Excellent points, John. The sad fact is that while...

2009-07-01T18:17:18.044-10:00

Excellent points, John. The sad fact is that while newspapers are set up with marketing, circulation and advertising departments to take advantage of readership spikes in print, very few are even close to being similarly sophisticated about taking advantage of Web traffic. I touched on this a while back in a post on my blog about search engine optimization (SEO) (http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2009/01/the-web-is-about-search.html). Rather than complaining about link traffic somehow "stealing" their business (which is so absurd it makes my head hurt), newspaper sites should be learning how to track, analyze and take advantage of traffic, and it should be as important a job as the print circulation and marketing departments. Sadly, it's not even close, even 15 years into newspaper Web sites.

Thanks for giving this some thought, John and John...

2009-07-01T17:01:27.325-10:00

Thanks for giving this some thought, John and John. I wrote the piece at the Nieman Journalism Lab, and I find the topic fascinating but have no good answers. Even if publishers could anticipate traffic spikes, it's nearly impossible to sell inventory at that magnitude, and regular advertisers probably wouldn't be interested in flash-in-the-pan traffic. (The demographic of readers coming from Yahoo, for instance, likely doesn't match up with the Times' typical readership. That's just one of many complications.)

I like John Leach's idea of using the traffic spike as a marketing opportunity: The Times could reach into its archives and promote articles that might particularly appeal to those coming from Yahoo — stuff that went viral in the past or otherwise lifestyle pieces that attracted large readerships. Or, hey, what about offering up articles the Times has written about Yahoo, on the assumption that there's some built-in interest? That would definitely work for traffic spikes from Digg, where articles about Digg do better than anything else.

All of this reminds me of what Joel Kramer has said repeatedly about the traffic at MinnPost, where he's editor and CEO. Readers from outside Minnesota simply don't interest him; they're useless, and MinnPost serves them remnant ads by default. Only local readers are served the ads from local businesses that MinnPost sells itself. And that's how the site has been able to achieve a $15 CPM, on average, which is spectacular for a local news site.

—Zach Seward

Comments on TEMPLE TALK: Good thinking on how to capitalize when Yahoo! dri...

Excellent points, John. The sad fact is that while...

Thanks for giving this some thought, John and John...