Thursday, January 23, 2014

Hobby Magazines Thrive Thanks to Loyal Subscribers

"Hobby" magazines have become the "darlings of the struggling magazine industry," The New York Times recently reported. The lucky niche publishers can thank especially loyal subscribers for immunity from the circulation erosion that has afflicted general-interest publications. An example is the toy train fanatic who spends about $120 a year on subscriptions to Model RailroaderClassic Trains and Classic Toy Trains and declares to The Times, "I would probably give up my train club before I would give up my train magazines." Some high-end niche publications even boast circulation growth. For example, Wine Spectator's circulation has grown by 11% in the last 10 years. And while Cycle World and Hot Bike magazines have seen slight declines in circulation, both have been able to successfully raise subscription rates to offset the drop and have such strong renewal rates that they have expanded editorial staff. Food magazines are among those benefiting from subscriber loyalty--and the fact that advertisers value that loyalty: Bon Appetit's ad dollars were up by 27% in the third quarter of 2013 from the same period a year earlier and Saveur's ad take was up about 11%, compared with the publishing industry growth rate of just 4%. And hobby magazines are now making a profitable transition to the digital world. When the big brands began to offer free Internet content, the niche players held back. Now they are introducing paid subscriber-only websites and digital apps. Wine Spectator subscribers pay both $2.99 a month for an app and $49.95 annually paid website, which has attracted 10,000 sign-ups since its debut eight months ago. See the whole story at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/business/media/loyal-subscribers-keep-hobby-magazines-afloat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Search Retargeting: Effective Online Ad Prospecting

Lots of marketers are familiar with ad retargeting to promote to site visitors. They serve display ads to users based on their online behavior, with the ads seemingly following the user as he or she travels around the web. But what if you could use display ad retargeting to entice new customers who have never been to your site, using only their search keywords? And what if you could do so less expensively than a Google keyword campaign? Welcome to the world of search retargeting. A recent Marketing Profs article outlined the steps to getting started. Search retargeting serves display impressions to users based on the keywords they've typed into Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines, and so is similar to the SEM paid search campaign. But search retargeting is on the rise because advertisers have discovered that they can purchase keywords at a fraction of the cost they'd pay to Google. You bid for keywords in real-time auctions in ad exchanges, where the advertisers or vendors determine how much they're willing to pay to serve impressions to specific (anonymous) individuals. The algorithms do the rest. If you sell Louboutin shoes. as an example, you target users who have searched for "Louboutin shoes." Once a user performs that search and travels to the site of a publisher that's participating in your ad exchange, your creative will appear as long as you've placed the winning bid for that impression. And you often place the winning bid because you know the impression's hidden value. Once your campaign is up and running, a search retargeting vendor will monitor the behaviors of the clicks and conversions, so make sure you set up benchmarks for your sales funnel. As conversions roll in, don't rest on your laurels; use a good DSP to uncover new keywords to target based on patterns revealed by your existing campaign, a process known as look-a-like targeting, For more about search retargeting, see the article at http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/24094/search-retargeting-a-quick-how-to-guide