March 13, 2011 9:32 pm Chronotope: RT @shannonphilpott: 10,000 Words – 15 quotes to inspire journalists http://bit.ly/hbHTJ2#collegejourn 9:39 pm florida_mike: Journalism debate on #collegejourn looking forward to it 9:45 pm Chronotope: Chat with #collegejourn and #cmanyc11 tonight at 8PM - http://bit.ly/fXmaay 11:05 pm Chronotope: #CollegeJourn chat tonight, in-person and on the web for #cmanyc11 - http://bit.ly/fXmaay 11:06 pm newzed: RT @Chronotope: #CollegeJourn chat tonight, in-person and on the web for #cmanyc11 -http://bit.ly/fXmaay 11:35 pm collegejourn: Hey #cmanyc11 – Come to the CMA lounge, 5th floor, tonight, 8PM, to network with fellow student journalists and join #collegejourn chat. 11:59 pm AramZS: Hey everyone, we’re getting everything up and running for the #cmanyc11 #collegejourn chat! #collegejourn March 14, 2011 12:03 am AramZS: Ok, it’s 8PM I’m here with our first in-person #cmanyc11 person of the night @thevampirebrand – Hello also to Twitter folks #collegejourn 12:04 am AramZS: Hey, how are we on Twitter tonight? Who is online from @collegejourn and #cmanyc11 ? #collegejourn 12:05 am Chronotope: Hey #cmanyc11 – We are in the 5th floor ballroom come by for #collegejourn 12:06 am newzed: Hi @AramZS @thevampirebrand El Heller here, reporter, designer for @bupipedream at Binghamton University. Good to be back! #collegejourn 12:07 am AramZS: We have some audio and a still shot of the screen going at http://bit.ly/fIVmW9 #collegejourn 12:08 am AramZS: Hey @newzed How are you! #collegejourn 12:08 am AramZS: I’m hoping that people will be slowly coming in on Twitter and in-person but let’s roll forward. #collegejourn 12:10 am AramZS: Since we’re coming to you live from a conference, I thought we could talk about some goals and opportunities for future chats. #collegejourn 12:10 am newzed: @AramZS things are going well, glad to be part of Pipe Dream now #collegejourn 12:11 am Chronotope: Hey #cmanyc11 – if your sitting around in your rooms staring at the computer log on and chat with us -http://bit.ly/fXmaay #collegejourn 12:11 am newzed: How is the convention going? #collegejourn 12:13 am AramZS: Hey, the convention is going great, a lot of good workshops and great networking. #collegejourn 12:14 am AramZS: You can check the #cmanyc11 tag looking back today and tomorrow and the day after to see folks tweeting about what’s going on. #collegejourn 12:15 am AramZS: So, have you seen our newly launched website? http://collegejourn.com We’re looking for contributers #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 12:15 am newzed: What plans to you have in store for #collegejourn 12:16 am AramZS: I would like to expand the website to do more than post alerts about the chats, I’m looking for contributers. #collegejourn 12:17 am AramZS: I’d like to make it a source for college journalists to see what other universities are doing and find resources. #collegejourn 12:18 am AramZS: BTW @newzed we have Westboro Baptist Church at #cmanyc11 tomorrow. That should result in some fun tweets. #collegejourn 12:19 am AramZS: Apparently they are going to be protesting outside the hotel #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 12:21 am AramZS: We’ve been joined by more people rom #cmanyc11 – @jwilliammay Kristen, @Jackie20Smith#collegejourn 12:21 am newzed: i highly recommended @collegedaybreak by @CharlieSzold a morning email newsletter summarizing the day’s important stories. #collegejourn 12:23 am smithbm12: @AramZS What are they protesting? #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 12:23 am AramZS: Q1: What resources would you like to find online, but have trouble with, as a college journalist? #collegejourn 12:24 am newzed: hello from binghamton, ny @Jackie20Smith, @JWilliamMay, Kristen #collegejourn 12:24 am AramZS: @smithbm12 Just protesting everything. That is the agreement here. #collegejourn 12:24 am AramZS: They say hello back. I think we have audio here - http://bit.ly/fXmaay #collegejourn 12:25 am AramZS: Some stuff learned at #cmanyc11 – buying a Muppet will keep your staffs happy. #collegejourn 12:26 am newzed: audio is working (with adverts!) #collegejourn 12:26 am AramZS: @smithbm12 Welcome to the chat! #collegejourn 12:26 am AramZS: @newzed Good to know, can you hear more than me? #collegejourn 12:27 am newzed: @AramZS it’s mostly you and your typing, some background audio too #collegejourn 12:28 am AramZS: Also: “Editors that can’t write good headlines should be forced to have sex with Charlie Sheen” – Koretzky #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 12:28 am AramZS: I’ll work on getting more audio #collegejourn 12:31 am jdpelletier: RT @AramZS: “Editors that can’t write good headlines should be forced to have sex with Charlie Sheen” – Koretzky #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 12:31 am AramZS: @Jackie20Smith is talking about the need for more online journalism classes and better resources. #collegejourn 12:32 am newzed: i sometimes get asked how i keep up with things, here is “what i read: newzed edition”http://bit.ly/hku3jr #collegejourn 12:32 am AramZS: And Kristen notes that the students are doing just as much to teach the professors as the other way around. #collegejourn 12:33 am AramZS: Some how to vlogs or more accessible to people is one suggestion for @collegejourn content. #collegejourn 12:34 am thekrg: Nice resource! RT @newzed: i highly recommended @collegedaybreak by @CharlieSzold. #collegejourn 12:34 am BrianManzullo: At work, but tuning in a bit to @AramZS and #collegejourn. Sounds like an awesome discussion! #collegejourn 12:35 am AramZS: I guess too many people here are sharing the same IP address. #cmanyc11 has broken Twitter search. #collegejourn 12:35 am Jackie20Smith: vlogs is a realistic ideas for people who are looking for this sort of info. People use that kind of medium all the time #collegejourn 12:36 am AramZS: RT @newzed: i sometimes get asked how i keep up with things, here is “what i read: newzed edition”http://bit.ly/hku3jr #collegejourn 12:36 am newzed: video of what? #collegejourn 12:38 am thekrg: Only a journalist would have a list of what he reads! RT @newzed: here’s what I read http://bit.ly/hku3jr#collegejourn 12:38 am BrianManzullo: When it comes to the classroom, I like Jeff Jarvis’ “This is Bullsh*t” speech.http://youtu.be/rTOLkm5hNNU good stuff. #collegejourn 12:38 am AramZS: There is some interest in switching back to a Meebo chatroom, or something along those lines. Opinions? #collegejourn 12:38 am newzed: @AramZS the audio is nice, but there are too many advertising interruptions. #collegejourn 12:39 am newzed: @AramZS twitter makes for great sharing though. #collegejourn 12:39 am AramZS: Possible topics: the differences between blogs and a column in the newspaper. #collegejourn 12:39 am AramZS: Maybe to include interviews with some of the people who presented at #cmanyc11 over the course of the year? #collegejourn 12:40 am AramZS: There is an argument for providing more resources beyond Twitter, I hope that collegejourn.com can help provide that. #collegejourn 12:40 am AramZS: @newzed It’s true, which is why we switched back. But as was said here, not everyone has a Twitter. #collegejourn 12:42 am newzed: if you want access to editors at the new york times … get on twitter #collegejourn 12:42 am ddryan: And access to embittered, unemployed ones RT @newzed: if you want access to editors at the new york times … get on twitter #collegejourn 12:42 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Hope you’re doing well. Wish I was there. Be sure to say hi to @JWilliamMay for me. He’s the one with the big beard. #collegejourn 12:42 am CollegeDayBreak: Glad you like it! RT @thekrg Nice resource! RT @newzed: i highly recommended @collegedaybreakby @CharlieSzold. #collegejourn 12:42 am AramZS: Would videos talking to editors, other university advisors, other college media editors, etc… would be valuable? #collegejourn 12:43 am CharlieSzold: RT @CollegeDayBreak: Glad you like it! RT @thekrg Nice resource! RT @newzed: i highly recommended @collegedaybreak by @CharlieSzold. #collegejourn 12:43 am newzed: .@thekrg i was inspired by the “what i read” series on @theAtlanticWire #collegejourn 12:43 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo He says “You’re just jealous that you can’t grow a beard of this magnitude.” #collegejourn 12:44 am newzed: .@thekrg here is the link for “what i read” http://bit.ly/hkQ7LA #collegejourn 12:45 am AramZS: @newzed – what would you think of making that ‘what you’re reading’ into a regular post as a resource for others? #collegejourn 12:45 am Chronotope: @JOnathan_imo Come to #collegejourn on the 5th floor! 12:46 am AramZS: What format do you prefer to speak to fellow student journalists with? #collegejourn 12:47 am Jackie20Smith: @AramZS videos w/ other advisers would be beneficial b/c extending that beyond #cmanyc11 helps more people year-round #collegejourn 12:47 am AramZS: There’s some conversation about some sort of message board for collegejourn again. Useful to see other people’s questions. #collegejourn 12:47 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS @newzed More student journos need to develop a Google Reader feed w/ journalism/SM blogs and resources. I follow 70. #collegejourn 12:47 am AramZS: You know what would be awesome, a Quora for college media. #collegejourn 12:48 am newzed: @AramZS follow me on twitter, hehe. interesting idea. #collegejourn 12:48 am newzed: RT @BrianManzullo: @AramZS @newzed More student journos need to develop a Google Reader feed w/ journalism/SM blogs and resources. I follow 70. #collegejourn 12:50 am AramZS: Our chat display is going backwards. Too many people using Twitter search at #cmanyc11 I guess. #collegejourn 12:51 am BrianManzullo: @Jackie20Smith I found out about #journchat, blogs, etc. thru using Twitter and networking. Journalists have to reach out. #collegejourn 12:51 am BrianManzullo: @Jackie20Smith Will say, more journalists should share who/what they follow. I’ll prob. write something on that soon. #collegejourn 12:51 am AramZS: Group: The problem is reaching out to people who don’t know these tools exist. #collegejourn 12:52 am newzed: @AramZS we can use collegejourn to curate resources (just like http://www.journaliststoolbox.org) #collegejourn 12:53 am Jackie20Smith: @BrianManzullo look forward tot he next post on BrianManzullo.com. But start your suggestions here, it’s interesting #collegejourn 12:54 am AramZS: My e-mail is azuckers@gmu.edu. I’ve set up collegejourn.com to be a site for multiple authors. #collegejourn 12:54 am AramZS: E-mail me if you want to contribute. #collegejourn 12:54 am AramZS: RT @newzed: @AramZS we can use collegejourn to curate resources (just likehttp://www.journaliststoolbox.org) #collegejourn 12:54 am AramZS: @newzed I like that idea a lot too. It would be a good place for people to drop their gReader URLS and Delicious lists. #collegejourn 12:55 am BrianManzullo: @Jackie20Smith Search these in RSS: 10,000 Words, Editors Weblog, MediaShift, PressThink, BuzzMachine, Romenesko, Reportr.net #collegejourn 12:56 am AramZS: We’re taking a look at vyou.com right now. #collegejourn 12:57 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo Those are all good sources. I like using LazyFeed to monitor RSS keywords, it allows me into the margins. #collegejourn 12:58 am AramZS: vyou.com is pretty interesting looking. Sort of a video question-answering service. #cmanyc11#collegejourn 12:58 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Great point. I found a lot of mine thru searching “journalism” etc. in Reader. Find what you like, collect feeds #collegejourn 12:58 am newzed: also check this out www.mediagazer.com #collegejourn 12:59 am AramZS: Q2: What about technical resources? What content are people looking for the most? SEO? WordPress? #collegejourn 12:59 am AramZS: RT @newzed: also check this out www.mediagazer.com #collegejourn 1:00 am AramZS: We’re talking about @cmlife and WordPress #collegejourn 1:00 am AramZS: It was interesting to see how many people are still trying to switch over to WordPress from CollegePublisher. #collegejourn 1:01 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS @cmlife Whoever built that site must be awesome. #collegejourn 1:01 am AramZS: CoPress still have an active e-mail listserv that you can find on their website, copress.org. Great resource for WordPress. #collegejourn 1:02 am BrianManzullo: RT @AramZS: CoPress still have an active e-mail listserv that you can find on their website, copress.org. Great resource #collegejourn 1:03 am AramZS: A lot of people are still interested in switching to WordPress, want to know the basics, hosting, resources, etc… #collegejourn 1:04 am thekrg: @AramZS I wrote a post about that on my blog www.profkrg.com. #collegejourn 1:04 am Jackie20Smith: @BrianManzullo Yeah, you would’ve enjoyed the #cmanyc11 WordPress workshops. Tho I feel I know a lot, there’s so much I don’t #collegejourn 1:05 am AramZS: WordPress resources, def. a priority. #collegejourn 1:06 am AramZS: Social Media, do we need more resources for that? #collegejourn 1:06 am newzed: i still believe most collegiate readers prefer a print copy of the paper over the web. #collegejourn 1:06 am ethanklapper: Me too. RT @newzed: i still believe most collegiate readers prefer a print copy of the paper over the web. #collegejourn 1:07 am AramZS: Better expansion of knowledge that is already out there, more mapping to resources. #collegejourn 1:07 am BrianManzullo: @Jackie20Smith Oh, same here. WordPress is an incredible CMS with a lot of uses.http://codex.wordpress.org/ #collegejourn 1:08 am AramZS: Folks here agree with you on the interest in print editions. #collegejourn 1:08 am thekrg: Alloy has done some research finding this. RT @newzed: collegiate readers prefer a print copy of the paper over the web. #collegejourn 1:09 am AramZS: @thekrg Nifty, do you have a link? #collegejourn 1:09 am thekrg: I would love to help you write on that. Changed this year. RT @AramZS: want to know the basics, hosting, resources, etc… #collegejourn 1:09 am AramZS: Probably another thing that would be good to talk about – advertising, advice online and off. #collegejourn 1:10 am AramZS: @thekrg Perhaps you’d like to write a post about it for collegejourn.com? So we have a resource that can be referred back to. #collegejourn 1:10 am Jackie20Smith: College publication websites are still vital, however, for most schools’ large alumni base who want to keep up #collegejourn 1:11 am AramZS: Are any of you having trouble with advertising at your college outlet? #collegejourn 1:11 am BrianManzullo: @thekrg @newzed Very true. College print products have a niche audience – mainly students who read during class/studying. #collegejourn 1:11 am newzed: here is a related story on poynter http://bit.ly/dQ7bft #collegejourn 1:11 am AramZS: @Jackie20Smith Also parents are a big source of traffic. At GMU, our second most number of hits comes from NY. #collegejourn 1:13 am thekrg: @AramZS http://www.profkrg.com/?p=519 #collegejourn 1:14 am thekrg: @AramZS love to! #collegejourn 1:14 am newzed: the web is where you break news, supplement the print edition with multimedia content, and blog #collegejourn 1:14 am AramZS: BTW, my office just finished a massive survey of online ad pricing and use in college media. Useful?http://bit.ly/g5XvvT #collegejourn 1:15 am Jackie20Smith: @AramZS I’ve observed that most commentors who identify themselves on @CMLIFE‘s website, do so as concerned alumni. #collegejourn 1:15 am AramZS: What do you think about presentation formats, would you like to see slideshares or Prezis on the site. #collegejourn 1:18 am thekrg: @AramZS Ad research is amazingly useful. Thanks! #collegejourn 1:18 am AramZS: What about a day change for this chat? Do people think it would be more appealing on a Tuesday? #collegejourn 1:20 am AramZS: @thekrg It was actually quite fun to do. I’ve got drilldown information below the graphic + can pull more out of the database. #collegejourn 1:21 am AramZS: Also, while I’m throwing questions at everyone, how do you like the new site design? #collegejourn 1:22 am Chronotope: RT @Jackie20Smith: @AramZS I’ve observed that most commentors who identify themselves on @CMLIFE‘s website, do so as concerned alumni. #collegejourn 1:23 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Nice and clean. I might want to contribute every now and then, if you don’t mind. #collegejourn 1:23 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Assuming, of course, you’d allow me to. #collegejourn 1:23 am thekrg: @AramZS This is my first time to participate, so I guess I don’t have an opinion. #collegejourn 1:24 am newzed: sunday is fine with me too #collegejourn 1:25 am gmule12: Agree @pittsburghliz? RT @newzed: i still believe most collegiate readers prefer a print copy of the paper over the web. #collegejourn 1:25 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo That would be great, of course. Shoot me an e-mail and I’ll turn on an account azuckers@gmu.edu #collegejourn 1:26 am AramZS: Hello @gmule12 ! #collegejourn 1:27 am newzed: need to get back to hw, let me know when we do this again #collegejourn 1:27 am AramZS: Folks have sadly filtered out from being here in person. Early morning tomorrow. Perhaps someone else will stop by #cmanyc11 #collegejourn 1:28 am newzed: @AramZS aw, are you all alone? #collegejourn 1:29 am AramZS: Q5: What types of tools would you like as a contributer on collegejourn.com? #collegejourn 1:31 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Q5: Get a Publish2 widget “What We’re Reading” on front page. It will allow all of us to share journalism content. #collegejourn 1:31 am AramZS: Seeing as how no one has objections to Sunday, we will continue on that day from here on out. We’ll be online next week too. #collegejourn 1:32 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo Good idea! How can we link to multiple accounts? #collegejourn #collegejourn 1:33 am AramZS: If I seem unsynchronized, it’s because I am, Twitter continues to be very unhappy with me. #collegejourn 1:33 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS You can start a newsgroup and have ppl w/ Publish2 accounts ask to join. Then the links they share will show in feed #collegejourn 1:34 am AramZS: Q5: I’m also putting in time to get everything highly search engine optimized, so your content should get good exposure. #collegejourn 1:35 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo Sounds like a plan. When you (or anyone else) emails me, include your Publish2 account info so I can invite you #collegejourn 1:38 am AramZS: Any other tools to incorporate? I’ve already installed WordPress Emphasis. #collegejourn 1:39 am AramZS: I was thinking that it might be useful to post stories or op-eds that can be used as launchpads for others to create content? #collegejourn 1:43 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Maybe do a weekly topic that 3-4 writers can write on throughout the week? #collegejourn 1:47 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo You mean 4 people take a perspective on it and post? That’s interesting. I’m all for trying it. #collegejourn 1:48 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo I was just thinking of providing a post with a Story Idea that any college newspaper could use each week #collegejourn 1:48 am BrianManzullo: @AramZS Yeah, esp. on controversial issues like Charlie Sheen entertainment cov’g. It’d be a good challenge for writers #collegejourn 1:49 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo But it would be cool to see people take it on right there on the site. Content is Creative Commons. They … #collegejourn 1:49 am AramZS: @BrianManzullo … could write it there and publish it in their own papers as well. You think that would work? #collegejourn 1:54 am Chronotope: Ok, thanks for coming. This has been the #cmanyc11 #collegejourn chat. E-mail me (azuckers@gmu.edu) if you want to contribute to website. 1:55 am AramZS: Thank you everyone. The archive will go up later. I’ll be online next week. Sunday, 8-10PM. Hope to see you chatting. #collegejourn 1:56 am AramZS: Shoot me a tweet if you have any questions. Bye and good night! #collegejourn

Via: What The Hashtag?

Image via CrunchBase

Hey College Journalists,

Tonight at 8PM we’ll be having a college journalism chat on the web and in person at the College Media spring convention in New York. This will be a general chat, a chance to talk about what is going on in college media, the problems we all face and what we all are looking to learn.

There will be a big screen up to showcase anyone who joins by Twitter and (if the internet gods are with us) a live stream with audio of what’s going on at the convention.

Log in or come to the 5th floor CMA lounge at 8PM tonight to join the chat and tweet with other college journalists.

Not sure of the best way to interact with a Twitter chat? TweetChat is one of the best sites out there, give it a try.

Join the conversation with the hashtag #collegejourn.

tl;dr

Table of Contents

• 1.0 – Introduction
• 2.0 – Methodology
  • 2.1 – College Media Rate Cards
• 3.0 – Observation and Conclusions
  • 3.1 – Fragmentation
  • 3.2 – Flash Ads
  • 3.3 – Online Advertising as an Afterthought
  • 3.4 – Displaying Your Rates, PDFs, etc…
  • 3.5 – Figuring Out Your Prices
  • 3.6 – ROS and Other Options
• 4.0.0 – Full Findings
  • 4.1.0 – IAB Compliance by College Media
  • 4.2.0 – Rates
    • 4.2.1 – Average Rates
    • 4.2.3 – Monthly Rates
    • 4.2.4 – Weekly Rates
    • 4.2.5 – Daily Rates
    • 4.2.6 – CPM Rates
    • 4.2.7 – Semester Rates
    • 4.2.8 – School Year Rates
    • 4.2.9 – Summer Rates
    • 4.2.10 – Calendar Year Rates
    • 4.2.11 – Miscellaneous Rates
  • 4.3.0 – Ads
    • 4.3.1 – Ad Levels
    • 4.3.2 – Ad Types
    • 4.3.4 – Ad Packages

1.0 Introduction

I’ve recently completed a survey of how college media does online advertising. Out of it came some very interesting results, which I’m going to go over here. If I were to sum up what I discovered, I’d have to say that college media outlets have wildly different ideas on how to sell ads on their websites.

Just as an example, the George Washington University’s Hatchet sells a 120×240 advertisement for $137.50 a month while the University of Connecticut’s Daily Campus sells the same size ad for $1,995. The two sites have had roughly similar traffic over the past year; in fact The Hatchet has had slightly more unique visitors this year. Of course, it could be a matter of demand, though I have no way to tell from the site or the information they give to advertisers. But that’s not the only way in which college media advertising presents enormous fragmentation. The college media universe offers 76 different advertisement dimensions, 49 different options for placement on a site (not including no options for placement) and 171 different ad names. It’s enough to make you want to go back to referring to ads by column inches.

The survey includes 193 universities and 203 different college media online publications. In addition to the cool infographic, I hope this post can help anyone looking to start selling online ads in college media to decide what ads to offer and how to price them. I hate when people create infographics with no explanation or sources. So I’m giving you everything. Perhaps some publications might be able to use the information to improve their offering.

2.0 Methodology

The publications selected for the survey were found from four sources:

• Links from CoPress.org’s main site
• Winners of the 2010 Online Pacemakers
• Publications listed as Student Media Operations on the College Media Advisers website, with the following restrictions:
  • The publication had to have an online presence.
  • The publication had to post content to its website at least once a month while the college was in-session.
  • The online presence was active, that being they had to have visibly posted content in the last period of classes.
• I followed links from one college media site to another, where such links were visible.

Of note, there were a few universities whose websites were temporarily down for upgrade during the break. They were not included in the survey.

The first 365 entries (there are over 500) were initially made in a Google docs spreadsheet for a few reasons. For one, when I started I didn’t realize the scale I was working with. The other reason I continued using the spreadsheet even after deciding to use SQL was to make sure that I would have all the right fields for the data I needed to enter.

Once I decided I had enough data to start putting it into the SQL database, I built a database and table using phpMyAdmin (I wasn’t able to get command line access until after compleating the project). I then wrote a rough script to input data into the database. I ended up making a couple of changes to the script as I went forward, but I’ve posted the final version online. If you have any questions about this or any other code I link in this post, I’ll be glad to answer them.

I input the data from the spreadsheet and then continued to input data from the remaining websites. If I came across a website that did not offer online ads (to the best of my ability to find)I marked it No Ads. Some publications stated that they did offer rates but I couldn’t find them on the site. I marked those as well. I tried to input ad names exactly as listed.

When it came to rates, some student publications offered CPM (that’s cost per thousand impressions) prices but also made data available so that it would be clear to advertisers what the equivalent of a monthly purchase would be. In those few cases, I entered a monthly cost as well as a CPM.

Whenever there was a distinction (College, Local, National, etc… ) I entered local rates.

2.1 College Media Rate Cards

I also tried to save any rate cards I came across and printed HTML pages that described pricing  to PDF. I’ve made all the rate cards I’ve saved available online. Some I may have forgotten to PDF, others I tried and came out with something useless and unreadable.

3.0.0 Observations and Conclusions

Collecting all this data, as well as exploring various college media websites, has been very interesting. Besides the conclusions made from the statistical data there are some interesting observations that I think might be useful.

3.1.0 Fragmentation

As I noted in the introduction, there is an enormous variety of offerings across college media outlets, ignoring the semantic differences in names, there are still 76 different ad dimensions. That’s a huge number and it doesn’t even count the ads without dimensions, which include sponsorships and multimedia ads. I can’t help but wonder about the possible confusion this would offer to potential advertisers, especially national advertisers which create one ad for (at most) 18 different dimensions and sending it out. Besides that, with the rise of local online news organizations, small local business owners are going to become more and more familiar with online ads and the standards that most sites adhere to. I feel that offering non-standard ad sizes is just one more obstacle in the process of selling online ads.

I’m sure that part of the reason that these odd ad sizes are around is that people are customizing ads to squeeze into the various nooks and crannies of their web design. Additionally, when dealing with those businesses that have done little online advertising, no doubt a significant number of local businesses, it really doesn’t matter what size you are offering them.

All that being said, I think that the next time you do a site redesign, you should look towards insuring that the spaces for ads can fit the standard sizes.

3.2.0 Flash Ads

A few student publications increased rates for Flash ads. Of those, even fewer specified limits on the Flash ads. Flash ads are popular and while they don’t really require any extra work on your staff’s part, they are more annoying to users. Advertisers tend to consider them more effective.  I think that charging extra for placement of an animated advertisement is a good idea, though I have not seen the practice anywhere else. You should also make sure to clearly state a limitation on the length of the animation. The standard recommended animation length is 15 seconds.

In determining what to charge for Flash placement, I saw two prices, $50 and $100. If you are going to charge more for a Flash ad, a lump sum is the way to go. I didn’t see any Flash ads on the site that charged $100 for them, but even if I did, it feels a bit pricy. I think that $50 would be the maximum.

3.3.0 Online Advertising as an Afterthought

As I noted in the infographic, 53 publications seemed to offer online ads but did not list rates for them anywhere online. That’s a bit over a quarter of the college media outlets. Of those 53, some had pages that claimed to list prices but did not. A number of them had web pages, rate cards or media kits that mentioned online advertising while simply calling on the user to contact them via e-mail or phone. There were some very irritating sites that offered prices on their print ads online, but didn’t make the price of their online ads available.

I know that the journalism industry seems to prefer to hide all their rates behind an advertising staff, but I think that the more information that is out there and publicly available the better it is for all parties. It looks like 88 of the publications I surveyed agree with me. I think anything that makes online advertising more accessible to potential buyers is a good thing. If you have online rates, put them online. Especially if the print rates are already available.

Also, if you are one of those student publications giving online ads away for free with print ads, that’s just throwing away possible money.

3.4.0 Displaying Your Rates, PDFs, etc…

I saw a lot of different ways that for displaying advertising rates, good and bad. Here’s my recommendation:

• Provide a PDF version of your rates or an easily printable web-page.
• Provide an HTML version of your rates
• Make both one to two clicks away from the front page of your publication.

The most annoying thing I encountered was having to rummage around a website trying to find the rates. You shouldn’t make it a chore for someone to give you their money. The next annoying thing was Issuu embeds of media kits. Yes, Issuu is cool. Yes being able to view PDFs is incredibly nifty. You know what isn’t good? Only being able to print 1 to 2 pages at a time and not being able to download the document. Of all the publications I found using Issuu, zero provided download links.

A few publications have separate webpages with different URLs that act as a multimedia online media kit. If you can put something together that looks good, go for it. There were some very nifty digital media kits. Just don’t forget to offer something that is easy to print out. In my experience, most people like to have something physical for files or to hand around. It can’t hurt.

3.5.0 Figuring Out Your Prices

Clearly, the price range on ads is huge. Ads go for as low as $10 and as high as $1,995. Deciding on the pricing for your ads is something that’s very dependent on what your market can bear, preexisting customers, demand, location on the site and the number of hits your website gets.  Only you can determine the prices for your stock of online ads.

I’ve provided minimum and maximum prices, as well as the average price, on the IAB standard sized ads, since those were the most used among college media groups.

When it comes to rates, at this point, I’d recommend providing non-CPM rates. I think that monthly is probably what businesses are most attracted to, though weekly is not a bad idea either. Either way, local businesses are more attracted to flat rates. Building alternative vehicles beyond the standard display ads are valuable too. Listings, sites for reviews, topical or event-centric sites, all of these may be equally or more attractive to local businesses for purchase. If you’d like to see a good example, I’d point to Central Michigan University’s CM-LIFE and their various associated sites.

There’s nothing wrong with also providing CPM, in addition to other rates, especially since that may be what national advertisers are looking for. If you are going to set CPM rates, there is a useful Quora post online with advice. The gist is, try out a third-party ad system, like AdSense, and see what the sort of payment is going to place ads on your website, then move from there. If you are going to provide CPM rates, you should probably include a brief explanation somewhere in your media kit about what exactly it means.

Oh, and since we are linking to Quora, here is a useful question that can help you sell ads to local businesses.

When it comes to looking at the price ranges and figuring out your prices from the chart, some of the minimum prices seem to be just too low. I think that any of those online ad sizes could go for at least $100 a month. Anything less than that and you are probably squandering an opportunity.

Also, it doesn’t hurt to remember that value is created through the position of the advertisement. A number of universities offered different prices on same-size units depending on their place on the page. Some included granularity in pricing ads above the fold. Providing different price points is definitely a useful tool for pulling in advertisers. You may even want to go a step further and offer different pricing for ads to appear on single pages.

3.6.0 ROS and Other Options

As with CPM, if you are going to distinguish different levels of advertising placement or just use the term ROS to describe how ads are displayed on your site, define it. ROS, or Run-of-Site, doesn’t even have a full Wikipedia page. If I were an advertiser, especially a small business owner, I’d be very confused to see the term in a media kit. Making your customers confused is never a good strategy. I stumbled across a couple of publications which used the term ROS without any definition.

If you have a placement method that can support it, I think that providing placement only on particular sections is a great idea. Providing more, lower-priced, options for businesses to target their ads has to be a good thing. Very few of the publications I surveyed provided more placement options than just ROS. I suspect that part of the problem is the technical barrier. We’re trying out OpenX’s free option as an advertising server and I like what I’ve seen so far. I’m not sure what other publications are using, but I’d love to find out. Post in the comments if you’d like to tell me what system your site is using to serve ads.

Some possible placement options:

• Front page
• Campus news page
• Sports page
• Opinion page
• Entertainment/Style page
• Bloggers page or on their individual blogs

In addition, there are a number of options for placement positioning that can be indicated in the materials you give to advertisers:

• Above the fold (explain where the fold is and what it means)
• Below the fold
• Headline
• Footer
• In-content

4.0.0 Full Findings

I was able to calculate a number of results as well as produce a few charts to which I applied some funny looking CSS from an old project. I generated the results almost entirely using MySQL queries. I have the code I used to calculate advertising statistics as well as the results page itself available. Also, if you choose to look in depth at any particular section, I’ve also built a search page that will allow you to look through the results set. I’m going to apologize in advance to anyone trying to figure out the results code, it is a huge mess. I didn’t realize just how many queries I was going to be using until I was done and it ended up sort of disorganized. I’m new to this type of SQL use, so there may be some mistakes in the code. If you find them, I’d be glad to correct them, credit you, and change the infographic. Most of the general information I found, as well as the IAB information is in the infographic.

You can also browse the entire data set.

The goal of this section is to offer the most relevant snippets of that information in a way that will allow a publication to better determine their own online rates, as well as what types of ads they’d like to offer. The rates on the results page dynamically update with new data. These do not.

Universities Surveyed: 193
Publications Surveyed: 203
Ad Types: 171
Package Types: 9
Ad Level Types: 49
Dimensions supplied: 76
Total number of Publications with Ads: 141
Student Publications that either do not have ads or do not list rates online: 115
Student Publications that do not sell online ads: 62
Student Publications that have rates but do not display them online: 53
Publications that designate ad placement options: 65
Publications that do not designate ad placement: 76
Publications that offer advertising placement in email newsletters: 10
Publications that offer mobile advertising: 4
Publications that offer video ads: 9
Publications that offer audio ads: 3
About 711 Pixels per $1 a Month

4.1.0 IAB Compliance by College Media

I thought it would be interesting to chart college media’s compliance with the recognized standards set forth by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).  The IAB includes the organizations who sell 86% of online advertising in the United States (according to them at least) and tracks the ad market. They have a committee that creates official Interactive Marketing Units (IMUs) which are sizes and names for the most commonly traded ads online.  In other words, their sizes and the names for those sizes are a standard. They have plenty more information on who’s involved and how these things are decided on their site.

What I found was that in some form or another, college media outlets use either the dimensions or the names of 16 these 18 ad types. The ones not used are the Pop-Under (720×300), Button 2 (120×60) and the Micro Bar (88×31). The statistics on the rest of the ads are in the big infographic, but I’ve reproduced the chart portion here. To determine width, I multiplied values by 10.

If it is not clear:

• The blue bar (numbers on the right) represents publications that use the stated dimensions of an IMU.
• The orange bar (numbers on the left) represents publications that use the stated name of an IMU.
• The green bar (and center numbers) represent publications that matched the correct IMU name with its standard dimensions.

The textual representation is on the results page.

Also, I included ads for the Square Pop-Up class of IMUs as those that were just Square. As far as I saw, no college media websites offered pop-up or pop-under ads.

4.2.0 Rates

I’ve collected all the statistics on rates and aggregated it in this section. For more detailed information about specific ad sizes or types you should use the search page.

4.2.1 Average Rates

I originally set up queries to determine the overall average rates for ads. However, I realized that it was including zero values, because I had neglected to allow NULL values in the numerical fields, so I recalculated the rates so they would exclude zero values. This was how I determined the average pixels per $1 a month statistic.

4.2.3 Monthly Rates

Keeping in mind the caveat in 2.0, monthly rates were, by far, the most commonly offered rates in college media, with  61 individual publications offering monthly options. I’ve sorted the rates by dimensions of the advertisement and given you average, minimum and maximum rates. Note that one online publication referred to the Peel Back ad as 500x500x250, which is what is listed here.

Image via Wikipedia

Classroom polling technologies , like iClickers and Turning Point, are falsely marketed as Generation Y-friendly tools. In reality, iClickers are just a crutch for professors who can’t engage.

I stumbled across yet another article by an educational professional about how amazing polling devices are in the classroom. It was the last straw. Interactivity does not equate with engagement.

Here’s what the teachers apparently think: Cyberpop blog, written by a Queen’s University Professor, erroneously calls polling edTech “the quintessential disruptive mobile teaching technology.” Then there’s NYT whose article claimed that Turning Point polling devices “made it harder for them [students] to respond to text messages, e-mail and other distractions.” Early this year, I attended a presentation on the advanced iClickers that described their utility in the classroom in such euphoric terms that it could have been some sort of drug.

I can’t help but wonder if the professors and single student that the NYT interviewed actually observed student behavior in using iClickers. I am in my first iClicker class this semester and I can tell you what happens when students get a polling question.

• 85% of the class look to the right, left and behind them and copy the answer.
• 10% of the class sits in the front of the huge lecture hall and is copied by everyone else.
• 5% of the class have fallen asleep, are watching a movie or playing a video game and miss the question.

I’ve yet to meet a student who actually likes polling devices in classrooms. I think that anyone in the average clicker class can see right through the professors who use them. Instructors seem to think that a few polling questions can hold a class’s attention, but clicker devices can’t be used to cover for bad teaching.

Can we break the illusion please? Classroom polling devices are not attractive to Generation Y, they don’t count as real engagement. The devices just allow you to pull the veneer of interactivity over your class. Clickers don’t make me interested in a class, they don’t engage my intelligence and they don’t substitute in for discussion. They are not an educational game-changer. Clickers are just one more way for bad and lazy professors to try to cover up horrible teaching or for higher education to feel better about ballooning class sizes.

Related articles

With economic problems abounding all over the US, universities of all types are feeling pressure to tighten their belts and cut where they can. Chances are that at least one of the things they cut will be something a student loves. This is an important story from at least two sides. You should be showing the impact of these cuts on your readership and making sure that the reasoning behind where cuts are made is honest.

There may be extra important elements depending on what type of university you attend. If you attend a public university, a significant hit to the budget may have come from state cuts. Some state universities, like the SUNY system, send their tuition directly to the state legislature, which than regulates how much is sent back via the state budget. For public university newspapers the most important interview may be your local congresspeople.

Don’t automatically assume that everything spent at your university comes from the same place either. Quite a few universities have odd financial structures which may be set up so that the money that regulates academics does not come from the same budget as construction.

• Who: You need to determine which body regulates your budget, who is responsible for suggesting cuts to individual academic programs (it may not always be the same person) and who is affected by the story. Others worth interviewing may be fired or let go faculty. There may also be a student representative to the body that regulates the budget who would be worth and interview.
• What: What has been cut from the budget? What programs are suffering? What dollar amount? This is an opportunity to build an infographic, perhaps compare current and future budget dollar amounts with the budget in past years.
• Where: Where should students be going to lodge a complaint? Where are the programs that are suffering on campus?
• When: Budget cuts may not be set to go into effect immediately, when do they start applying? When were the decisions made to set the budget? If past budgets were set with an expectation of money in future that turned out to be wrong, when did that happen? When, if ever, will funds return to the programs from which they were cut?
• Why: Why did the budget cuts happen now? Did the state decrease the amount of money your state is getting? Is enrollment down? Is the endowment suffering in the market? Why did certain programs get cut? Is enrollment or interest low? Have they traditionally done well with smaller budgets?
• How: How was the budget cut and how were certain elements decided upon to be cut from the budget? Were students represented in any way as part of the process? Were faculty? What was the vote?

Possible Multimedia:

• Budget graph
• Video or audio interviews with student who are affected by the cuts
• Interactive: Show students the budget and give them checks and balances and see if they can balance it themselves.

Follow up or companion story?: Tuition increases.

If you’ve done a story on your university’s budget cuts, leave a link in the comments.

Related articles

• While College Presidents Rake it in, Humanities Get the Ax (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Save SUNY, for all our sake (timesunion.com)
• State universities gear up for big cuts (seattlepi.com)

I’ve been reading through Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics on and off these last few months and it strikes me just how important this book is to anyone dealing with multimedia, not just comic artists or aficionados. When you think about it, in many ways comics were multimedia before anyone else was. They took an unusual step in completely combining images and words to create unique narratives that spoke in both media with one voice.

In comics, you can’t take any media out and still have a complete story. A comic without the words or without the artwork is not really a comic and may not even be a story. Even without words, there is still a narrative drawing everything together. The same can’t be said for most implementations of multimedia now. Many people who create narratives online do so with separate media in separate places, or create text with audio or video that doesn’t add to the narrative or does so in a way unassociated with the space it is in.

All this is confused even more by the web, with hypertexts and social media it would be relatively easy to have someone destroy the intended sequence for a user.

The question is, in what way can we use sequence to imbue our linked multimedia with narrative, instead of sitting along side it.

Get rid of sidebars?

Sidebars have been a standard practice in print media for a long time and in many sites it seems that the practice has carried over. The sidebar holds related but not integrated content for a narrative. Sometimes it may hold a summery for bored readers. But this practice ignores the possibilities of the web.

• Content can be embedded inside of text with tooltips.
• Rolling over text can reveal hidden elements.
• Separate sequences of text and imagery can be integrated to enrich narrative. But go beyond slideshows, show the sequence, push interaction.

Match beats

There are often different multimedia sequences which share beats with other media related to the narrative. By beats, I mean places where moments in the narrative line up between two media, for example photo and sound. This is why Soundslides is so attractive, it allows you to tell richer stories by combining photos and audio then you would be able to do with those two media sitting separate on the same page.

‘Here sequence is ridiculously important, the sequence of audio clips and photos can be matched up to create a rich story. One that is easy to digest and quite attractive.

• Narrating video with voiceovers
• Put navigation elements next to related content (tagging).
• Integrate related social searches (like Twitter) inline with an article.

Move beyond the paragraph

With the advent of easy typography on the web, considering how your text looks within the body of a website is key. The paragraph itself is a form of punctuation. However, we need to think beyond just the two+ sentence paragraph and into methods that take advantage of all the ways we can manipulate type today. The form and accepted format of the paragraph is something that comes from how we write by hand and is further formalized by the technology behind the printing press. However, the popularity of something like Twitter shows that this is not always the way we think anymore.

Placement of paragraphs, sentences or words can have a unique effect as well, imagine spreading out elements of a story in a way that shows emotion or meaning. We could deform letters or display them one at a time. We can even use words as playing cards. Why should we limit our storytelling to paragraph format?

• Spread and sequence sentences or paragraphs. Many people work on screens that are far wider than a book page. Why not spread out you sentences on one line or consider other formats?
• Place standard text within non-standard places. You can use floating divs or JavaScript to write on top of pictures or even on top of videos. With JavaScript or perhaps HTML5, you’d be able to animate it. Gives a new meaning to ‘voice’ over, huh?
• What about a cloud format? Letting concepts float up and hover around?

Consider left to right, than break it

McCloud notes how we read from left to right and how that changes how we read, what blanks our mind fills in, and where our eyes go next. (I wonder how things change where the society’s primary language goes in the opposite direction.)

What does this mean for web design? Should we throw out the concept of right-side sidebars or the sidebar-content-sidebar format? I’m not sure. I’d love to see some statistics on that if you have them. But what it does mean is that we have an opportunity to direct navigation in an order, not just as the presentation of options. It also means that we can reward users at the right side of a page by presenting them with something a little unusual, a new kind of punctuation.

But if we understand that the eye works this way, we can play with it, exploit it. With subtle strokes we could force it along a path. We could even defy the standard format and give multiple options. Instead of a buffet of every single area on a website, what about a limited menu, or a path that implies a narrative through the design.

• Can website navigation tell a story?
• Create a set of paths through your story or website using links or anchors. What if the selection of one path results in the exclusion of some options, what sort of narrowing down can be done?
• Embed artifacts in your site. Things that enrich the narrative of a site through consumption.

What’s next?

There is a lot to consider here. This doesn’t even get into real interactive options and the idea of narrative web design is something that has been banging away in my head for a while and I feel needs some serious expanding in the future.

However, It is important to start thinking right now about how sequences of events, media or even color can change how an online narrative is consumed.

This re-posted from HackText under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.

Image via Wikipedia

Online searches are immensely important tools for any journalist, but you may not realize that there are ways to create better and more detailed searches. In the information age, nothing is more important than the ability to find and filter information, here are some ways to make that easy.

Almost all search tools on the internet use a form of Boolean logic to parse down searches and understand what you are asking for. While most of this goes on behind the scenes, if you know the Boolean operators you can create searches that let you find information faster.

You may not know it but when you enter a set of terms into a search engine, you are already using Boolean logic. Most sites interpret multi-word searches as “AND” requests. When you type in a search for Kate Gosselin, what the search engine sees is Kate AND Gosselin. In Google, you can also use this operator by putting a + next to the phrase or word you want to be included. Though most of the results in that search will have the two words next to each other, this method doesn’t force the engine to look at them as a single phrase. This technique does force search engines to include commonly ignored words, by including something like +the.

On the flip side, you can exclude words or phrases by using the NOT operator. This is done in Google by using a – symbol in front of a word. If you search Star Trek on Google the third thing you’ll see is the 2009 re-launch of the series by JJ Abrams. Didn’t like that movie? You can get it out of your search results by typing Star Trek –Abrams instead.

The next major operator is OR. By using the OR operator you can find sites that have one phrase or another different phrase. If you wanted to learn HTML5 and jQuery you might type both into Google’s search field. However, if you wanted to see the top sites for both of those individual topics in one search you’d type HTML5 OR jQuery. This is equally powerful as a phrase for Twitter search.

By putting a search request in quotes, you can narrow down the search to only the exact phrase. If you were to type Students Save Lives in Haiti into Google your first few hits would be to popsci.com and most of the links would be to different sites. However, put it in quotes to get the exact phrase “Students Save Lives in Haiti” the first set of links you’ll see are from this site. You can combine this technique with both AND, NOT and OR operators. For example: Journalists +“Social Media”; “Kate Gosselin” –“Jon Gosselin”; "Batman Begins" OR "Batman Returns". You can also combine it with pretty much every other search operator.

Google-specific search operators

There are a number of special search operators that are only guaranteed to work using Google. Some of these may work in other search engines. Some of these operators may only work on the English language site.

Wildcards are a search tool that has been long in use in operating systems. The wildcard, usually indicated by the * symbol, is used to indicate that a word or phrase should go there, but you don’t know what it is. If you forget an old saying, you can search for it with the parts you know. For example, if you forgot how many stitches there are and what they save you could type “a stitch * * saves *” into Google or, if you are trying to hunt down the author of Understanding Comics but can’t remember his whole last name, you could type in Scott Mc* to find Scott McCloud’s home page.

The synonym operator provides another great option for finding things when you can remember exactly what they are. By including the ~ symbol before a word or phrase you can search for it’s synonyms. If you can’t remember what that awesome tool for Voice over Internet Protocol is called, type ~voip into Google and see Skype pop up as the second result. Looking for various types of police records? A useful search phrase might be police ~records.  This search term shows public police records, methods for looking up criminal histories, police car archives, scanner recordings and more.

There are a number of field searches that are very useful.

• site: allows you to perform your search internal to a website. So India site:upiu.com will show you all mentions of the India on UPIU.com.
• link: shows you sites that link to a certain URL. This is a great tool for finding out who linked to your site. link:upiu.com shows who is linking to our website.
• intitle: shows sites that have the term in their Title information, the part that shows up in the title bar of your browser window. For example intitle:j-future will show a link to this blog.
• inurl: will reveal sites that include a word in their web address. If you were looking for help with Search Engine Optimization, perhaps inurl:seo might pop up some useful links.
• related: shows sites that are related to another site’s URL. If you are looking for other sites about journalism or UPI, you might type in related:upiu.com to find them.
• allinanchor: is a search field that will show sites that have been linked to using that particular phrase. allinanchor:”United Press International” shows all the sites that have been linked to using the complete phrase United Press International. Without the quotes, it would search for sites that were linked to using any combination of those words.

Twitter-specific operators

There are a few very useful Twitter search operators that may help you in finding the right people to talk to.

• from: only searches Tweets from a certain user. It can be used in combination with other terms or other from: queries to search a group. Ex: from:upiu
• near: searches for tweets that were sent near a location. Ex: near:NYC
  • within: is a field that can be added to a near: search in order to further limit or expand results. Used with a mile indication. Ex: near:”washington dc” within:15mi
• since: is a search field that, when included with a date, limits the times of tweets you are looking at. Ex: #journalism until:2010-01-15
• filter:links can be used to only show tweets that include links.
• Semantic search terms are used to filter tweets based on the attitude of the tweet.
  • Adding to the end of a Twitter search will show you tweets “with a positive attitude.”
  • will show tweets “with a negative attitude.”
  • ? will show tweets that ask a question.

These tools to parse down and create exact searches are invaluable for research. They can be used for tracking conversations or for finding sources. These techniques are important additions to your journalism toolkit. Try them out and tell me what you think.

Interested in finding out more search terms or suggestions? Here are my sources.

Note: This is a repost of my original posting from http://blog.upiu.com. It is posted here in accordance with a Creative Commons licence.

What did you think of running the chat on Twitter tonight? Would you like to do it again or do it some other way?