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LABJ: LA.com to launch this week- UPDATED 3/8 7:25 A.M.
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2660 Reads
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UPDATE: Well ... they're still in beta...
LABusiness Journal's RiShawn Biddle has an article out today (3/1)on LA.com's finally-coming-this-week launch.
Banner ads - a poor option as a sole or even core business model - are actually just part of the site's economic backbone, which includes discount travel sales, push ads for realtors and paid, ad-linked keywords on the site's search engine, reports Biddle.
The last of those will surely irritate anyone trying to find something in a hurry on the site, but as noted before here, the audience will determine the site's fate.
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Biddle quotes me briefly on Gannett/MNG's chances for survival with a high-stakes, high-gloss portal in a down economy, but also point out that the ad market is on the rebound. I'd link you to it directly, but you'd just have to pay $3 to LABJ to see the whole piece. It says, in part:
But the online guide market hasn’t exactly been a moneymaker. Two years ago, newspaper giant Cox Enterprises shut down its collection of 24 sites – including LAInsider.com – after several years of losses. Online guide pioneer Citysearch, a division of InterActiveCorp, which dominates the market, hasn’t made money since its formation, Chairman Barry Diller said in a conference call last month.
Part of the problem is that visitors only frequent the site when they are searching for a restaurant or movie listing. To make money a site would have to keep the audience around for a few clicks.
“Audience is underestimated in this business. Without the audience, you’re not going to get advertisers,” said Mack Reed, who ran LAInsider before it was shut down in 2002 (and who was a losing candidate for the LA.com editor’s job).
(Media News Group Interactive President Eric) Grilley admits it may take as long as five years for MediaNews to recoup its investment, but he says that the site is “as much a strategic play as it is a revenue play.”
The interview was quite a bit longer - Biddle and I spoke for about half an hour - and he makes no mention of my critiques of LA.com, either negative or positive.
But hey, when you come out of an interview with your quotes accurate and your name spelled right, it's the best you can hope.
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| Posted by: mack_reed on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 09:00 AM
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