When Print Ads Go Online
by Brian L. Dear

Back in the 1980s there was a nice little computer rag in San Diego called Byte Buyer. Printed on newsprint, Byte Buyer was a great way to find out good deals on PCs, Macs, and accessories, as well as find out dial-up numbers for scores of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's) -- we're talking totally pre-WWW, pre-AOL here. At one point Byte magazine came along and claimed trademark infringement, and Byte Buyer was forced to change their name. The name they picked, ComputorEdge always rubbed me the wrong way. I think it was the "O". :-) Ever since then I've called it "ByteBuyor"...

Anyways... I mention ComputorEdge because a few years ago they started doing something on their website that I thought was very cool. They started including all of the print ads from the print version of the magazine.

"B-b-but... who cares about print ads online!? Why is this a big deal?" That might be what you're thinking right now. Nobody reads ads anyway, right? Ads are bad. Ads are evil, right? Banner ads are worthless -- people tolerate 'em (sometimes they don't) -- but they have no value, right? So how could reproductions of actual print ads possibly be useful? Oh, I believe they can be quite useful. In fact, I've visited the ComputorEdge site countless times over the years to browse their ads -- that's the reason I went to their site -- for me, that was the content I was looking for: what did Datel Systems, a local San Diego PC clone dealer, have on sale this week? How much were local decked-out Pentium boxes going for? What about Chip Merchant -- what were this week's deals at that venerable San Diego institution? (I've always loved the Chip Merchant business name -- simple, direct, plain: not a "tron" or "dyna" or "onics" or "sys" or "data" in sight!).

Advertisements become content when relevance reaches a certain point. For me, anyways. I like ads. I study ads. When I read a magazine or newspaper, I not only read the articles, but I study the ads. For some ads, it's because I am genuinely interested in that company, service, or product. For others, it's because I want to understand the design, brand, and message. I am probably not your average print publication reader. (Then again, who knows? Maybe I am? My personal "conversion rate" is, I suspect about the same as everyone else: way, way, way under 1%.)

So when I recently discovered that the San Diego Union-Tribune was offering all of their print advertisements through the website (well, not all their ads, unfortunately, but many), I was pleased. Two publications here in San Diego doing the same thing. The beginning of a trend?

Turns out, it is. In fact, as I should have guessed, there's a startup cashing in on the trend: AdExpedia, based in Chico, CA. (Now the first thing that struck me about AdExpedia was, um... their name. Um, I think these guys may be in for a ByteBuyor situation of their own if they're not careful...)

For years I subscribed to the print publication of the Wall Street Journal. I should have been the ideal customer to transition over to the Online Edition of the WSJ when that originally launched. I was intrigued. I used it while it was free. But nothing beat the print edition. I wanted to know who was spending $100,000 to run a full-page ad that day. I loved reading the occasional cheeky full-page ad from Steve Jobs, or IBM, or one of the princes of Saudi Arabia. Or the full-page hostile takeover pleas from beleagured shareholders for or against a merger. It was all part of the WSJ reading experience. The online edition just wasn't the same without those big ads from the paper. And the small ads too: the houses, the boats, the Ferraris, all of that was interesting to browse through -- what are the trends? Are prices up this week or down?

Now, AdExpedia comes along and they're making a business of it. Not everyone is impressed, however. INC. Magazine recently did a profile on AdExpedia and the reviews were mixed. They're in for a challenge, no doubt about it. But for this reader, what AdExpedia and ComputorEdge are doing is a completely natural and reasonable next step in the merger of print and online media. Really, in the end, the whole damn print publication should be available daily as a fresh PDF.

Then I'd be happy. :-)