UK regional paper publisher to charge for web access

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Local news publishers in the UK have had a fairly hard time of it recently, hit by falling readership and reduced advertising revenue, but now one of Britain’s largest regional newspaper publishers is to begin charging users to read full stories on six of its titles’ websites.

Johnston Press will charge £5 (about $8) for three months full access to content on the Worksop Guardian, Ripley & Heanor News, Whitby Gazette, Northumberland Gazette, Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter.

Readers who don’t wish to subscribe will be given access to excerpts and then encouraged to buy the paper copy to read the full stories. [Read more…]

Google turns to algorithms to create better-looking ads

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The constant push to make ads more visually appealing — reducing the effects of ‘ad blindness’ and helping them to convert better for advertisers and pay more to publishers — continues, as Google announces a pending deal with the Californian startup company Teracent.

Teracent specialises in machine-learning algorithms which have been put to use on the image ads of Google and its partners.

The example given in the announcement shows a standard, human created ad (left) and a similar ad that’s been picked in real time from thousands of different creative elements by these algorithms.

google-teracent-ads

[Read more…]

Fwix launches local news revenue-sharing service: AdWire

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adwire-logoWith the increasing number of publishers creating hyper-local sites, it’s no surprise that services such as AdWire are springing up to allow them to add a new stream of relevant advertising and earn revenue.

AdWire, from Fwix, is a local news distribution system which allows web publishers to add widgets to their sites that will provide local news and ads.

AdWire serves up news based on particular categories that a publisher sets, but it also takes visitors’ geography into consideration when serving content, hopefully keeping stories relevant.

Ads are served in between main content. [Read more…]

LiveJournal allows Google AdSense on premium accounts

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livejournalI’ll admit that I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to blogging platforms, and my view of LiveJournal isn’t the rosiest. Then again, the platform does have 22 million registered bloggers, so it’s certainly not to be passed over.

The Russian-owned blogging platform will now allow its premium (i.e. paid) users to embed Google AdSense ads on their blogs.

The “Your Journal – Your Money” system means that LJ users with an AdSense account can add customised ads to their blog, in much the same way as any other AdSense publisher would. LiveJournal says it won’t take any of the profits (and if it’s based on individual AdSense accounts, how could it?) [Read more…]

Google opens AdSense to multiple ad network companies

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Google has announced that AdSense publishers will soon be able to choose whether to accept advertisements from other ad network companies, as well as AdSense itself, in a change to how ads are served.

Any network that is Google-certified — that is, the ad company adheres to user privacy, ad quality and speed standards — can bid for ad positions previously exclusively available to AdWords advertisers. [Read more…]