[Circle indicates an Embassy Suites ad I missed in a slideshow]
What's not to love about Extreme Midget Wrestling?
The Indianapolis Star posted 38 photos from one such event this month, in a gallery on its Metromix site. I flipped through every single one -- twice! -- and would have looked at even more if they were available.
But until I paged through them a third time, and forced myself to look, I wasn't even aware of the Embassy Suites Hotel ad that appeared in the upper right corner. Indeed, I suspect other advertisements were published in that spot, too. Yet, I couldn't identify those advertisers, either, because I was too busy checking out the crazy wrestling photos.
This leads to a series of questions posed by one of my readers. His editor has ordered up thousands more photos in a series of new galleries, apparently to drive up page views and, so, advertising revenue. Wasn't that a waste of time? he asked. Did advertisers really pay for those impressions? And does software exist, so savvy advertisers can opt out of galleries?
I told him most big advertisers know about this dodge; small-business customers, maybe not so much. In any case, I think lots of readers are like me: They're so busy trying to find that one photo of their daughter among the hundreds of pictures in a prom slideshow, they don't even notice the blur of ads whirring by in the margins.
Do photo slideshows really boost advertising revenue? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
At our site, photo galleries are the most popular page views and also the most popular for advertisers.
ReplyDeleteDo people ignore ads? Sure. Just like I seldom click on your ads, Jim, or hire a lawyer from a bus ad or order a Snuggie from TV or buy gold from that guy hyping it during Limbaugh's show. Heck, I'd probably be able to ignore the ads in USAT if there were any there.
BUT - and this is true for all media from centuries old to trademarked yesterday - there are people who do. And you are most likely to find many people who will buy your product if you put your message out in front of many many MANY people.
Even with hyper-personalized, grab all your data, interview-your-mother ads coming down the pike - those advertisers are going to push out x messages and get back x-? responses.
Do we push galleries to push page views? Sure. Ten years ago did we push man on the street and force more diversity into our front pages to reach out to other communities? Sure. Just because something is good for the bottom line doesn't mean that the readership/advertiser can't benefit as well.
People like slowing down for car wrecks and they like metromix. They also like Susie & Jimmy's winning goal photos and emailing it to everyone - 'look what the paper put on their website!'. Creating an audience, and marketing that audience, is one way we pay for all the wonderful things we do at Gannett.
I know Digital did a report that showed that all USCP sites with photo galleries would have TWO metrics drop significantly if the photo galleries were removed. The number of page views and the time spent on the site. Without photo galleries, these newspapers are dead!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh, and by the way, the advertisers are starting to figure out that ads in and around photo galleries are not worth crap.
Oh, and by the way, the advertisers are starting to figure out that ads in and around photo galleries are not worth crap.
ReplyDeleteEr, aren't online ads in general crap? I mean, I don't mind getting that $10 check from Google Ads every couple of months for my paltry blog, but I don't think they'll ever approach how lucrative print ads were and still are, in comparison.
As far as photographers and photo galleries go, I'm assuming that they don't get a commission for each picture sold, correct? At one of my old, non-Gannett shops, I got 25 percent of every picture sold. Since I was taking sports photos for a pretty affluent suburb, this was usually a nice $25 to $50 in each paycheck, even though it was only a weekly.
I used to think every photo needed to be captioned with idents for every person in the photo, and a sentence explaining what was going on.
ReplyDeleteNow I think it depends on the assignment. If I caption a few photos, but not all of them, I get more images done.
I'm not sure which serves the reader better: fewer images, all with detailed captions, or a handful of captioned images at the start of a larger uncaptioned photo gallery.
I believe that a 100% captioned gallery is best, and that more is better, but there's not enough time in the day to have both.
Also, I don't think the ads are a bad idea or worthless. On a page where the ads don't change, I know where not to move my eyeballs. Since the ads on photo gallery pages change repeatedly, it can cause my eye to wander because of the motion.
ReplyDeleteAlthough photo galleries are among the most visited things on newspaper Web sites, they have an unfair advantage. The way it's set up at our site, each individual photo counts as a hit. That means a 30-photo gallery gets 30 hits. In the meantime, even a lengthy story brings in only about five hits.
ReplyDeleteSo, to make a realistic comparison as to what is most popular on a site, you need to multiply the page views of every story by about six.
I think advertisers are beginning to figure out that Web sites are padding their numbers with galleries that people are forced to click through. The fact that people are breezing through 100 photos doesn't mean they are engaged by the content, it means they're trying to find one or two photos they may like.
On the other hand, a story that draws thousands of hits has probably engaged the reader. That's why you find far more comments on stories than you do photos.
The problem is Gannett and the internet is selling advertisers "hits" or page views, not unique visitors. Hits is a vague term and in fact is a sham because of what 10:52 a.m. said. Ignorant advertisers are told galleries are more popular because they see three times as many hits when in fact, they have just as many unique visitors as a video or story.
ReplyDeleteWhen Gannett and others in the internet start selling ads based on unique visitors rather than page views, then maybe internet advertising will be seen as more legit. Right now they are cheating advertisers.
"Caption" is a verb now?
ReplyDeleteMerriam-Webster says, yes.
ReplyDeleteSteve G. - online advertising isn't lucrative? Tell that to Google, whose market valuation at the moment is $156.7 billion more than GCI.
ReplyDeleteto 10:26,
ReplyDeleteI agree, however it's simply not possible to uniquely caption 2,000 images.
Though the hed says "photogs wrestle with workload," nothing in the item addresses that. The workload wrestling is being done largely by web producers, who increasingly are being asked create photo galleries that people will gawk at, even if the subject of the gallery is not local.
ReplyDeleteto 10:00,
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for other newspapers, but at the one I work for staff photographers are being asked to create 1500-3000 images galleries at community events, such as fun runs, etc. After spending two to four hours of shooting, we then download, resize, and upload all of the images. Our web producers don't have anything to do with our workflow.
Yes Jim probably should have explained the difference between reader submitted and staff produced galleries.
This may not relate, but I had to share....
ReplyDeleteI just got back from Scranton and saw a copy of the local paper - Times-Tribune? - that was its Mother's Day special section.
There must have been well over a 100 color photos of moms and their children. Looked like a good half inch of newsprint. Just page after page of protrait shots.
Amazing!
12:27 am: Former Cincinnati Enquirer Executive Editor Larry Beaupre is/was the top editor at that Scranton paper. I just searched the paper's site, but couldn't turn up the name of the editor now, so I don't know if Beaupre is still in that job.
ReplyDeleteIf you're uploading 1500-3000 images to a gallery and using Saxotech, it would take forever. The manifest tool can't hold more than 100 images before it locks up.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, 1500-3000 images would mean that you're definitely not being a photojournalist.
Since the galleries are such an important aspect to Gannett's digital offering, I wonder if all the photographers formed a national union if things might change for the better? Probably not; corporate would just hire more warm bodies with working index fingers and call it even. Sad.