WebProNews

Facebook, Wall Street Journal Partner

When the New York Times introduced a Facebook app, we were suspicious, but the thing did surprisingly well.  Now, in what's even more of a stretch, the Wall Street Journal and Facebook have also shaken hands.

Microsoft Grabs WSJ Search Ad Deal

Unlike another well-known News Corp property, MySpace, the Wall Street Journal opened its search advertising opportunity to Microsoft.

Wall Street Journal Picks Microsoft

Microsoft will be providing the contextual and search advertising to the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, which includes The Wall Street Journal Online, Barrons.com, MarketWatch, and AllThingsD.com.For Microsoft, that means the Beast of Redmond can add 20 million visitors per month to its advertising network.

Money for Content

The WSJ let the "our content will be free" story spread for months to generate public relations related coverage and to misdirect competitors before announcing that they are going to keep their subscription service: Mr. Murdoch made his latest comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in answering a question.

WSJ Will Not Abandon Subscription Model

If rumors are to be believed, the Wall Street Journal has been considering abandoning the subscription model for months. But alas, it’s not to be. Rupert Murdoch announced today that the Wall Street Journal, while expanding its free offerings, would not leave the subscription model. In fact, he stated that:

WSJ.com Frees Its Opinions

The Wall Street Journal Online took another step toward opening to the web by merging its opinion content with OpinionJournal.com into one free site.

WSJ May Need Big Subscription Increase to Make Up Lost Revenue

The Wall Street Journal would have to increase traffic to their site by 12x to make up for the lost subscription revenue. WSJ.com is going from paid subscriptions to free online access. A report from Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang made the prediction based on advertising rates for banner ads.

News as a Commodity

In my last post about how contextual advertising targets the weak and poor, I promoted the idea of niche publishers shifting to sell niche products and services directly as a better means of monetization.

Video Ads Cost Roughly Same As Banners

The price of video ads are $10 - $90 per thousand views according to a report out today.WebVideoReport wrote an article that reviewed the ad sales web pages of eight sites that sell video ads.  The prices noted are public asking prices which are typically discounted or included at low cost or free with purchase of other web ad inventory. Only three of the eight sites provided their rates on a standard CPM basis:

Newspapers' Sites Doing Rather Well

The holiday season is supposed to be a happy time of year, and it would be a shame to discuss the death of print during it. So we’ll talk about print’s life, instead; new numbers from Compete indicate that it could be a long one yet.