Who's This 'Craig' Guy, Anyway?

By: Jennifer Saba There were many big ideas tackled during the E&P/Mediaweek Interactive Media Conference in New Orleans in June, including the free vs. paid online model, blogs, good ways to attract younger readers, and one of the industry's most pressing issues: the migration of print classifieds to the Internet. On the heels of the conference, Goldman Sachs issued a report on the subject, calling the erosion of print classifieds the most significant near-term challenge for newspapers.

Yet some publishers are slow learners. As late as November 2004, a large number of executives admitted they had never heard of Craigslist. This prompted the Newspaper Association of America to commission consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to look at the competitive terrain of the classified category. The report confirmed that newspapers are continuing to lose share to online competitors such as, well, Craigslist.

While print classifieds remain relatively healthy for now, the future is online ? and newspapers do have recourse. Mort Goldstrom, vice president of advertising at the NAA, thinks the McKinsey report is a wake-up call to publishers still snoozing. There are many ways to recapture online share, and some newspapers are moving in this direction.

One approach ? and this seems simple ? is for newspapers to provide the opportunity for the ad buyer to place pictures, a do-it-yourself method. Goldstrom says that is one of the tools that is lacking industrywide: Businesses or people looking to place an ad should be able to do so at the newspaper's Web site, even if they want that ad to run in print.

IPIX AdMission is one company that is giving newspapers a different way to make the sell. A customer can go online and place an ad using a simple template that asks a variety of questions, such as whether that person wants the seller to contact him by e-mail or by phone. But AdMission's real advantage is the ease of placing a picture with the product; all a seller has to do is upload an image. The AdMission platform allows the user to crop or rotate pictures without having to learn Photoshop, or without having a call center do it for them.

Another problem with newspaper online classifieds is that they are often hard to search. One of Craigslist's advantages is that you can scan for anything from furniture to an apartment easily because of its stripped-down, utilitarian interface, something that is lost on newspaper Web sites. One company, Morris Digital Works, is currently addressing that issue, and AdMission is introducing "spotlight ads," a ticker tape of classifieds ? with pictures ? which scrolls across a newspaper's home page.

Also, Morris Digital Works is set to introduce a new way of selling classifieds by creating a clean and inviting interface, eliminating clutter. The newspaper also can present the category with unique search methods. For example, someone looking for an automobile can select from specific lifestyle categories (such as "family") to suit their needs. Users can click on autos of interest and then compare and contrast different choices without having to pull up each individual ad. The company is partnered with Edmunds, which rates cars and provides a wealth of information.

For now, Morris Digital Works is concentrating mostly on auto and real estate ads, although the company provides newspapers with platforms for all classified categories.