A cheeky new campaign from the Wall Street Journal Online, one of the few news Web sites to charge users for access, mocks its free counterparts as uninformed, simplistic and unreliable. But the critical words are not preventing free competitors like CBS Marketwatch and Motley Fool from accepting the ads.
The ads, which are also running on cable channels and in the print edition of The Wall Street Journal, are part of the strategy of the Web site, wsj.com, to find younger users and to look beyond its core audience of financial professionals.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
"This campaign is a way to drive home the message that we are really different and that truly unique value is worth it," said Scott Schulman, president for consumer electronic publishing at Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. Going to the free sites, the targets of the campaign's satire, was necessary, if only because that is where the potential new users are, he said.
Executives at the free sites hosting the ads -- which include The Motley Fool (www .fool.com), Hoover's Online (www.hoovers.com) and Bloom-berg.com -- say they can take the heat, as well as the money.
"I think that it was a little jab, yes," said Larry Kramer, chairman and chief executive at CBS Marketwatch, which is running the ads. But the campaigns do not cut too close to the bone, he said, arguing that the Journal and CBS Marketwatch are quality sites relying on different audiences. Kramer said his site is geared to people who are relative novices to financial news. CBS Marketwatch had about 5.3 million unique users in September, according a count of US users at work and at home by Comscore Media Metrix.
"We're proud to take their money," Kramer added, referring to the Journal Online, before joking, "We have to see if they pass our credit check."
Motley fool not threatened
Ted Ryan, vice president for advertising sales at Motley Fool, said, "We don't see ourselves as direct competitors." The Fool site had about 2.7 million unique users in September, according to Comscore Media Metrix. "Those folks will keep coming back to us, because they don't think we're slapdash or sub-par quality or anything like that."
Some advertising executives, however, say the free Web sites are taking a risk by allowing critical advertising to run.
"Individual properties are looking for revenue streams and advertising through any channel they can," said Kelly Kernaghan, senior vice president and management director at Fcbi in New York, the digital and direct-marketing arm of Foote, Cone & Belding, part of the Interpublic Group of Cos. "They're kind of selling their souls to take ads making fun of their own core offerings."
The new Journal Online campaign parallels efforts by the print edition Wall Street Journal to expand beyond its base, said Vin Crosbie, managing partner at Digital Deliverance in Greenwich, Conn., an online media consulting firm. "They've already saturated their core constituency," he said, and now Journal Online executives have to chase mom-and-pop investors, too.
Executives at the Journal Online said they hoped the campaign, the first major advertising for the Journal Online since its redesign in January, would help sustain its recent growth. The site had 664,000 paid subscribers at the end of the third quarter, up 9 percent from the same time last year. (Subscribers who already receive the print Journal pay US$39 a year; others are charged US$79.)
The bigger audience has helped the site bring in more advertising revenue, which grew 24 percent between the third quarter of 2001 and 2002. The Journal Online, which has some free affiliated sites, received about 1.2 million unique visitors in September, according to Comscore Media Metrix. Dow Jones does not break out the site's actual revenue, instead including it with licensing and business development under consumer electronic publishing.
To increase its audience, the Journal Online is relying heavily on humor. Using loud colors and busy design, the online ads depict a decidedly irreverent vision of free financial sites.
Pointless headlines
One element is a mock free site (www.biz-o-rama.com), with headlines like "Computers to Get Faster, Says PC Industry Veteran" and "Sources Say: No Changes Ahead."
"Free sites are great for a lot of things," Schulman said. "The kinds of sites we've chosen to use reflect the kind of people we think should also be using the Journal Online."
The humorous campaign is aimed at younger consumers than the typical reader of The Wall Street Journal, said Allan Charles, president and chief creative officer at Trahan, Burden & Charles in Baltimore, which created it. Neither the Journal Online nor the agency would disclose the campaign's budget.
And its jibes are not aimed at any site in particular, Charles insisted. "We're really using a broad brush here."
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