Upheavals In The Advertising World: The Interruption-Disruption Model Is Said To Be Dying, Newsday Fires Its Advertising Manager Because The Revenue Isn’t There, And The Chicago Tribune Cuts Classified Help Wanted Ads, and Goodbye To Sexism

Philip M. Stone January 17, 2008

There seems to be a revolution of sorts in the advertising world – print and video. Who would have thought a major metropolitan newspaper like The Chicago Tribune would cut out help wanted classifieds during the week in print; that another metropolitan newspaper, Newsday, would publicly criticize its advertising manager for not bringing in the expected revenue and very publicly fire him; yet alone for a very well respected marketing analyst to make the point that advertising as we know it – interrupting and disrupting our media life -- is on the way out.

Starting on the print side, maybe it’s just plain coincidence, but no sooner does Sam Zell take over Tribune and tell his newspaper publishers that they have bottom line responsibility and decisions will be made locally and not in Chicago, than two of the newspapers make rather startling moves.

In Chicago itself the Tribune has announced that it is eliminating help wanted ads from the newspaper on weekdays. Hands up those of you who ever thought you would see a major metropolitan newspaper make such an announcement! Classifieds, after all, are supposed to be the lifeblood of newspapers.

But The Tribune says that with the Internet here to stay and stealing so much of print’s thunder that it is time to take stark decisions on the classified business. “Chicago Tribune and the rest of the newspaper industry face the same challenges with shifts in help wanted advertising , and we are taking the lead on reinventing the way we present our job listings, “ said Ellen Glassberg, the paper’s director of recruitment advertising. “We see this challenge as an opportunity for us to retool our recruitment advertising offerings and fully integrate the online and job search experience to be hyper-focused on the needs of the job seekers.”

The idea is to take advantage of the CareerBuilder brand. The Tribune will run help-wanted classifieds on Sunday in print under the CareerBuilder title, but during the week it will have listings every Tuesday in the business section giving basic information on jobs available and directing the searcher to the Tribune’s CareerBuilder web site. A by-product of this is that the newspaper will save some newsprint, and it is yet another example of turning people away from print and onto the Internet.

And then in New York Newsday publisher Tim Knight very publicly fired his senior vice president for advertising with a message to employees that 2007 performance was well under plan and, “We need to change the way we drive revenue and serve our advertising customers because the current approach is not working, and the demands on us have increased for 2008. We need to accelerate the transformation of our business.”

These sorts of things are usually not done so publicly or in such a blunt manner. No doubt publisher Knight is showing Sam Zell, who just happened to be visiting Tuesday, that he’s a take-charge kind of guy. It’s also a shot across the bow that will be heard by newspaper advertising managers across the country that their bottom line is the bottom line and if it wasn’t hardball time before, it certainly is now.

And then there is a fascinating analysis by Geoff Ramsey, the CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, who believes that advertising that disrupts and interrupts our media habits is on the way out. He wrote in a recent newsletter:

“For decades, the ad industry was built on the interruption-disruption model. Consumers understood that if they wanted to experience free content—in the form of television shows, music on the radio and magazine articles—they would have to put up with ads, most of which were perceived as irrelevant, boring, annoying or all three. In this standard construct, ads were seen as a ‘necessary evil’ to support the content consumers really wanted to see.

“But the interruption-disruption model is dying out, thanks to shifting consumer trends. Consumers are increasingly in control of their media content and can easily eradicate ads they don’t want to see. They also have less trust in advertisers and their messages. Further, consumers are creating their own content with the help of blogs, social networks, wikis and other digital-communication platforms.

“As a result, advertisers and their agencies who want to engage with today’s consumers will have to start turning their ads into content. Ultimately, they will need to be able to produce content that is so compelling, relevant and entertaining that consumers will seek it out and want to share it with others. The new ad model is about creating great content and finding clever ways to embed it in the fabric of communities and content platforms where consumers are hanging out and actively participating.”

So, not only do we want it free, but we want it without interruption, too, and it appears we may just get our way!

And for another sign of what may be ahead in advertising then look to Sweden where a special government adviser has recommended that sexist ads be banned – not self-regulated, but banned.

Sexist advertising, defined as commercials that could be considered offensive to men or women, “is counter-productive to society’s goals of achieving gender equality,” according to the government-commissioned report that called for the ban to go into effect January 1, 2009.

Sweden already leads in one key advertising  statistic, according to WPP, the world's largest media buyer,  that this year the Swedish Internet advertising spend will surpass  that of television.  It will become the sign of the times as other countries such as the UK and Denmark are expected to join that exclusive club next year.