Peter Vandevanter, vice president of targeted products for MediaNews Group, told the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) “The Power of Print Conference” that the subscribers will get home delivery of a printed paper, through home printers or portable devices, with content personalized to their demands and including hyper-targeted advertising and coupon offers.
So, on the ad side, MediaNews and Dean Singleton are trying to out-Google Google and Sergey Brin? Good luck with that. Coupons? BFD. Everybody knows their use rate is in single digits.
If I want to read hardcopy, I can just go to a webpage and hit “print” if I have a home printer. If it doesn’t correctly format for 8.5x11, I can copy the text and paste in a Word document. Plus, if I have ad-block settings and/or a good hosts file, I don’t get any of Singleton’s ads.
What moronity.
But wait, that’s not ALL the moronity. The MediaNews printer ain’t a freebee:
Subscribers buy the printer at a deep discount and pay a “modest” subscription fee, Vandenvanter told Mitchell. The newspaper reimburses subscribers for the consumable. Advertisers pay the newspaper for targeted ads.
Even THAT isn’t all the moronity. Allegedly, advertising rates for the I-News product “are 10 times print advertising rates.”
Good luck with that one!
