Obviously, Politico should be making its money through selling concert tickets and T-shirts.

Assignment desk: The kewl kids all like the Politico. "Must read," "setting the Beltway agenda." What are the ramifications of that?

As for the economics of online writing. Everyone is still working it out. The reality is that subscriptions are too "all or nothing" to draw in the crowds, but there's no greatly useful way to monetize the crowds.

The irony is that the geeks killed advertising as a real source of money for media (it doesn't know it yet) because all this pay per click stuff has started to prove just how few adverts most people have any interest in...

Advertising can support and make profitable certain categories of web sites: extremely narrow ones (like porn), or extremely broad ones like google search.

The problem for Politico and any other politics oriented site is that general business advertisers want to stay far away from identification with some political point of view - or even the general nastiness and rank odor of politics (as beheld by the average person).

The newspaper model of revenue depended on classifieds and large format ads by major merchandisers. The classifieds are nearly dead in papers, and the major merchandisers themselves are under profit attack. For the same reasons the daily paper is an endangered species, 'news' on internet sites aren't attractive places to advertise in the general case, since about half of the audience is hostile to what they perceive is slant and bias.

Maybe the BBC/PBS government supported/non-profit model is the only way real 'general' news can be supported??? Niches will find and develop that can attract advertisers (sports, food, hobbies, hard-core politics [I almost typed porn].)

As tough as it is to survive as a non-profit (Amer. Prospect-like), it may be the only lasting voice since advertising is narrowly aligned with the content.

I hoped this post might chastise Politico for so shamelessly engaging in the big-media, Halperin-style, he said-she-said "objectivity" BS. And not once, ever, considering whether it should educate its voters about anything more than "what did the latest McCain press release say about Obama that Obama denies."

Cut through the horse-race baloney by going to VoteGopher.com. REAL nonpartisanship, REAL objectivity, about REAL issues. Read about it in the Post, now it's my only nonpartisan web source.

I enjoy the Politico, and I'm sorry they can't figure out a way to make money. I certainly wouldn't pay for a subscription--there's just too much other free stuff out there to fill in my time, if political when pay-per-play.

On the other hand, I have a hard time taking the news-worthiness of a site called "votegopher.com", even if they don't take ads. I'd recommend History Beats up Politics by Bruce Carlson:

http://myhistorycanbeatupyourpolitics.blogspot.com/

I love that guy. Gives a real historical perspective on modern day politics.

Well, agreed, it's a little too cutesy for my tastes. Apparently all the children go crazy for cartoon gophers dressed up in fatigues or business suits.

Anyway, the site's content is pretty smart. More for political know-nothings, rather than junkies, though.

Ezra-

Isn't this kind of commercial analysis more useful if you also include the relevant costs for the print and internet segments of the business. I mean, if 60% of the profits come from the print side, but so do 90% of the costs, well....

Make that "revenues", not "profits." The point's the same, though.

I know you are (personally and understandably) interested in the economics of online political media in general. But in the particular case of the Politico (which exists only to regurgitate Village CW as filtered through The Note, Mark Halperin and Drudge) the sooner the damned thing fails the better for American democracy (small d) and American Democrats (big D).

Online advertising is in a weird place. The biggest problem is that success is measured by the number of people who click on the banner, which is a ridiculous way to measure an ad's effectiveness---do you measure a TV ad's success by how many people immediately hit pause on their Tivo and run out to buy your product? As a result, online ad space costs are absurdly low, which is why so much of it is dominated by fly-by-nights even as the affluent demographic that advertisers love increasingly abandons print for the web.

Eventually, advertisers are going to have to realize that online ads are the only way to reach the people they want to reach, they have to pay for the privilege, and their ads will be measured by large-scale strategic effectiveness, not instant gratification. And once that happens, online publications will have a viable business model. Everyone's treading water until then, but I suspect there's not that long to wait.

I agree with Marlow and others here who feel Politico just acts as a conduit for trash from Drudge and other right-wing sites to penetrate into the Corporate media consciousness.

You could have at least made a note of that bias even though you probably keep up with it to see what the village thinks is important from day to day.

Politico could have invested a little time studying the histories of Salon, Slate, Inside.com and other efforts to support modest-sized professional newsrooms via online advertising -- which show just how difficult this sort of thing is. But showing that kind of comparison to potential funders might have spoiled the party.

Speaking of that, here’s my take on Ted Rall’s suggested three-part solution for how daily newspapers should save their butts from the Net:

• First: newspapers should go offline.
• Second, copyright every article in the newspaper.
• Step three: cut off the wire services.

Certain types of traffic are worth a lot of money, other types aren't worth that much. For instance, those who visit nonnudepicturesofweathergirlswithoutanysortofsubscription.com probably aren't going to click any ads. Those who visit ireallyneedalawyerrightnow.com are probably going to click ads. Politics sites apparently tend towards the first set.

A person doesn't have to click on an ad to get an ad's benefit. Just seeing an ad is effective. That being said, the advertisers need to be the one's to adjust to this new market place. They should start thinking graphics, and they need to understand that in this new advertising age they require more exposure then just the pages of let's say The New York Times. By the same token, the smaller net hosts need to start charging for the privilege of advertisers to place their ads on their sites.

Halli Casser-Jayne
http://www.thecjpoliticalreport.com

The above is correct. Where as in print media, it is the publishing concern that sets ad rates, online advertisers get to decide how much they will give per click or page view.

And while I mostly agree with the gentleman above who wrote that national advertisers are reluctant to associate themselves with politics, the demographics on online readers should make them think twice about not taking a chance.

Web readers are older, richer, better educated, and interested in high end products.

But Ezra's point is well taken - and depressing at the same time.

Profitable or not, Novak has resigned. I blame Politico. And hope they'll talk Broder into resigning next.

"Old-school reporting values"? Are you joking? Politico is the more respectable arm of that ultra-right-wing tabloid-style serial liar, the Drudge Report.

How does Politico's business plan compare to TalkingPointsMemo's? It seems like Josh's operation is consistently growing.

Fuzzy Bastard, it's a legitimate question. Casser-Jayne... but, what type of advertising are web click-throughs like?

I would say they're much more like junk mail rather than TV ads.

Sure, if one person responds, at some point and not necessarily immediately, they have an effectiveness rate marginally above zero. Big deal.

Internet advertising is like the Red River out in the Panhandle -- a mile wide but an inch deep.

Casser-Jayne, you also forget that we as "Net consumers" have the power to "not see ads."

I have Firefox on a PC. Between Firefox's ad block, and my extensive list of URLs on my hosts file, I simply do not see most ads.

That's a far physical difference from a hard-copy newspaper.

Heck, even with junk mail, it may catch the corner of my eye for five seconds.

My further thoughts on the issue

面料

The biggest problem is that success is measured by the number of people who click on the banner, which is a ridiculous way to measure an ad's effectiveness do you measure a TV ad's success by how many people immediately hit pause on their Tivo and run out to buy your product?

http://www.watchrolexshop.com

I have to say, though, that I'm beginning to get this weird feeling, as though I've been transported back to the '90s. Between conservatives' ridiculous reaction to Eric Holder's factually accurate comments and the Post's racist cartoon, I've been reminded this week of Clinton-era culture wars. Can the re-release of Dinesh D'Souza's "The End of Racism" be far behind?

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