By: Ken Liebeskind New Category Spent Several Million On Ads
As college newspapers look back on the past school year, one of the
highlights is certainly the ad revenue generated from a brand-new
category: online textbook companies. The industry - just a year old,
but already occupied by a group of major players - spent several
million dollars last year on ads in nearly every college paper.
'We've seen them all,' said Andrew Cantor, publisher of the Yale
Daily News. 'They are the strongest campus marketers.'
The companies buy a series of full-page ads at the beginning of each
semester when students buy books. 'They advertise big for a couple of
days, and then it peters out,' said Ericka Myers, a senior account
executive at The Daily of the University of Washington.
'We use all kinds of ads ... full pages and spreads' as well as full-
color inserts and brochures, said Kate Hauk, senior vice president for
e-commerce at the company that runs efollett.com, a textbook site.
'We run quarter- to half-page ads for the first two weeks of each
semester, and use color in all our ads,' said Dick Hackenberg, vice
president of consumer marketing for BigWords.com, a San Francisco-based
site. Color is used infrequently in college papers, but online textbook
firms are using it in college papers that have color capability.
The ads appear in papers at schools ranging from large state
universities to small private colleges. VarsityBooks.com, one of the
biggest players, uses 1,500 papers and Bigwords.com a few hundred, said
Carol Watson, senior vice president of sales and marketing for
Marketplace Media, an ad-placement firm in Santa Barbara, Calif., that
works for both companies.
College papers, read by 11.5 million U.S. students, 'are a great tool
to reach the majority of students,' said Valerie Valente, vice
president of marketing at Textbooks.com, which is affiliated with
Barnes & Noble.
The online textbook companies use newspapers as part of a two-tier
approach that includes a network of student representatives who hand
out fliers, posters, and gifts on campus. Most of the companies go the
multimedia route - TV, radio, magazines, etc. - but college newspapers
appear to be the best medium.
'We don't do any other kind,' said Jeffrey Kuperman, president of
TheUZone, a Web portal that targets the college community and sells
textbooks. 'We didn't think it made sense to spend money on other
advertising. Unlike other audiences, college students are focused on
only one area, the college paper.'
While most of the advertising runs at the beginning of semesters, some
now runs at the end, when the companies offer to buy used textbooks
back from students. The UCLA Daily Bruin has sold buyback
advertising, according to Business Manager Guy Levy. Most of the
companies are trying it, although it's still in the early stages.
Another opportunity for student papers is to sell Web site advertising
to the online textbook companies. Levy said all the companies requested
online advertising placement on the UCLA Daily Bruin's site, but
the paper was unable to accommodate them because all of its banner
positions were sold.
But Myers at the University of Washington said there has been little
interest in his paper's Web site. Watson said the reason for this is
that while business Web sites are measured by Media Metrix, college
sites are not. As a result, she pointed out, they 'aren't measured
enough, so you can't gauge the impressions and hits accurately enough
to garner an ad rate.'
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