For many a reason, we’ve been a bit head down recently; scrabbling about with this presentation and that.

Anyway, this event managed to slip by without too much fanfare…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leeds

It’s the noticeboard bit; down and to the right. There…

It has two Addiply ads. Now filled. By local, Leeds punters.

And as you can see, both are paying a tenner a week for the privilege. Or rather they were; the next advertiser will need to find 15 notes to oust the pair out of their chosen slots.

There’s a bid model at work.

Those two agreed to a tenner a week. OK… Times two… that’s £80 a month; minus PayPal and an Addiply commission… OK, that’s about £72 a month heading GMG’s way.

Courtesy of their decision to ‘go local…’ For two, small, text box ads.

That allows two, local Leeds platforms to display their wares.

No GMG ad salesman in sight; it’s too small beer for them.

Does that £72 out-perform the revenue return from the Google AdSense proposition at the foot of the page… for that individual page? In that one, tiny corner of the vast GMG empire? What’s the scores on the doors… Googliath vs Addiply?

I don’t know. They’re not my numbers. I would only go as far to suggest we give MrG a run for his money. That’s all.

But look again at those advertisers; this one in particular…

http://www.leedsforum.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=95

And the wording of his text ad: ‘Live or work in Leeds…’

Right, go to the bottom of the page where the Google ads now hang out. And this might be unfair; it might just be one of those occasions where the wrong ad popped up… when a distant algorithm was having an off day….

… but the top ad is for ‘Love Leeds More’.

Quote: ‘Visit Leeds This August and Stay for just £20′

OK, it’s my italic.

But that ad is a completely different beast altogether from the one that Addiply has delivered.

Ours is aimed at people who ‘live and work… ‘ in Leeds.

Google’s is for people who ‘visit…’ Leeds.

I might be making a wild stab in the dark here, but I suspect the Guardian’s vision for Guardian/Leeds is that it is read by – and, indeed, written by… – people who are Leeds residents. It’s aim is to keep councils under check, to get potholes repaired, to see civic good nurtured and sustained.

It’s whole thrust is not towards the casual visitor; yes, there’s a good-ish ‘fit’ for the student accommodation ad, but it is not a tourism gateway.

The algorithm – in my humble opinion – has dished up the wrong kind of ad.

And if your commercial future rests on matching the right ad with the right eye-ball, that’s not good.

Particularly when the revenue from that particular ad space *can* be dependent on someone clicking upon that ad… that GMG, TheLichfieldBlog or whoever are resting their business model on PPC.

If I live in Leeds and read GuardianLocal/Leeds… why would I click on an advert that’s built around a visit proposition?

Answer is… I won’t.

Therefore, chances are, I as the Guardian won’t earn. For as long as that visit ad tops my Google Ads box and is working on a PPC basis, I’m all-but giving my ad space away for nothing.

And yet I’ve pulled in an audience that’s delivering 20,000-plus views a week…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=8

None of this is rocket science; none of this should be news to anyone.

B&B ads slapped onto ‘local’ news websites don’t work because those same local news websites are aimed at people who have no need for a B&B; they live there…

And, therefore, they will not take action via that ad… whether that’s to click on it, transact through it… etc etc…

The value is in tenancy; those are where my potential punters are; how much does it cost me to place my brand in front of them… A tenner.

Or £15 now that the ‘bid’ model is starting to kick in on the streets of Leeds.

Simples. Simples.

That’s where our futures lie. With the simples.  

Question: What does the long grass look like?

Answer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/15/local-media-ownership-rules

The key ‘commitments’ – and I use the word in its loosest possible sense of the term – are included in these three paragraphs…

‘The department said today that it intends to decide by January 2012 whether to use part of the TV licence fee to fund broadband delivery to rural areas.

‘By the summer of 2012, it expects to begin licensing the first of as many as 80 local TV companies, part of a Tory plan to see local media companies deliver TV, print and online content to replace services such as ITV’s regional news.

‘The DCMS said that 10 to 20 local TV stations will be licensed by the end of the current parliament in 2015. It wants to “foster the development of a new breed of strong local media groups, by removing local cross-media ownership rules to encourage local TV…’

The link, of course, harks back to the Roger Parry notion that the likes of Archant, JP, TrinityMirror et al have nothing else on their minds right now – and would, therefore, leap at the opportunity to fill the hole left by the departing Archie Norman and the rag-tag of regional content that does for ITV’s stab at ‘local’ news.

For most provincial newspaper ceos, November 2012 is a lifetime away… most, I strongly suspect, can look no further forward than the summer of 2011. Certainly not if you’re John Fry and JP; between now and the birth of the Roger model there is the small matter of that £475 million-odd debt mountain to service… speculation around which has always been rife.

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2009/09/07/johnston-press-a-cash-machine-for-the-masters-of-the-universe/

Such fall-outs of JP’s aggressive acquisition policy aside, there are, of course, 81 ’slots’ up for grabs.  

Each of the Parry-designed ‘Local Media Companies’ is, it appears, designed to service a ‘patch’ 500,000 punters strong.

“A typical LMC will cover cover a single city or group of towns and will combine the media formats of local television, radio, print and websites,” to quote the Government’s favoured report.

We have, of course, walked this walk before – why, for example, it is in the very nature of this web beast to defy any kind of artificial imposition ordained from on high; the revolting masses of whom Parry clearly has little or no conception will not take to being coralled into convenient political constructs that have little or no relevance to the realities of day-to-day web life.

An LMC will cover ‘a group of towns’. Because that’s a proven model?

That people living in Fakenham really want to know what’s happening in Dereham? Just as much as people in Witney want to know what’s happening in Abingdon?

And they clearly won’t be interested in accessing WitneyTV… and all the host of other little ‘TV’ channels that are springing up in our midst?

There are already 12 ‘TV’ stations in Cornwall…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/06/12/why-imho-81-into-mycornwall-tv-and-yournorwich-tv-wont-go-whatever-messrs-parry-and-shott-think-the-answer-to-local-tv-will-bubble-up-from-below/

Put frankly, the Parry model is bollo*ks.

In a sense, the Tories might get lucky in the fact that they could claim that ‘the market’ is, indeed, demonstrating the way to go… that in the best traditions of laissez-faire economics, the Government might be all too happy to bat this notion of ‘local TV’ deep into the political long grass and see what ‘the people’ deliver.

For, to my mind, we’re right back to Christopher Hill; we’re right back to the ‘World Turned Upside Down’…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/30/as-2010-looms-perhaps-we-need-to-party-like-its-1649-not-1499-and-to-recognise-that-maybe-the-world-is-indeed-turning-upside-down/

We’re back to that quote in his introduction…

‘Popular revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition and the middle decades of the seventeenth century saw the greatest upheaval that has yet occurred in Britain.

‘… This book deals with what, from one point of view, are subsidiary episodes… the attempts of various groups of the common people to impose their own solutions to the problems of their time, in opposition to the wishes of their betters…’

MyCornwall.TV – what we could potentially do with www.southnorwichnews.co.uk as a ‘TV’ station – these are all examples of the ‘common people’ attempting to find a solution of their own to ‘the problems of their time…’

And this is the line: ‘in opposition to the wishes of their betters…’

On one level, you could claim that one of those ‘betters’ would be Rupert Murdoch who, as we speak, is trying to impose a pay-wall on us all.

But, equally, that could also apply to the Parry vision of 81 LMCs springing up across the country; that if I live in Abingdon, I will find news of Witney interesting… that the future of local ’TV’ news in this country will come down to this thing 81 ‘patches’ big… that this size will, somehow, fit all…

Actually – to re-quote Mr Weller – the more I see, the more I know, the more I know, the *more* I understand, it is probably just as well that HM Government’s plans for the future of local news in the UK are, indeed, hidden deep within the long grass… to be retrieved only once the fun and games of the 2012 London Olympics are over.

Thatway, locked away in some DCMS vault for the forseeable future, no-one can ever suggest that they’re utterly clueless as to how this thing might ever actually work… no, no… they are deep in ‘consultation’; working closely with Roger and his plan.

I guess whenever Google ceo Eric Schmidt speaks in public we are all almost duty-bound to sit up and take notice.

To ruminate, cogitate and procrastinate (albeit occasionally…) on the latest pearls of Mountain View wisdom the man has to offer.

Because as much as we might have the odd quibble with the complex business model that is AdSense/DoubleClick, Mr Schmidt is still a man worth listening to – particularly when it came to his key-note speech at The Guardian’s Activate2010 gig last week.

Where next for newspapers – in the same moment of media time as Rupert and Co were slamming up their pay-walls around The Times and its content – was all fascinating stuff; even if – I guess – the correct terminology might have been where next for content… it, as far as I can ever see, will remain king.

*All* we have to do is build a new palace for Content’s throne. Millions of them, if truth be told.

Anyway, there were some gem lines is Mr Schmidt’s key-note; many of which struck a chord in this neck of the woods as we wandered around with a couple of PowerPoints and a blank piece of paper.  You can watch the speech here…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2010/jul/02/google-eric-schmidt-activate

As usual, it prompted a flurry of articles… the gist of which was that the future of ‘news’ would involve something mobile, something cloud-based and something that was highly personalised to all of us… 

http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2010/07/in_a_16_minute_speech.php

In particular these lines: “Mobile is the hottest area of computer technology…

“The smartest developers now are writing apps for mobile before they write for Windows or Apple Mac desktop operating systems. Part of that is because these devices are hugely personal to us when we use them.” 

And on the future of newspapers? This: “What does the newsreading experience look like many years from now? I think it’s delivered to a digital device, which has text, obviously, but also colour, and video, and the ability to dig very deeply into what you are supplied with…

… The most important thing is that it will be more personalised.”

So it will be my news; the news that matters to me… and, crucially, organised to my way of thinking…

Actually, change that. News can mean so many things to so many different people; as journalists we can get all too hung up on what the ‘news’ that really matters to me is….

To a 16-year-old the news that matters could be that Johnny X just got off with Yasmin Y; to a 25-year-old it could be the news that the next XBox Live release has just got a preview clip out… we can’t impose ‘news’ values on anyone. It’s each to their own out there…

Try again.

So it will be my content; the content that matters to me… and, crucially, organised to my way of thinking…

Personalised. And organised.

As you do, I found this little curio the other day… here:

http://www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_collectibles/80s/filofax.php

That the word ‘FiloFax’ was actually coined by a secretary. A secretary going places, it seems…

“The original idea for a loose leaf ring binder goes back to Philadelphia in 1910, when the Lefax organiser was invented to hold engineering data.

“In 1921, a UK company, Norman and Hill, began making the Lefax. The name Filofax (File of Facts) was coined by a secretary Grace Scurr, who eventually became chairman of the business…”

A ‘file of facts’. Organised and personalised to meet the individual user’s tastes and requirements.

Right now, that’s fascinating.

Truly fascinating.

Because for me, I think we have to empower people to build; to personally organise the ‘news’ that really matters to them in a way that works for them… Not in a way that works for us.

And we have to stand back and let them decide what is the ‘news’ that matters to them.

And if they organise their news around an alert that there’s a half-price sale on at Karen Millen this weekend, a 10% discount at CostaCoffee and a free screening of ‘Gone With The Wind’ at the local Playhouse, then so be it…

The ‘page’ earmarked for the very latest developments in the Northern Ireland peace process or the fluctuations of the Euro against the Dollar, lets leave that on the shelf for someone else to read.

Let people personally organise their own news. Whatever that is…

http://traintimes.org.uk:81/map/tube/

It is a ‘live’ map of the London Underground.

If you look at the little multi-coloured flags for long enough, you will see that they do indeed move. You are watching tube trains shuttling between London Underground stations in real time.

And for many this was another ‘Wow!’ moment; proof positive that the data miners are going to rule the world; they are the ones that – in certain eyes – deliver the real gold.

Further proof that anything that combined a map with data was hot right now came in the shape of one of the 2010 Knight News Challenge winners… two boys from Riga who have created a ‘live’ map for Latvia; plotting not so much the movement of tube trains, rather a whole host of ‘news’ feeds… a Tweet from my down my street now plotted on a Google map.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/knight-news-challenge-gomap-riga-wont-make-much-new-just-hopefully-make-things-work-better/

They were, to their credit, swift to acknowledge the part that Adrian Holovaty had played in delivering the first, automated ‘data-as-news’ stream in the shape of his own, Knight News winner, EveryBlock.

We have, of course, been down the path of data before; why – for me – there has to be a balance between a stream of data droning on overhead and those poor grunts left on the ground trying to work out just why there were four yellow flags backed up in an orderly queue going into Marble Arch at 8.18am on the 27th June…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/04/23/the-lesson-comes-from-the-streets-of-baghdad-that-our-future-has-to-be-a-joint-operation-you-need-grunts-on-the-ground-you-win-no-hearts-and-few-minds-with-just-drones-in-the-air/

The danger is, of course, that you become all churlish in your dis-regard for the power of data; the fact that the Guardian can now offer a map that shows exactly where their football writers are on any given Saturday afternoon seems to me slightly beside the point… I don’t need a flag on a map to demonstrate that the reporter covering Arsenal-Everton is sat at The Emirates.

Whereas is he or she going to be? 

Data in its rawest of forms needs to be softened, to be humanised, to be tailored to a wider audience… not just those who know one end of an API from another.

‘Faces Of The Fallen’ remains a classic case in point; that was EveryBlock given a ‘face’ – tragically, the faces were those of the US servicemen and women killed on active service in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2008/06/07/faces-of-the-fallen-is-for-me-the-way-to-go-its-re-humanising-the-red-raw-data-that-holovaty-and-co-so-brilliantly-deliver-everyblock-with-a-cherry-on-top/

Which is why when I look at the live map of the London Underground, I don’t see the future… I see part of the future; its a device to be built upon… or, more ideally, written upon. For someone, somewhere to be empowered with the means to add the why to the what…

Why are those four flags backing up at Marble Arch… what’s the story there….

There is, of course, another reason why I looked at this live map of the London Underground with interested eyes.

Because as someone rightly pointed out, that data becomes most useful in the one place that you currently can’t access it… actually on the London Underground itself. Down at the end of an escalator at 11.47pm on a Friday night; wondering where the last tube home was….

For that’s the bit where the web currently fails to find a foothold because – thus far – no-one has had either the wit or the wherewithal to whack a wifi network along those same tunnels.

It is a little known fact that the Tyne & Wear Metro is all wifi’d up; you could run that in Newcastle, no worries.

For someone who is still trying to make the world wake up to the value of elegant new networks, that’s one area that fascinates me – the opportunities content and, crucially, ad-wise that would open up across a new, wifi-enabled network of the London Underground ilk.

How many people would discard their free Standard for the real-time news and information that would stream into their SmartPhones, lap-tops and tablets halfway between Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road?

That network, that platform would give that piece of raw data a proper home; a rich piece of data embedded deep amongst other pieces of networked news and information… a stream of data that would, in turn, deserve to be monetised; a useful service that would attract both eyeballs and advertisers in equal measure… advertisers that could be at once local to individual stations and national to the network…

Opening up transport network data is, equally, nothing new… this is the developers site for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the US:

http://www.bart.gov/schedules/developers/index.aspx

And nor is seeing rail networks as a potential ‘framework’ for local journalism new either; head east for that point to be proved… http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/

But if we ever suspect that the challenge of the web is of such a magnitude that it forces all of us to start with a blank piece of paper and work out what networks might actually work in this new world of ours, then I think one answer may lay underground.

There lies a potential content and advertising network of, as yet, untapped possibilities; of which that Live London Underground map would be just one, integral and integrated part.

www.MyCornwall.TV 

First things first. It only actually caught my eye courtesy of Mr Will Perrin; who tweeted it out with due reference to ‘#ifnc’ on whose ‘beauty panel’ he sat and the news of whose demise came as no great shock to anyone last Tuesday.  

As in the demise of the ‘Independently Financed News Consortia’ as opposed to Mr Perrin; he, last time I looked, was alive and kicking and still talking about local.  

We, of course, had our own reasons to follow the fate of the IFNCs with particular interest; with due thanks to Nico Fell and Michael Wilson at UTV, we were part of their ’successful’ bid for the WalesLive model; only for that to meet its maker as Jeremy Hunt stayed true to his pre-election word, canned the IFNCs and ear-marked the money top-sliced off the BBC to further the cause of rural broadband connectivity.  

The kind of connectivity, you suspect, that will be sorely needed around Cornwall if mycornwall.tv is ever to fly.  

In such far-flung nether regions of the United Kingdon, such debates flourish. Callum at HighlandWifi is a new pal of ours after his success at Smarta100; we have also been walking this kind of walk in Norfolk; one of the reasons why I tucked the domain name www.yourNorwich.tv up my sleeve last summer. Just in case talks with You-Know-Who ever came to fruition.  

The fact that Addiply now runs an MPU unit to host video – be they news, info-mmercial or straight commercial – also floats our boat; it was why I was up at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital last week talking about local video we could drop onto www.southnorwichnews.co.uk Sure enough, a short info-mmercial about the merits of the ‘Park & Ride’ ahead of fighting over the last free verge at the car park will be winging it’s way across to our Claire.  

Simple join the dots stuff; there’s a highly-relevant 4,000-strong digital audience; there’s a highly-relevant digital message for that same 4,000-strong audience… how do we join the two… and reward Claire’s hyper-local publishing efforts into the bargain.  

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/05/29/dmgt-appear-curiously-at-ease-with-central-government-ad-spend-going-down-the-proverbial-toilet-fine-in-which-case-give-those-last-pennies-to-every-josh-we-can-find/  

But what makes the emergence of – I presume EU, RDA or ‘public’ funded MyCornwall.TV soooo interesting is how, exactly, it might fit in the ‘Parry Model’ now – apparently championed by HM Government. A model that, according to one informed estimate doing the rounds on Tuesday night, could take up to five years to properly gestate. 

First, of course, an investment banker from Lazards how has to nod and approve; we can all only hope that the fabled Nick Shott doesn’t take his investment cue from the clowns at RBS who swallowed every word that the old Irish chancer Brian P Tierney had to say with regard to Philly Media Holdings…  

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/26/an-open-letter-to-the-media-acquisition-dept-royal-bank-of-scotland-case-of-bonus-first-brain-second-people/  

We digress. The Parry Plan, of course, is for 81 ‘Local Media Companies’ to populate the local ‘TV’ news space suddenly to be left as and when ITV vacates the scene of the 6.30 revenue crime.  

Why it was 81 and not 63 or 96 no-one was wholly sure when it came to the panel discussion at The Frontline Club on Tuesday night. For me, it was Marc Reeves who made one of the night’s most telling points when he tried to get people to see beyond this notion that ‘TV’ – going forward – was going to involve a studio desk, two presenters, a gaffer, a boom-boy and all else that comes with our traditional notion of ‘TV’ news.  

In its stead would come something altogether more radical and ill-defined; something that an emasculated OfCom will clearly struggle to define and regulate if this idea of ‘TV’ proves to be no more than Claire from www.southnorwichnews.co.uk armed with a video enhanced iPhone – and a 4,000-strong audience to match.  

The answer as to ‘Why 81?’ comes in the form of OfCom’s part in Parry’s original report to the Tory party; written in summer 09, it was still championning ‘Channel M’ as the way forward; the same bastard child of GMG/MEN that TrinityMirror wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole when it came to the MEN’s recent sale.  

Anyway, here we go…

http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/920601/Tories-unveil-plans-81-new-local-TV-stations/

It’s 81 cos that was the number of spectrum ’sales’ people figured you could auction off; those in turn would give rough audience numbers – per LMC – of 500,000.

‘The Tories would also auction spectrum to create local television licences that would form a key part of these LMCs. The party statement said Ofcom had identified 81 different locations where such licences could be created, covering populations of about 500,000.’

At which point, presumeably, Parry, Shott, Hunt et al figure that even what was left of a Johnston Press sales team could find enough ads to support a ’studio’ in the bowels of the Sheffield Star. Job done.  

Now Sheffield, Yorkshire, has its own TV station; still seven short of Birmingham, Alabama, but done. 6.30 ’slot’ filled. Everyone’s a winner.  

OK. Go back to www.mycornwall.tv – or, indeed, imagine our Claire with a camera and a video platform on www.southnorwichnews.co.uk – and, for my money, we’re getting far, far close to the likely reality – particularly if you then empower both with a wifi cloud slung above their heads.  

Cos – smartly – MyCornwall don’t see their world through the eyes of neat, 500,000 ‘viewer’ chunks of spectrum. They seem themselves split into another 12 sub-domains… from Lizard to Bodmin Moor; neither gives a toss about what happens in the other; both care deeply what happens beneath their own connectivity cloud. 

The future of local ‘TV’ ? I suspect it starts at the door of The Jamaica Inn, deep in the heart of Bodmin Moor… 

http://www.mycornwall.tv/region/bodmin 

It starts with a ‘bottom up’ solution… it doesn’t start by splitting spectrums into 81, 500,000-strong chunks in the vain hope that a ‘top down’ imposition from the former chairman of Johnston Press and an investment banker from Lazards will work wonders. 

It won’t. 

The answer is – as we speak – bubbling up from below.

If ever there was one person who took C Shirky’s words to heart and experimented like his little life depended on it, then its Josh Halliday.

It therefore came as no surprise to find Master Halliday being the first person to whip Addiply’s new MPU ad panel off the shelf and drop it into www.SR2blog.com.

Others might feel their way gently into this whole ‘richer media’ landscape.

Not Josh. He grabbed the bull by the horns and made his www.SR2blog.com capable of hosting video ads off our Addiply back-end… or rather, we host; Josh plays.  

Click through that ‘Advertise here…’ button and you’ll get here…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&pid=57

That’s how you place a video ad yourself into the heart of SR2. For a fiver a week.

Simple.

Which brings us to these two pieces that popped up in the Guardian last week; the fact that some £520 mill is being wiped off the Government’s advertising budget. This year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/24/coalition-freezes-advertising-budget

Down at the coalface, that means individual campaigns will be hit… ‘A spokeswoman for the Home Office, which runs high-profile ad campaigns on issues including teen alcohol abuse and knife crime, said that there would be a £5m cut to its communications and marketing budget…’

Click through that live link to ‘teen alcohol abuse’ and you get to this…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/17/advertising.health

A video advert.

I’ve never been to SR2. I met Herb Kim and his Codeworks crew in Sunderland the other month; I’ve no idea whether that was in SR2. But the suggestion is that parts of SR2 aren’t the greatest.

Like every, ageing industrial mass in the UK, SR2 will have ‘inner city’ issues. Some of which will, you suspect, include teen alcohol abuse.

Now, if I’m the COI with a budget now £5 mill light, but a message that I’d still like to drill down into the heart of afflicted communities, Josh’s little video ad space looks absolutely heaven sent…

For a fiver a month, I can place that video ad for teen alcohol abuse right where it needs to be seen… only if I were Josh, I’d start charging them £50 a month for that privilege.

The winners? The UK tax-payer and Josh Halliday. The losers? All the third party interventionists. Now a COI ad monkey can place that ad themselves. They don’t need an ad agency to do that work for them….

Nor, of course, do they need the static pages of the local evening newspaper.

Not that that appears to be of any concern to certain regional newspaper execs; certainly not Martin Morgan of DMGT…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/28/dmgt-regional-business-apps

… given the squealing noises to be heard from the Newspaper Society every time the thorny issue of planning applications comes up, it was remarkable how few feathers the fact that Northcliffe’s titles look set to be £10 million lighter courtesy of public ad spend going down the proverbial toilet ruffled.

“Government-related advertising is actually a small part of overall advertising, we are not a major recipient of government spending,” said Martin.

‘DMGT added that growth in private sector advertising was “taking up the slack” of any drop-off in bookings from the government..’

Fine. If you’re not that bothered, lets give what little COI cash there is to every hyper-lcoal Josh we can find.

For them, it could make the world of difference; the difference, say, between ‘not-for-profit’ and ‘not-for-loss’.

As world and his wife waits to see where the first of the new Chancellor’s cuts will come on Monday – £6 billion-worth, to be precise – we lost an important advertiser on MyFootballWriter.com the other week.

They have, in fairness, been replaced by another important advertiser; so all is not wholly lost. But both serve something of a purpose as we all try and figure how to make the numbers work once Mr Osbourne goes to work.

So after the better part of three years working with Golley-Slater and the British Army, this week we welcomed Great Yarmouth and Waveney NHS Trust to the MyFootballWriter fold with their ad for chlamydia awareness.

A click-through and you’re here… http://www.areyougettingit.com/

The point is that both the British Army and the chlamydia campaign share one thing in common – they’re both trying to work out how on earth you target 16-25-year-old ‘lads’ when – in every reality – they are probably not reading their local evening newspaper any more.

They will be on-line. They will be on FaceBook. On YouTube. On their smart phones. Reading their footie. Where – in every likelihood – they won’t be is ferreting out the nearest corner shop and waiting for the van with the newspapers to arrive.

They’ve gone. Long gone.

But hanging around a footie website; that’s a possibility. And if I’m the Yarmouth & Waveney NHS Trust and I’m charged from on high with hitting that young male audience – somehow – you will feel pretty happy about justifying your ad spend.

It’s local; it’s on-line; it’s footie; it’s young men. Tick, tick, tick…

And for that level of ‘certainty’, you will be prepared to pay a premium.

Just as I, the publisher, am happy to stick to my guns and charge a premium to the NHS Trust; because I ‘fit’ with what they are looking for. I offer them the audience that they seek – and that has value.

Even now. Even in this current climate. That is an efficient and effective way of delivering ‘brand’ value. And for that, someone can pay.

Because as every local and national Government department comes under huge pressure to justify every last penny of their ad spend, such thinking is going to be crucial.

Demand sweeping savings of every local council and it’s not just their much-hated ‘newspaper’ offerings that will go to meet its maker… because if the choice is between one OAP home and the £000s and £000s I’m still obliged to spend in planning applications advertising in the back pages of the local weekly paper – and all in an age when I can get that ‘data’ fed out to the public for nowt – it’s a no-brainer.

Whatever the local newspaper barons demand.

What are market forces dictating? To maintain indirect public subsidies for an information platform that technology is fast making redundant? Is that the Tory way? Is that what Master George wants?

Read the tea-leaves as to the Jeremy Hunt vision for the delivery of local news and he would – it appears - still be wedded to this notion of city-based TV stations popping up across the land in the manner of Birmingham, Alabama.

That’s the interesting line from here…

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/17/jeremy-hunt-priorities-culture-secretary

That rather than Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland etc etc all falling under the one roof that an ‘independently financed news consortia’ might have offered; somehow each will find the wherewithal to produce their own TV stations. NewcastleTV, SunderlandTV, etc, etc…

Maybe, the LibDem ‘wing’ of this new Government can persuade our Jeremy to give the IFNCs a ‘go’; maybe Archie Norman’s long-standing connections with the Tory hierachy will see a deal being stitched as a newly-liberated ITV.com ‘re-enter’ the local news market that they were desperately hoping to abandon.

Perhaps.

But the point is I think Jeremy Hunt’s vision is – actually – do-able. I said as much after speaking on all things ‘local’ at GMG’s Oxford Media Convention…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/01/24/making-mr-hunts-vision-of-city-based-tv-stations-flesh-will-take-a-large-dollop-of-networked-thinking-a-few-random-thoughts-from-gmgs-oxford-gig-mycity-tv-and-all-that/

Some five months on and – to mis-quote Mr Weller – the more I see, the more I know; the more I know, the more I understand how this can be done.

Part of the answer lies in the on-going power of local, display advertising; why it is that we’ve always been able to attract the likes of the British Army and the local NHS Trust to take out a tenancy-based ad on MyFootballWriter.

It is a lesson not lost on Google, either. Wade through the weighty tome that was The Atlantic this month and their piece on ‘How To Save The News’… http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/how-to-save-the-news/8095/ …and there it is; pretty much the same conclusion… (on Page 6)…

‘Online display ads may not be so valuable now, he [Google's Neal Mohan] said, but that is because we’re still in the drawn-out “transition” period. Sooner or later—maybe in two years, certainly in 10—display ads will, per eyeball, be worth more online than they were in print…’

Really? ‘…be worth more online than they were in print…’

This is the man from Google talking, right.

‘Wherever people choose to spend their time, Mohan said, they can eventually be “monetized”—the principle on which every newspaper and magazine (and television network) has survived until today.

“This [online-display] market has the opportunity to be much larger,” he said. It was about $8 billion in the U.S. last year. “If you just do the math—audience coming online, the time they spend—it could be an order of magnitude larger.”

‘In case you missed that, he means tenfold growth.’

Which makes my clap ad worth £1,500 a month. Plus VAT. Give or take.

There is, to my mind, another trick you need to pull to make Jeremy’s ‘city-tv’ vision flesh and that comes down to delivery systems; what replaces the press hall, the delivery van and the paper boy.

For that you need some serious wads of cash and some kick-ass kit.

Funny thing is, I could even tell you where both were. Do that, however, and someone would have to kill me.

But it’s do-able. As the boys from Google know.

Indeed, a couple of days later and we even had our very first £20 per week advertiser in the shape of http://www.readersheds.co.uk/ 

Who knows what that means for any of us in the medium-to-long term. For now, it remains little more than a trial. A suck-it-and-see operation on the part of GNM – wedded, like the rest of us, to this idea that if nothing works, everything might…. that now is, indeed, the time for 000s of little experiments; of which the Addiply/GuardianLocal tie-in is just one.

So, we’ll see. There will be no promises from our side of the fence that we’re about to change the world.

We’re just in the business of giving publishers, large and small, a new tool to play with in the hope that it might – just – form one possible part of one potential answer.

In that regard it was interesting to note that the start of Emily Bell’s farewell speeches before she disappears to New York to join the likes of Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen in the hotbed of US J-School thinking, that she sensed the answer would lie in some form of hybrid model – a bit of this here, a bit of that there… etc, etc…

That there will be no one, single answer to all our web woes; what works for some, won’t work for others.

But what interests me in the midst of this current General Election campaign is just how much of our once-accepted world is now bust – be it morally, financially or, indeed, philosophically, there’s not too much for anyone ‘big’ to shout about.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/04/03/if-brown-was-once-the-new-black-is-small-the-new-big-because-one-or-two-people-are-starting-to-take-offence-at-an-oblique-way-of-working/

The world’s biggest investment bank Goldman Sachs is just the latest cornerstone of ‘big’ business to find its very foundations under threat; now to my mind, ‘big’ politics of the two-party variety in the UK is under threat like never before.

The televised leaders’ debates are, in part, to blame.

Suddenly we’re all empowered to see who of our three, potential leaders-elect can actually hold a conversation; who can ‘engage’ us as an audience; an audience weaned for the better part of ten years on such shows as ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘X-Factor’.

And, in many ways, the live debates are no different; who has got Prime Ministerial ‘talent’; which of the three candidates has that ‘X’ factor that marks him out as my preferred candidate?

But – and here’s the ‘big’ problem – the old, electoral system doesn’t ‘fit’ with the way in which we’re now empowered; the level of expectation that comes from us ‘choosing’ a Susan Boyle or a Leona Lewis.

Most people, I suspect, would settle for a phone vote these days; swap Peter Snow and his ’swing-o-meter’ for Simon Cowell and a big, red button and it’d be job done.

As it is, Clegg can sweep the popular vote, but the very nature of this country’s electoral system ensures that he’s got next to no chance of becoming Prime Minister – the man most able to hold a conversation with the people of this country won’t get in.

Because the system – the ‘big’ beast that is two-party politics and first-past-the-post protocols – won’t allow for the collaborative voice of the individual voter to be heard.

And how are individual voters collaborating like never, ever before? Through their alter egos on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc etc… this is where the debates are being instantly dissected and opinions shaped or re-inforced. That’s where the consensus is to be found.

Of course there is another fixture in the roster of ‘big’ that are finding life very uncomfortable right now – and that’s the big media beasts of the right for whom this election is not playing out as they demanded.

Because people will no longer do as they are told; just as they won’t watch the news at 6.30pm or wait for the paper boy to deign to show up at 6.30pm every evening, they won’t sit there and be told who to vote for.

Go back – as we all-too often do – to Christopher Hill and this world of ours that is fast turning upside down and it’s there again, this ragged band of Diggers…

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/12/30/as-2010-looms-perhaps-we-need-to-party-like-its-1649-not-1499-and-to-recognise-that-maybe-the-world-is-indeed-turning-upside-down/

…who headed to St George’s Hill intent on defying the landlords, etc..

‘We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men…’

Free to hold our own conversations as to who we think is best suited to life at No10; this assumption by the ‘big’ beasts of the media jungle – be it Murdoch Jnr or Mr Dacre – that we will ‘bow’ to their will is a throw-back to another age.

When ‘big’ ruled.

When life was more complicated; when the ‘collapse to simplicity’ as foretold by Mr Shirky had yet to take root in our consciousness.

That essay – to me – looks increasingly seminal in its thinking.

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

That the same logic that Shirky appears intent on applying to complex ‘business’ models could apply equally as easily to complex ‘voting’ systems of which the UK variety is a class apart.

The simple solution is to put Messrs Clegg, Brown and Cameron in front of Cowell, Morgan, Cole and Co and for them to press a big red button as we all reach for our mobile phones.

We’ll vote for the lad we like, we trust… the one we think can have a conversation with.

That’s simple. And that’s small.

Big and complicated don’t work. End of.

In times gone by, we used to use the Shilbottle Coal Co as our prime example of a local tradesperson who ‘got’ what Addiply offered the local advertiser.

The chance to place a simple, text ad himself.

For a fiver a week in the case of TrinityMirror’s JournalLive site in Alnwick.

Or, in the case of Josh Halliday’s http://sr2blog.com/ and the little text ad that appeared thereon for a Sunderland tiler, http://www.tilingservicesne.co.uk/ a couple of quid per month.

To put his Sunderland tiler ‘brand’ in front of the good people of SR2.

Himself.

I might be wrong; I don’t think tiler and student are mates. The former simply recognises that the latter has a spot of digital ad space for sale in front of his target audience and – with a little help from his Mrs’ PayPal account – so he was able to place an ad himself.

As he might have placed a postcard in the window of a Hendon PostOffice; his business card tacked to the wall in the local chippie.

He didn’t need an ad agency to tell him where to place his ‘brand’; nor did he need a digital marketing guru. Somehow he worked it all out for himself… because it’s not rocket science.

He wanted to place his ad… just there. Where? There… in front of his potential punters in SR2.

Oh, there… OK, fine… Go on then. It’s a couple of quid. For a month. Do it in three clicks.

Simple.

Three clicks later and there it is. In front of his eyes. Placed. Tacked to the wall of Josh’s digital chip shop.

What said Sunderland tiler didn’t need to do, of course, was to go via a big black box and a magical algorithm in sunny California.

He cut that ‘complexity’ out of his life – the complexity that comes with one end optimising his campaign brightly enough to ensure that he will end up on http://sr2blog.com/ ; the complexity that comes with an algorithm recognising that the same little text ad wants to be in SR2 and the back-streets of Sunderland; the complexity that comes with Josh ensuring that his ad space is open to the likes of local tradespeople – and not B&Bs and Hotels In Sunderland.

Or, if you’re Patrick Smith and his journalism blog, Used Car Sales In Rochdale… http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/03/27/if-any-of-us-are-ever-going-to-get-to-that-ledge-marked-not-for-loss-we-have-to-do-better-than-selling-used-car-ads-in-rochdale/

I would hesitate to say that in the last four years I’ve found myself walking hand-in-hand with Mr Clay Shirky.

A bit like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, me, MyFootballWriter and Addiply walk firmly in their shadow.

Perhaps we try and walk the walk that they actually talk… for example, trying to make certain visions of an entrepreneurial and web-empowered Africa flesh.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/03/21/an-open-letter-to-sir-tim-and-his-new-best-pals-at-vodafone-one-way-in-which-we-might-empower-africa-to-pay-their-own-way-web-wise/

Mr Shirky’s latest tome was fascinating.

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

Once again – in my humble opinion – we could get certain of our pieces to ‘fit’ within this new, societal jigsaw he was drawing; one in which ‘complexity’ was starting to get the cold shoulder from a populace enabled to view the world in a different light.

To re-invent ways that they organised themselves – both commercially and philosophically – and all from the bottom up as they tired of the ever-growing complexities that were delivered from the top down.

All of which takes us right back to Christopher Hill; and the world that he saw starting to turn upside down in 1649 as the Diggers, Levellers and Co looked to create ‘a common treasury for all… ‘

Writing his introduction, Hill wrote: ‘Popular revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition and the middle decades of the seventeenth century saw the greatest upheaval that has yet occurred in Britain.

‘… This book deals with what, from one point of view, are subsidiary episodes… the attempts of various groups of the common people to impose their own solutions to the problems of their time, in opposition to the wishes of their betters…’

The only word that is, alas, missing is ’simple’.

That we were – in 1649 – witnessing various groups of common people trying ‘to impose their own simple solutions to the problems of their time…’

Read Shirky’s tome and the point is clear; the simplest way to deliver me media in 2010 is into the palm of my hand; two touches of a screen I have the weather, the sports results, a home made video to chuckle at…

… all in the same way that, in three clicks, a Sunderland tiler can place a text ad in front of a Sunderland audience. It doesn’t need to go via Mountain View. Thataway lies ‘complexity‘.

‘In such systems,’ writes Shirky, ‘there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change…’

So what if someone asked Google to change AdSense? ‘Can we not do our advertising on a tenancy basis, Eric? I can’t get anyone to click…’ might be an example, I guess.

Just a little tweak? Even that, it seems, can pose a fundamental challenge to the established order.

‘Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites…’

Further on, Shirky notes: ‘It’s tempting, at least for the people benefitting from the old complexity, to imagine that if things used to be complex, and they’re going to be complex, then everything can just stay complex in the meantime.

‘That’s not how it works, however.’

No, it’s not. Because people want simple; they value simple – particularly in times of economic strife when ‘complexity’ comes with at least two other partners in societal crime, obscurity and cost.

‘I don’t have time to get this to work… nor do I have the cash to pay someone else to get this to work…’

That, I strongly suspect, will be the refrain from SMEs the world over as they try to figure out how on earth they ever market their digital wares.

‘It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old,’ Shirky concludes. 

‘But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future…‘

If Shirky is right, then there’s a bright future in store for at least one Sunderland media student and, likewise, his local tiler.

Motors for sale: In Rochdale...

This isn’t anything new or revolutionary.

In fact, you could equally claim that this was nothing big or clever, either.

‘So what?’  will be the typical refrain… ‘And..?’

Perhaps I should go back a stage. I am, sad to admit, something of an ad spotter. Open up a web page – any web page – and I now, instinctively, look at the ads that are being served around that piece of content.

Almost before I even know what the content itself is about. But you have a rough idea; I go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/media to read about all things media; I go to http://www.wv11.co.uk/ to read about all things Wednesfield; I go to http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/ to read all things Norwich City.

But then I scan the ads… OK, that’s a Norwich wine merchant that has just taken out an Addiply ad on http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/ Mmm.. OK, makes sense… etc etc.

For if it makes sense – it seems appropriate and fitting – then, to my mind, it is of value. That for a Norwich wine merchant placing a text ad in front of a primarily Norwich-based audience has a value.

Particularly, if I can simply demonstrate my numbers… http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&pid=50 And at a quid a month – equating views-wise to one pence per 1,000 views – boy, is that good value money. Be rude not to…

And then, of course, we sit and wait for the bid process to click in. That’s the fag packet theory that we’ve always worked towards… that the market, eventually, will find its own level.

Anyway – sad to report – it has all left me something of a tragic ad-spotter; so I look at http://www.scotsman.com/ and hit refresh (F5) in the hope that the top banner ad for the Isle of Wight ferry would re-appear.

I do it with Jeff Jarvis’ rightly-lauded http://www.buzzmachine.com/ And sometimes his Google ad strip is spot on… I see ‘Train to be a journalist…’ Just as I know see a big, fat leaderboard ad for http://www.journalism.co.uk/ atop OutWithABang as I gave John and Co – gratis – an ad spot with which we could then test Addiply’s new richer media functionality.

Both ads make sense; they ‘fit’ the community around them.

Most of the time.

Jeff has had his troubles before. Lovelorn Jewish singles would have done little for his click-through returns a couple of summers ago… http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2008/07/06/for-niche-publisher-and-niche-advertiser-the-question-is-always-the-same-wdgdfy/

This morning and the same misfortune befell another leading media commentator… Patrick Smith. So you read this… http://psmithjournalist.com/2010/03/independent-sell-off-proves-every-old-media-business-is-for-sale/ … and, lo and behold, you’re getting an ad for ‘Cash For Cars In Rochdale’.

The liberal use of the word ‘independent’ clearly helps with the arrival of the IFA ad alongside; that kind of makes sense… but having read the article time and again, why ‘Rochdale’ should be deemed to be of relevance is a mystery.

Unless the fact that Patrick was in Manchester for the weekend, found a big black box buried deep beneath Mountain View whirring its geo-locator into life and slapping a ‘targetted’ Rochdale used car ad on the blog of a media commentator in the hope that the two ‘communities’ of Patrick’s media luvvies and the community of car buyers that, presumeably, http://www.webuyanycar.com/ signed up to target in Rochdale would magically mix… cos he was in Manchester for the day…

It might just be one, text ad on one bad day.

I know that Patrick could supply a list of better-targetted media job ads, for example, that arrive via his RSS-feed.

But, Patrick – in common with 000s of us – is looking to get this web thing to work for him. To earn him money. To get himself to that first little ledge – of being a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition.

And, for me, right now being enslaved to the curious whims of an algorithm simply doesn’t offer anyone enough of a guarantee. Not in our game. Not in journalism.

I run Google ads off a VisitNorfolk site; fine… everyone’s looking to click through onto a holiday cottage ad. Get that. And best of luck to all concerned.

But that’s not our market. Our community of readers comes to blogs like Patrick’s and website like SR2Blog and WV11 with a completely different purpose in mind. And it is a purpose that – IMHO – the current Google AdSense model ill serves.

People don’t want to buy a second hand car in Rochdale when they are reading Patrick Smith’s new media blog.

And in that particular, three-way commercial relationship between publisher, advertiser and network provider, there is only one winner. And it’s not Patrick. Nor is it a used car sales outfit in Rochdale.