African American Magazines Need to Look Online for Advertising Future
by Amani
As 2010 begins, many companies are putting the final touches on where they will allocate their marketing spend for the entire year. Specifically which magazines they will choose to advertise in to grow their 2009 revenue levels to a higher level. Many Fortune 500 companies have chosen to decrease advertising within the African-American demographic as they choose to focus more on their “core” market. This would be a crucial mistake. With President Obama entering his second year in office, the marketability of African Americans in mainstream media is considerably more permissible within the media world. Despite the troubles of many African American magazines such as Vibe (which relaunched after being shutdown) and Ebony/Jet (ad pages decreased by almost 40 percent), now is the perfect time for the respective magazine’s web properties to “pick up the slack”.
To do this, there are a few action steps the majority of the African American magazines must take to catch up with their mainstream competitors and grow their advertising potential:
- The website of the magazine must be the launching point of all news, video and discussion on any topic relating to the African American community. It is as simple as making the home page as interactive as possible with multiple video widgets, deep photo library and continued discussions throughout every page of the website. Establishing a vibrant community with return visitors is key in attracting the online advertising dollar which will soon outspend traditional advertising dollars. In my opinion, popular sports magazine Sports Illustrated does a tremendous job with this as well as Black Enterprise.
- Establish a partnership with Amazon and their Kindle product. This is a hot new way for people to read books and stay current with their magazine subscriptions. The time is now to develop this partnership in order for the African American magazines to get in on the ground level and grow with this very promising piece of technology. Attractive placement within the Amazon store will translate to additional advertising dollars by all types of companies. A partnership should also be grown with whatever product Apple launches
- Create mobile applications that are mobile versions of the magazine. It is my opinion that mobile apps are the future. The success of both the New York Times mobile app as well as the USA TODAY mobile app are strong indicators of a viable future. As a heavy user of the USA TODAY mobile app, I can confirm there is definite advertising dollars to be made within mobile applications.
Can you think of any other ways African American magazines can use their web properties to grow sagging advertising revenue? Let’s discuss your ideas in the comments.
Category: Advertising, Featured | Tags: Advertising, Amazon Kindle, Black Enterprise, ebony magazine, jet magazine, Magazines, mobile applications, New York Times, USA Today, vibe magazineDid you like this article? Share It!
Related Posts
- Irish Researchers Note Decline of ‘Digital Divide’ While Ad Dollars go to Hispanic Budgets
- Ebony Names New Editor, No Plans to Sell
- Radio One Announces Exclusive Ad Sales Deal With AllHipHop.com
- New Pew Report: African Americans Most Active Users of Mobile Web
- The Top 10 Web Trends You Should Keep an Eye on
sharinarichardson says:
Very good observation and I definitely agree. I have a couple of suggestions. None of them are innovative ideas and are already being done, but if done correctly, this can really put these magazines on another level online:
- Creating online forums for popular topics/categories within their magazines and offering advertisers to sponsor a particular board/forum.
- Interactive quizzes and sponsored polls. This can be a great value for advertisers; they can collect information and have a nice interstitial ad as the results are being calculated for the quiz or poll.
- Integrated ad campaign with a promotion or giveaway – they can do this exclusively on their website or add further support through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
- Sponsored solo Email marketing campaigns
- Sponsored online surveys (again adding value to advertisers for demographics/ psychographics, buyer behavior)
- Offer a digital version of their magazines and with options to hyperlink to the advertisers website
- Create a unique Rich Internet Application, tool or widget and offer advertisers opportunities to sponsor these widgets.
How Can I Stop Ear Ringing? I Need To Get Rid Of Tinnitus, Any Ideas? | My Health Bulletin - Live Healthy and Wealthy says:
[...] African dweller Magazines Need to Look Online for Advertising … [...]
amyosullivan says:
This is very insightful.
ahr19 says:
Very nice ideas Sharina. I really like the digital magazine and Rich Internet Application, tool or widget ones. Sports Illustrated had a cool demo of a digital magazine they will offer in the future. Thanks for reading and commenting.
@amyosullivan – Thanks for the feedback and for reading.
davidbaer says:
How To Make money with affiliate programs Today. Affiliate marketing is the easier and probably the most effective method to make money from the internet. It is basically, a kind of selling technique where potential buyers from your website are directed to the websites of sellers. For every click, the website owner gets a small commission.
http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com
iluvblackwomen says:
ha i say let the FAKE AFRICAN AMERICAN magazines die! Black Enterprise 2.0 Beta is doing well @AlfredEdmondJr gets it. I am so tired of talking about how to help these Brands that really and obviously “Dont Care about Black Readers/Black People” make way for the new New Media properties that do have audience and are serving them online! Have you all seen some the horrendous articles/blogs ESSENCE puts out and then that “Reggie Bush cover”. Please let them eat dirt! There is no helping the purposefully ignorant —Death of Black Media is upon us! But there is also Rebirth of Black Media via Social Media.
Tony says:
The Magazines mentioned lost their audience because they dont appeal to Grass Roots People!
iluvblackwomen says:
ha i say let the FAKE AFRICAN AMERICAN magazines die! Black Enterprise 2.0 Beta is doing well @AlfredEdmondJr gets it. I am so tired of talking about how to help these Brands that really and obviously “Dont Care about Black Readers/Black People” make way for the new New Media properties that do have audience and are serving them online! Have you all seen some the horrendous articles/blogs ESSENCE puts out and then that “Reggie Bush cover”. Please let them eat dirt! There is no helping the purposefully ignorant —Death of Black Media is upon us! But there is also Rebirth of Black Media via Social Media.
Tony says:
The Magazines mentioned lost their audience because they dont appeal to Grass Roots People!
Wm_Tucker says:
I believe Af-Am themed magazines and newspapers are in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to revenue streams. I'm sure the economy will rebound to the point major corporations resume their ad buys at pre-recession levels, but Af-Am publishers were already slicing up a narrow sliver of the total ad dollar pie. The web mostly dilutes that narrow slice. And we're yet to count the investment needed for these companies to create smartphone apps and other Web 2.0 media for use as ad space.
I also believe Af-Am publishers would be best served looking at some old-tech and non-tech solutions for discovering new revenue sources.
Kamau Austin says:
You know after reading the article it is apparent Old school media in the Black community still doesn't get it. I think they will be great switching their content over in new media whether mobile or traditional Internet.
But the advertising model of primarily going after Large corporate dollars may delimit their success. Large Black online media outlets like Black Enterprise and Black Planet should take a page from Google's play book.
They should develop PPC functionality and allow small and medium sized Black businesses and mainstream business pay for performance driven ads. This way they would not only make money from major corporations but businesses of various kinds and budgets.
Right now if you are an entrepreneur and you want to advertise in Black Enterprise you need at least $20,000 or you're stick in classified in the back some where. In new media there should be a way an entrepreneur can do PPC with a smaller ad budget. Black planet has thousands of pages of unused ad inventory.
Let people promote events on BE.com or BP.com for a small fee and do PPC and they could generate tens of millions in additional revenue. Come on people let's get some innovative ad models that work on today's Internet.
alfrededmondjr says:
@Kamau Austin
Hmmm….thanks. Something ELSE for me to think about and try to figure out. LOL But really, thanks for both the idea and the challenge of executing it.
Alfred Edmond Jr.
Sr.VP/EIC, BlackEnterprise.com
ahr19 says:
@Kamau – Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I enjoyed the ideas you shared. I think your thoughts on PPC are right on and would love to see that begin to happen. That is the future.
@alfrededmondjr – Thanks for the comment as well. Please let us know how the process of executing some of these ideas comes to fruition.
Blacks in the Digital Community | Sharina R's Blog says:
[...] Conversely, I truly despise NEGATIVE Black people who tear down other black people’s accomplishments. I often read posts from Blackweb20.com. I think they do a wonderful job in covering subject in the digital space. Very recently I became an active participant in this community and have written comments. One article in particular that was of interest to me African American Magazines Need to Look Online for Advertising Future. [...]
saravananccs says:
Visit http://www.mobilereflex.com is a mobile enterprise application platform that enables enterprise developers to simply and quickly build applications that connect business data to mobile workers on any device, at any time.