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.  

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…

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.

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.

Our paths almost crossed in Vegas one-time as a combination of MyLocalWriter and Addiply made it to the final round of the 2008 Knight News Challenge only to be pipped at the post by Sir Tim and Martin Moore with their ‘kite-mark’ thinking.

‘Pipped’, as in by a country mile. For me, it remains a killer application as we all seek to prove our worth and our value out there in Web-land.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2008/05/23/sir-tim-i-take-it-all-back-with-the-glorious-benefit-of-hindsight-you-have-an-absolute-killer-of-an-application-on-your-hands/

Whether our paths do ever cross again remains a wholly moot point; Sir Tim is clearly – and rightly – a man in huge demand.

But having read this the other day, it would be nice to drop at least one memo into the great man’s in-tray…

http://www.webfoundation.org/2010/03/vodafone-donates-1-million-in-support-of-web-foundation-initiatives/

Because if the World Wide Web Foundation and their new best pals at Vodafone are on a quest to discover web-based tools and applications that can help empower the next generation of African entrepreneurs, then I think we might be able to help…

Ever since Matthew Buckland of www.24.com called on the World Association of Newspapers to find an ad model that delivered a 90% return to publishers… http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/03/27/it-would-appear-that-matthew-buckland-has-a-plan-for-the-world-association-of-newspapers-the-same-plan-that-linda-clive-and-the-people-of-darwen-are-working-on/ …cracking that African nut has always interested me.

Addiply, of course, does just that – delivers a 90% revenue return to publishers. Be they www.24.com or potentially, say, a farmers’ co-operative website in Ghana. That, maybe, ad-network wise, we had something vaguely akin to a wind-up, clockwork radio.

I only say Ghana because that was the last time I spotted Sir Tim; wandering around a maize plantation in Ghana in the company of a mobile-stroke-web minded farmer and @aleksk of ‘Virtual Revolution’ fame.

But – and here we’re into scribbling on the back of fag packet territory again – if, say, that Ghanaian farmers co-operative website looked to try and cover its monthly hosting costs by dropping a Google AdSense/Double-Click device into its back-end, I’d be amazed if they weren’t presented with ads for Ghanaian hotels and safaris.

Neither of which would do much for their click-through returns.

Equally, there might be a Ghanaian seed merchant who might be looking to market his wares on a local, digital platform. Could he oust that same Ghanaian five-star safari lodge ad from said co-op site?

Maybe I do those marvellous, intuitive people beneath Mountain View a disservice; if so, I humbly apologise. But if Phil and Co can’t get www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk to deliver much more than ‘B&B in Lichfield’ ads, then I’m not sure either our farmers co-op site or his potential seed merchant advertiser in Ghana would fare much better.

Deploy something that was simple, three-click and offered a 90% revenue return and the seed merchant would get an opportunity to market his wares to an appropriate audience; the farmers co-operative website would get the chance to cover their hosting costs… the chance to make them a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition.

Could they not do that with the AdSense/Double-Click proposition? Maybe. But there was a very interesting line hidden away in Steve Outing’s recent piece on the value/virtues of Kachingle…

http://steveouting.com/2010/03/15/my-blog-earned-65-08-via-crowd-funding/

That: ‘Looking at my Google AdSense earnings from this blog, for comparison, I note that the monthly figure is usually in the low one-figures…’

Could a Ghanaian farmer get the same piece of kit to beat US media commentator S Outing and his ‘low one-figure’ return?

OK. Clearly one of the barriers to entry will be the PayPal take-up across Africa; or the lack of it. Not everyone has a credit card. Or, indeed, a bank account.

And for Addiply to offer a tool that enables said Ghanaian farmers co-op to offer a 5 Ghanaian Cedi/week ad space to, say, a Ghanaian seed merchant, ideally that same transaction would be fully automated.

That, however, might be coming; cue this…. http://www.techmasai.com/2010/03/is-paypal-coming-to-south-africa-they-are-according-to-techcentral/

More intriguingly still, however, is this baby… http://www.mobile-financial.com/node/4447/Vodafone-to-launch-its-mobile-money-transfer-service-M-PESA-in-South-Africa

A mobile phone payment system delivered via… Vodafone. Now bolt that onto an Addiply back-end. Oooh… that’s interesting…

Of course, Addiply is an open ad network. Which means – with the addition of our new richer media suite – we can offer the chance for ‘national’ brands to drill their Flash-supported banners, buttons, skys, MPUs etc down into highly-targetted areas… in a very cost-effective manner.

Brands like, Oxfam. AIDS awareness campaigns…

We can drill ‘mesaaging’ into famine hit areas via an MPU slot; we can drop agricultural educational videos into said Ghanaian farmers co-op website… enhancing their seasonal yields whilst at the same time rewarding said website for their digital publishing efforts… turning them from, potentially, a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition into one that offers a small profit.

Which can make the world of difference.

I’ve never been to Africa. Always strikes me, however, that it is a continent teeming with budding entrepreneurs; all they ever want is the right tools to do certain jobs.

Simple, robust tools that they can tweak and twidde with along the way. Discover what works for them. On the streets.

Give them the right tool for the job, you then just sit back and let them get on with it. Empower them to build a better future for themselves, themselves.

That’s all they ever ask. And I think – albeit on the back of a fag-packet - we can deliver.

Albeit, perhaps with a little help from Sir Tim and his friends…

One happened tonight in the City of Lichfield.

Here it is… http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/2010/03/18/council-leader-concerned-by-plans-for-new-rail-line-through-lichfield/

You have to scroll down to see it. But it’s the banner ad. For these boys… http://www.lichfieldpc.co.uk/

A computer shop in Lichfield.

Run, I believe, by a lad called Nick Brickett. Who, I suspect, is a pal of Philip John, who helps run http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/

In one sense, that’s by the by. Because to my mind, for a lad who is flogging digital gear-stroke-PCs, it makes perfect sense to be placing brand ‘lichfieldpc’ in front of the 11,000-plus uniques that the LichfieldBlog now attracts.

For a tenner a month.

That – and, sure, I’m biased – all makes perfect sense.

And it probably didn’t require Phil’s pal Nick to go to an ad agency or a marketing guru to decide that that wasn’t a bad place to place his ad; he could probably work that out for himself.

That he wanted to be there… on LichfieldBlog. Because he’s a LichfieldPC shop. Not much point in putting his ad on, say, Tamworth Blog because Tamworth people will, by and large, go to the PC shop in Tamworth. It’s nearer; it’s local.

All that was required for LichfieldPC shop to place a richer media ad on a Lichfield hyper-local news blog was a piece of kit. A connecting tool. A way for Nick to place his nice-looking, richer media ad in front of the appropriate eye-balls for a fair and sensible price.

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=33

There we go… a tenner. For a month. OK… I can see that… ‘Select’… place my url there; my tenner into the PayPal meter; Phil approves it… job done. Simple.

Perfect. And the LichfieldBlog is now another nine pounds the richer; nine pounds a month nearer to becoming a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition.

[Update 19/03/10: Nick and his PC shop aren't the only banner ad show in town... within 24 hours, TheLichfieldBlog has picked up a second banner advertiser... who is now rotating through that same slot... http://sabcat.com/

... if you can't see it first time, just refresh the page... http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/2010/03/18/police-keen-to-speak-to-cctv-pair-over-theft-from-lichfield-shop/

Two, local banner advertisers in the space of 24 hours; that's interesting...]

Why’s this so interesting? Where’s the little victory?

Well, for one thing, it proves – in our usual, tiny beta trial way – that you don’t have to bolt DoubleClick onto a Google algorithm to deliver a richer media ad banner into a perfectly-targetted spot.

Nick can do that himself, thank you… we don’t always have to be enslaved to an algorithm.

http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2010/03/04/selling-advertising-has-always-been-a-people-thing-its-what-ad-reps-did-they-gave-selling-a-human-touch-and-nothings-changed/

And, again, that this is an act of ’sociable media’; of people buying off people, not machines.

It also chimed very well with what at least one journalist got to take away from this week’s South By South-West jamboree…

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=179804

Three cheers for Matt Waite, senior news technologist, St. Petersburg Times

‘Maybe what our online business model needs isn’t more whiz-bang, but some simplicity.

The solution? Stop selling CPMs.

‘Only use sponsorships, which pay for time in front of your audience rather than impressions. Never sell an ad that cheapens your site (berry cures and fat pills and shady mortgage refinance offers).

‘Ideally, only sell ads for products you use and think your audience would use. By doing this, publishers can create scarcity and break out of the race for the bottom…’

Perfect. ‘Only sell ads for products you use and think your audience would use…’

And again: ‘Only use sponsorships, which pay for time in front of your audience…’

Bingo. Sell per month. Do people reading the LichfieldBlog have need of a PC occasionally? Probably; they might not be able to read the LichfieldBlog otherwise…

But the biggest thing for me about tonight’s little act of local advertising goes back to Mr C Hill and his thoughts on ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ – that fascinating period in English history when The Diggers and The Levellers came to town and tried to build a ‘common treasury for all’…

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/

Because The Diggers, The Levellers and their revolutionary like were trying to create a new world order; one in which they were all free men. And this is the line; from Hill’s introduction…

That he was attempting to chart… ‘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…’

Rupert doesn’t want Phil, Ross, Nick and the people of Lichfield to find their own solution to the problems of our media time; he wants them to ‘bow to the masters, pay rent to the lords…’

And nor do a whole host of others out there; they want to impose their solution on the City of Lichfield from on high; from above.

Me? I want people to find their own solutions from the bottom up; to work out for themselves what works for their community, for their neighbour, for their ‘audience’ – as much as it ever is ‘them’ and ‘us’ now.

And if Addiply can be one, tiny tool that empowers The Diggers and The Levellers of Lichfield to defy their former news masters and not pay rent to their former media lords, then brilliant.

Job done.

Only difference being that whilst Google’s road forward is a ten-lane LA highway; ours is far more of an ill-trod, mountain path.. with little more than one hardy, Himalayan goat to have gone before us.

And we tend to keep our gobs shut; we’re small. As in tiny small. And we know we’re tiny small.

But by chance our paths happened to coincide again last week after – courtesy of Mr Neil Mason – I found myself reading this…

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/next-generation-of-ad-serving-for.html

It is Google’s announcemnet of how they plan to integrate DoubleClick’s display ad proposition into their own, existing Ad programs… in effect, bolting on richer media solutions for publishers to their existing AdSense and Ad Words offerings.

All of which harked back to Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in the spring of 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick.html

Now they have a plan to marry the two together and offer publishers large and small the chance to maximise their ad returns…

DoubleClick for Publishers is designed… “to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both…

It is a tricky task; trying to be all things to all men.

Cos we’re doing the same; bolting on a richer media offering to our existing www.addiply.com proposition… only in our case, our Ian – with a little help from Harry, Toby and co from NeonTribe – has spent his festive break weaving the banner ad management system that always lay behind www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity into the DNA of Addiply…

So, in effect, Addiply’s ‘DoubleClick’ is http://www.twadservices.co.uk

It has only ever had one customer; http://www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity No-one has offered me three bucks for it, let alone three billion.

But the point remains the same; sign up to a publishers account with Addiply and – on the proviso that you recognise a public beta trial when you see one – you can now offering richer media solutions to your potential advertising clients.

For a fiver a week. Or a tenner a month. Or whatever rate you fancy. You could even set yourself a CPM rate – and sell by impressions.

But as Google themselves point out; that’s not always easy to manage yourself. Who knows when a big story might break… literally in the case of the global surfing site that suddenly finds itself the victim of a surge in traffic but is left with no ads to fill…

Of course, if he’d flogged his display ads off at $100 a month then he’d be covered; and if he was working on the bid model, then as soon as a web-savvy wax manufacturing recognised the surge in traffic, he could have nicked that space for $110 bucks a month… and seen which way the wind had blown a month later.

By placing the ad himself, as opposed to entrusting an ad network to deliver that same result for him…

It is fascinating. Because for me, rightly or wrongly, I still think people want to buy off people; they don’t want to be enslaved to a machine; to be wholly beholden to the magic of an algorithm.

However smart.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I suspect that there are one or two Google executives who wished that a pair of human eyes had seen a certain video clip rather earlier than subsequently transpired…

… had any decent human being spotted said video, then three of Google’s finest wouldn’t have found themselves at the mercy of the Italian judicial system…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/01/google-youtube-charles-arthur

All of brings thoughts of pre-moderation and pre-approval right to the fore…

And, yes, I know you can tweak and twiddle with this, that and whatever within the Google machine; that you can ‘optimise’ your life away getting the ad ‘fit’ right. There is an element of human intervention in both models.

But, I believe, one of the things that both Lee at our much-loved
http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthdevon.co.uk/and Alastair at http://www.greenerleith.org appreciate the most is the chance to simply approve ads themselves; to grant people space on their site in the knowledge that they fit snugly into that particular community…

And it might be a ‘fit’ that is explained by wholly non-mathematical thinking… ie/eg ‘Yeh, he’s fine… he’s a mate…’

Indeed, travel up and down this land with your ad network wares and more and more you find this trait; of people not only wanting to buy off people, but to sell to people that they – not a machine – approve of…

One conversation involved ruling out any business that lay west of the Tamar; another – more recent – involved the prospect of running a local ad system through one of the most fractured and divided communities in Western Europe.

How a black box would ever make sense of those tribal divisions is beyond me; and I suspect even the mightiest brains on the planet as they huddle round that magical algorithm.

People want the ability to choose; to be empowered, not enslaved. And therein lies a world of difference between Addiply and Googliath.

All of which means that I’ve missed much of the ‘buzz’ that accompanied Google’s latest concoction; stepping onto the social media toes of both FaceBook and Twitter. Or not, as the case may be.

I have to be honest, I’ve not done FaceBook for a while now. I’ve been dragged back to it of late if only because a couple of people do… that’s where they ‘hang out’. Both, interestingly, are over 40.

And post pics. Of holidays. And friends’ weddings.

But FaceBook has cropped up in other conversations too. I met Joniayn of http://www.llandaffnews.com/ fame in Cardiff the other night.

Her post on FaceBook meets Hyper-Local was fascinating; well worth a wider airing… http://www.joniayn.com/?p=138

… this idea that people might park themselves on FaceBook; settle into the landscape and – a bit like a favourite park bench – prove distinctly reluctant to move on.

So, ergo, if the FaceBook Mountain won’t go to the Hyper-Local Muhammed, then you go find them there – even to the extent of advertising your wares to potential ‘fans’ through the same medium; now home to some 400,000,000 potential punters.

‘All’ you do is – chameleon-like – recognise the colours of the FaceBook jungle and blend in… http://www.facebook.com/pages/Llandaff-News/165800343835

Now you’re part of the village ’scene’. You fit in; you’re not imposing your own solution onto your target community… you’re adopting their’s.

This growing sense that FaceBook might prove something of a basic building block of local-niche life – indeed, maybe even prove to be a cornerstone of everything we are all trying to construct – has popped up twice elsewhere on my Addiply travels.

In Devon, for example.

Here’s http://www.peoplesrepublicofsouthdevon.co.uk/ A long-time favourite in these parts…

Now look at the Addiply advertisers… the local taxi firm, the meditation people – http://artofstillness.org/ and the local music promoter, the Totnes Monster.

Whose link through… is his FaceBook page… “>http://www.facebook.com/pages/Totnes-Monster/138744587222

For those not of a Norfolk leaning, Addiply has just launched out of here… http://www.enjoynorwich.com/ Or, rather, atop their Events section… here… http://www.enjoynorwich.com/events/

And one of the ‘events’ in Norwich this week was the launch of a new coffee shop… run by a bright, enterprising young lady called Hayley. Guess she’s 20, 21. I was old enough to be her dad, in short.

Anyway, Tweets out of http://twitter.com/TheWindowCoffee

Doesn’t have a website. But guess what Hayley does have… a FaceBook page; that’s where her community – for now, at least – lives.

I’m not going to link; I’ve no idea if she’ll see me as a ‘fan’. A sad fan, maybe.

But it’s out of that that ‘brand’ Hayley that she can drive her own, new brand of TheWindowCoffee; I expect a goodly percentage of her new customers to arrive off her FaceBook page… not her website.

But, then, does she need a website? A stand-alone place to call her own?

Because if her FaceBook pals – her fans – have long since ‘bought’ into Hayley the person, chances are they’ll be buying her coffee… with or without the need for a website.

Why? Because they already know, recognise and trust the ‘brand’. They’re fans.

And people buy off people. Always have done; always will.

It’s why we all need to be sociable to survive; and those that do survive will – in every likelihood – live their lives off the most ’sociable’ media platform they can find.

And in this age of ’sociable media’, for me it looks like FaceBook is currently king; even if the ‘Buzz’ hopes otherwise.

There is, after all, a chance that the initial contours of the UK’s new media landscape might be drawn out in the rolling vales beneath Hadrian’s Wall…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=331

Today and Johnston Press boldly went where few weekly publishers have gone before by erecting a new wall around the ‘Premium Content’ contained within the Northumberland Gazette; from now on you will have to pay £5 a quarter to access the ‘inside pages’ of the Gazette.

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/sectionhome.aspx?sectionID=1117

And, sure enough, click on the canoeist and the dramatic rescue at sea story; and ‘Bang!’ its nose against the JP pay-wall…

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Canoe-sparks-fullscale-search-in.5869961.jp

.. without your fiver in the meter, you’re going no further.

A fiver for three months access doesn’t, in fairness, sound too bad. And I guess there are people who would do it. If the online version of the Gazette is that engrained into their lives; I don’t know.

We never got the subscription model to MyFootballWriter to work; ended up with a real hard-core of c70-100. Never really budged much beyond that. There was never enough ‘premium’ – and for that in football terms read ‘exclusive’ – content to go round.

That and the fact that we never quite mastered the anti cut-and-paste technology that you need to make a wall a wall.

But what interests me is what happens to the advertising – and, in particular, the local advertising pertinent to Alnwick, Amble, etc – when you build a wall around it… and offer just a two-paragraph teaser on the front.

Because what is interesting – and this is me just guessing a bit – is that the 30-40 word teasers offers the Google search spiders even less of a clue as what ad to serve up next to that content; that with precious little to latch onto key words-wise, the relevancy of the text ads served up below becomes ever more remote.

As remote as New Zealand, in fact.

Or at least that’s the ad I see in suburban Norwich…

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/sights-activities/activities/water-activities/fresh-water-canoeing-kayaking.cfm?cid=uk0909_search_paid_google&gclid=CKT40pLAs54CFVeY2AodiRmVlA

Two uses of the word ‘canoeist’ rings a distant bell in sunny California and up pops the 100% New Zealand experience…

OK, maybe that’s just a one off; one story that proved a point…

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/Rape–short-word-long.5870288.jp

Use the word ‘rape’ and I presume that’s when the Haven Centre, in London, pops to the top of the ads beneath…

http://www.thehavens.co.uk/

How many people in Alnwick or Amble will be making use of a service in Paddington or Clerkenwell must be a moot point; again, I’m seeing these ads in Norfolk; maybe the ‘locals’ get a different view of Google’s world underneath the gates of the Gazette’s pay-walls.

Of course, what goes on ad-wise behind the pay-walls where the fuller story lies none of us will ever know. Because I’ve very little intention of popping a fiver into the JP meter to discover that the Google ads grow in relevancy behind the paywall where there is more for the Google bots and spiders to latch onto.

What I think is safe to assume is that the Shilbottle Coal Company will take an awful lot of persuading to pay for an ad that lies beyond those walls.

The world and his passing wife can see his ad here…

http://alnwick.journallive.co.uk/

And, for a fiver, that makes sense. Place my ad where I know people can see it…

There…

http://www.coaldirect.co.uk/

Am I going to place my ad – or, rather, entrust someone else to place my ad in a space where I’m not sure how many people are going to see it…?

No.

In fairness to JP, tis only experiment; one of the thousands we need to conduct right now, Mr Shirky would tell us, given that ‘nothing works, but everything might…’

And pehaps pay-walls, subscriptions, micro-payments etc will, indeed, all have their part to play in under-pinning our future journalistic lives.

But at that local level, so too will locally-sourced advertising.

For me, the fight has to be to win that fiver off the Shilbottle Coal Company on a regular basis; do that and we can then start to edge towards a ‘not-for-loss’ proposition; a first rung on the ladder.

But putting a pay-wall in the way of the Shilbottle Coal Company finding his online punters isn’t the way to go; he needs to be encouraged to find a new, digital home in this new, emerging landscape – just like the rest of us.

And his home won’t be behind a pay-wall. He won’t do it.