New blogad networks… as classies crumble

Welcome to the new foodies blogad network catalyzed by SliceNY‘s Adam Kuban. Great logo Adam.

Most of the foodblogs have already pulled an interesting ad from PBS for its upcoming “Cooking under fire ” series, which debuted this week. I’m sure more like this will follow.

The foodies join the first mininetwork, Amy Langfield‘s federation of New York City blogads sellers.

Created and supported by bloggers in the same niche or locale, each network’s infrastructure and sales nitty gritty are powered by Blogads. Help juice fellow bloggers by posting a linking to their networks:

<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/foodblog_ad_network/order>Advertise on food blogs</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/new_york_city_blogads/order>Advertising on New York blogs</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/evangelical_alliance/order>Advertise on Evangelical blogs</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/sportsblogs/order>Advertise on sports blogs</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/gay_blogads/order>Advertise on gay blogs</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/baseball_blogosphere/order>Buy baseball blogads</a>
<a href=http://www.blogads.com/advertise/new_england_arts_and_entertainment_network/order>Advertise on New England arts and entertainment blogs</a>

If you want to organize a network, drop me a line and we’ll wire you up. (For my few fellow blog-theory-geeks, this is officially called “the revenge of the long tail.” For more perspective, here’s author Chris Anderson ‘s blog.)

As new businesses sprout, old businesses rot and fall, making room and mulch for the seedlings. Reports AdAge:

Newspapers’ long-secure classified ads business has already eroded noticeably and could ultimately cost newspapers about 9% of its total ad revenues by 2007, two executives from consulting giant McKinsey & Co. told attendees of the Newspaper Association of America’s annual conference yesterday. …

Luis Ubinas and Jochen Heck warned that newspapers could lose $4 billion of “highly profitable” classified revenue by 2007 — or around 20% of newspapers’ 2004 classifieds revenue and just under 9% of the $46.6 billion in total newspaper ad revenue last year — if trends that afflict help-wanted classifieds spread to automotive and real-estate classifieds.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of classifieds to newspapers’ bottom lines. Those pages of pure agate type are so profitable that, according to Mr. Ubinas, one newspaper executive said classified ads were a “better business than printing dollar bills.”

But the proliferation of online sites as diverse as monster.com, realestate.com and craigslist.com has substantially complicated newspapers’ hold on the format. “Once upon a time, classifieds was the exclusive property of newspapers,” said Mort Goldstrom, the NAA’s vcie president of advertising. “That time is over.”

The chilling part, Mr. Ubinas said, is that the key problem is not the competitors but rather what their pricing is doing to the entire classifieds model, calling it “price destruction.”

Another chilling fact: “Online is capturing all the growth,” he said.

A McKinsey analysis, Mr. Ubinas said, showed that an “Internet effect” began affecting help-wanted classifieds as early as 1995 and has resulted in an ever-widening gap between what historical trends would portend as expected help-wanted linage and what help-wanted’s true results were. In 2003, Mr. Ubinas reported, help-wanted classifieds were off 50% from levels that would be expected had decades of previous trend lines held true. …

My friend Jeff Jarvis spends lots of time badgering publishers to “get the Internet religion” and magically transform themselves. I think Jeff is wasting valuable pixels and breath. You can’t teach a pig to fly. A business is a carefully constructed ecosystem, each piece and person supporting and depending on the others and a web of customers and suppliers. Businesses are hard-wired to do certain things. Newspaper execs and owners can’t change an entire value chain, organogram and cost structure just because some consultants tell them to.