West Palm Beach, Fla., brings ads to mobile devices

May, 2007
By Steve Martin

For the last few years, executives at The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla., have been successful in “opening our minds to going beyond the printed page,” said Dan Shorter, general manager of palmbeachpost.com.

The results of this philosophy include digitizing every element on all of their display ads and making them fully searchable online with classified ads; offering extra space for online ads; accompanying real estate ads with floor plans, photos and videos; listing Web ID numbers at the end of all classified advertising and more.

Shorter and his colleagues have added a mobile service to their array: Classifieds on the Go. He cited how the rise in the use of mobile technology affected the decision to create the service.

“There is no more promising distribution network than cell phones, personal digital assistants and other mobile devices. It’s already been proven in Europe and Asia, where people are eschewing laptops and personal computers to use high-end mobile devices as their portable computers. I don’t know if usage in the United States is going to go exactly that way, but more people have cell phones than have Internet connections. We’d be foolhardy not to address that audience,” he said. 

In The Palm Beach Post’s local audience is what Shorter called a “sweet spot of young people” that the newspaper doesn’t touch.

“It’s a huge advantage to our focus on mobile; we hope that it will get young people who use mobile all the time to think of using us for finding a place to get pizza today, maybe to find a car tomorrow. Maybe five years from now they’ll become subscribers to the print product because they’ve developed a habit with us, and we’re vital and valuable to them. It’s the hope of building connectivity.

“No one here worried that we would cannibalize ourselves with Classifieds on the Go because we don’t have this group now, so what are we going to lose? If it turns out that we are never able to get them to the print product, at least we’ll get them to our mobile product.”

How it works

Mobile device users can utilize Classifieds on the Go two ways. First, users can input the Web ID number found on all items in the classifieds to learn more about them. As an example, a reader may see an attractive home in the classifieds but is unable to drive out to the property that day. Once she keys the Web ID number into her cell phone, the reader will receive more information about the property including photographs if her phone is Web enabled.

The second method involves adding text messaging phrases into the Classifieds on the Go database.

“Let’s say you decide you want pizza for lunch. You can text the phrase ‘pizza, West Palm Beach’ to 72727, which is our short code. The system then alerts you that the keyword has been found in multiple areas. It’ll give you a short menu, from which you can choose ‘restaurants.’ Back will come text messages that will offer pizza deals. But you’ll get ads only for the area you’re searching for,” Shorter said.

The keyword search passes through more than 10,000 items in The Palm Beach Post’s database. Shorter hopes that the newspaper will get more inventory from both retail and classified advertisers, just like it has with its Web site and kiosks.

CellSigns partnership

The Palm Beach Post has many products and services including digitized ads and enhanced self-order elements like photos online. Making them available through cell phones wasn’t easy, but Shorter said CellSigns of Exton, Pa., has been a good partner in making it possible.

“CellSigns has been working in the real estate business for years, distributing information in a similar manner to what a newspaper does, so they’re pretty easy partners to work with.  They weren’t hoping to develop this or wishing to develop it; they already had,” Shorter said.

The Palm Beach Post and CellSigns began communicating in spring 2006 and signed a contract in summer.  In less than three months, Classifieds on the Go was created.

“CellSigns built a mirror to our Web site with all its functionality; they created an alter ego for our ads on cell phones. We’ve got all this great content that can be found on online and on our kiosks — extra text, Web site links, e-mail links — why can’t we put it on mobile devices? The people at CellSigns stepped in, used their skills and adapted the tools they already had to fit our needs,” Shorter said.  

Advocates and promotion

Shorter credits Online Development Director Gina Wilcox with creating the service with CellSigns. Vice President of Advertising Robb Olsen and former Classified Advertising Director Jeff Anderson both saw the value of the mobile service from the start, while Online Marketing Manager Michelle Licudine and her colleagues made sure that people knew that the service was available and how to use it.

The newspaper promotes mobile on palmbeachpost.com with a sliding billboard and a Flash demo about using the service.  The front of the classified section has been redesigned to emphasize the service. The newspaper publishes full-page, full-color vertical-specific ads about using mobile for jobs, homes and vehicles, and there are promotional liner ads to inform readers why they should search for ads with their mobile devices. Additionally, the newspaper gives free yard signs to any advertiser who wishes to promote the Web ID number found at the end of their classified print ad.  

“If you’re not going to promote it, don’t bother creating it. You’ve got to have a well rounded promotion and take every chance to educate people. There is definitely an education to all this,” Shorter said.

“We have to create the marketplace for it, otherwise how will people know we have it?  Some newspapers have digitized their display ads, charged advertisers for them and stopped at that. They need to buy keywords, they need to have an ad campaign and other media to educate people. ‘Do you know this is on our shopping channel? Do you know you can come to our Web site, go to that local retailer, touch a product and buy it?’ You’ve got to have that kind of thoughtful marketing plan for mobile.”  

Results and the future

Classifieds on the Go has been available for only a few months, but Shorter is positive about its effect on the newspaper’s business. Although the audience is thin now, with several dozen people using it during a typical day, he expects it to grow.  

The revenue has also been a positive outcome, he said. 

“Our expectation for mobile was that it would add more than one million dollars to our franchise; it’s certainly trending there. We’ve had it out for only three months and it is beyond our early predictions for revenue. This is happening in an area that is not in a red-hot economic market for classifieds right now. But it’s going to be a million-plus business for us,” Shorter explained.

The future of mobile at The Palm Beach Post is also exciting, as it may evolve into being a voice-activated service. There is also the possibility of offering advertisers an enhanced presence on the screen when a mobile user searches for a product that the advertiser has.

Making it a priority

When Shorter and his colleagues at The Palm Beach Post initially explored the possibilities of bringing advertising to mobile devices, only a handful of businesses would have been able to offer the service. Now, however, there are “a plethora that want this business, who want newspapers to partner with them,” Shorter said.

“Either those companies can have the business relationship with our customers and amputate part of our revenue, or we can go after it ourselves. If you have dinner with Yahoo or Google, they will tell you that mobile is a top-three priority for them, so it had better be a priority for us,” he said.

Shorter and his colleagues believe that bringing ads to mobile devices has the potential to be as valuable, over time, as doing the same for the Internet. And while The Palm Beach Post has invested in a dedicated development person for mobile, newspapers don’t have to invest in presses or new buildings to be able to offer such a service to users.

“Newspapers need to embrace it and figure out ways to make it valuable for our advertisers. This is yet another opportunity for us to be a good partner with them. This is a relationship where we say, ‘We’re your local newspaper, we’ve done a lot of good work for you. You trust us. We’ve got something new for you.’ They’ll listen to us because they trust us and we have a relationship with them.

“We can inoculate ourselves to make sure that our advertisers aren’t being taken by these entrepreneurial companies that want to teach them about mobile. We need to do this. We need to sit down, figure out their needs, know their products and then open up a whole new business with them,” he concluded. 

 

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