Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials

Adam9 writes "As Salon fights for survival, they have introduced a new advertising program that allows you to receive a free 12 hour pass by clicking through about 10 seconds of advertisements. Currently, the advertisements are from Mercedes-Benz. According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995. They also have about 45,000 subscribers right now." Jamie also pointed out this article from the WSJ, as well as the words from Salon themselves about it.

I have the solution!

[craenor]

Tasteful banner ads for online porn! Afterall, it's still the online money making king.

Re:Anyone know

[Anonymous Coward]

Overheard from irc.slashnet.org:

slyguy^: How many paying subscribers are there to Slashdot?
Hemos: 12. After we split it all up, I got a #4 combo at Taco Bell. ;)

Well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon.com... I mean, come on, now. Who really thought that giving haircuts and facials over the internet was a good idea?

Ultramercials

[crumbz]

Man, that sounds scary. Like something from Brazil or Blade Runner. Might make your head explode if you watch for thirty seconds or more. I guess that's why Salon limited it to 10 seconds. Too much liability.

Re:Micropayments

[beq]

FWIW, That's exactly how First Virtual worked. Geez, do I feel old.

"When I was your age we had to carry our packets with our bare hands to the router...It was 5 miles, in the snow, uphill!*cough*"

Re:Well, duh!

[tmark]

Who really thought that giving ... facials over the internet was a good idea?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would think any company that could figure out how to give facials over the Internet would make a ton of money. I'd like to see a copy of THAT business plan !

/. them while they're down

[fobbman]

Damn, post a story about how Salon is losing money and then link them in the story? That's like telling your doctor that you have a headache and then they kick you in the nuts.

Re:Kind of like Slashdot

[Deagol]

How does CmdrTaco sleep at night??!

On a big, cushy, VC-funded bed, I'm sure. ;-)

Re:Most advertisers won't allow this...

[Lizard_King]

I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)

In those 1 in 10 Americans that have 'hit' your ad server, I'm sure that 9 of 10 would like to 'hit' something else.

woo!! I am the angel of internet publication death

[ksuhr]

I subscribed to Yahoo internet life last year -- dead after 3 issues

I subscribed to Salon last month (admittedly I knew they've been in hot water more or less the last few years) and now this

I oughtta start charging these companies for my not subscribing to them...

Re:Most advertisers won't allow this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit it was quite effective, and if i had the money to buy a mercedes then the ad might have effected me.

There's a reason you don't have the money to buy a Mercedes vehicle. Improper usage of the English language, it prevents you from landing a high paying job. The proper word to use in that sentence is "affected". Better luck next time.

Re:How did they lose $80 million?

[Mignon]

I actually *liked* the magazine -- as opposed to the annoying site (with its reader letters back and forth -- which strike me as the absolute height of pomposity and "in-joke-ness". If you just try to browse Slate, you're hit with all these things referencing other things -- and if you don't know what the "Fray" is and if you haven't been following all the oh-so-elegantly written missives between experts, you're lost.

That (hot grits) sounds (goatse) familiar (beowulf). Where (karma whore) have (first post!) I (Natalie Portman) seen (/. effect) that (anonymous coward) before? (troll)

advertisers wisdom

[timestocome]

When will it occur to Mercedes that anyone trying to save $12 a year in subscription costs probably isn't going out to buy a Mercedes?

Re:Lottery Micropayments

[jdludlow]

Uh huh. And the code looks like this.

/** Decide if payment is required.
* @author Jim - IT Development
*/
public boolean isPayment {
/* 1% chance of payment */
//if (Math.random() < 0.01) {
// return true;
//}
//return false;

// Fixed a bug (Bob - Marketing Department)
return true;
}

Re:The Right Wing and its Pressure Play

[grubert]

Does anyone have anything intellegent to say about my little observation/theory? Other then to mod it a troll?

Ya know, Socrates was a troll. But sometimes, a troll *is* just a troll.