Think Multicultural

The second thing I do every morning, after getting my coffee, is go out on my porch for my daily print-news-double: pick up the Wall Street Journal and throw away the Washington Examiner. I really hate the Washington Examiner. They deliver it to everyone in my neighborhood whether you want it or not. There are a number of houses on my street with signs that say “No Examiner, EVER!” but they still get their copy every morning. And I get mine. It goes directly into the recycling bin on my sidewalk (on days that my aim is good). Nobody at my house reads it. When I get home from traveling, there are a pile of them on my front porch to put directly into the recycling bin.

Yesterday I was cursing the Examiner as I threw it in the recycling, and got to wondering about their ad model. Do they consider me a reader? Is my house counted in their circulation? What about the people upstairs? Do we count as six readers?

According to their print media kit, their circulation in the DC area is 280,000 and in my zip code it is 1,640. Then they list daily impressions as 498,000. Considering that at most 1 house in 10 on my street even bothers to pick up the paper, how in the world do they justify almost 2 impressions per delivery? Does the one guy on my block who reads the Examiner read it out loud to all of his friends on a conference call, including the ads? Are there a hundred people living in that two-story house around the corner, all waiting eagerly for the paper?

If an online property tried to get away with a media kit like this they’d be laughed out of the market. Online ad serving measures every single impression. It assumes only one person is sitting at that computer when the impression is served. It knows where each ad is served. It doesn’t count all of the other people out there who might somehow be exposed to the website.

And at least for today, I won’t even go into the stark difference in measuring the effectiveness of online ads vs. print.

Let’s just say it’s a good thing the Examiner seems to have a pretty good website, because otherwise they’ll be laughed out of the market along with the rest of print advertising.