Can local newspapers become a comparative advertising alternative to Facebook?

Small and medium sized businesses prefer Facebook as an advertising platform over local news media for a number of reasons. If local news publishers want to become a comparable advertising alternative to Facebook, they need to remove barriers that limit small and medium sized businesses from advertising on their platforms.

If local newspapers choose to form a coalition to give advertisers access to an audience network large enough to compete with Facebook, a one-stop shop approach needs to be adopted. Advertisers should not have to go directly to any one publisher. This will be difficult to implement as many publishers consider each other competition.

Lastly, local newspapers need to introduce more engagement driven buying methods that may be uncommon with programmatic. Instead of just purchasing ads based on a CPM basis, alternatives such as CPC and CPA can be also be adopted.

A coalition of publishers combining their propriety user and content data with programmatic bidding technology to offer a self-service with quality inventory, buying transparency, propriety clean reader data and CPC/CPA pricing models could help local publishers become a comparative advertising alternative to Facebook.

If you are a local publisher or advertiser who would be interested in a platform like this, we would love to collaborate with you!

We're a group of graduate business students exploring the importance of local newspapers and news sites, with a focus on sustainability and related business practices. We're hoping to build a community of stakeholders to help and support our research. Please reach out if you're available for an interview to share your thoughts and experiences on the topic.

Read more at: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/publishers-this-is-the-real-reason-why-newspapers-are-losing-to-facebook/