I wrote a long piece<\/a> partially about how newspapers might be able to save themselves, a while back.<\/p>\n

Here’s another thought: advertising is where newspapers make their money, with local ads and classified making up a big percentage of the dough.<\/p>\n

What if newspapers leveraged their existing ad networks, to build a localized advertising platform for local web sites and blogs. [Or if a company built such a system to sell to newspapers, to allow them to implement with little or no technical requirements, or just on their own… and finish off newspapers for good].<\/p>\n

I’ve long thought that google adsense is a terrible tool for small websites – the ads are mostly irrelevant; the money insignificant unless you are getting thousands of visits a day.<\/p>\n

But if there was a good way to get decent local ads on a more local blog, it would make more sense. Newspapers are well placed to provide that service to blogs.<\/p>\n

Most local merchants are probably not savvy enough to recognize the need to be advertising online; so probably this service should be offered free to merchants to start; but with a year of statistics, a newspaper could much better quantify the value of such a proposition.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the guys<\/a> at Praized<\/a> have thought of this business angle? Seems to me there’s a big space for someone to build a good online ad system for meatspace commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote a long piece partially about how newspapers might be able to save themselves, a while back. Here’s another thought: advertising is where newspapers…<\/p>\n