Yep thats all Heather sent me but after all that time on parole & in the penalty box im more then happy, i did'nt want the Leather Jacket from the Village People auction and after repeated phone calls & emails with Ca$h,Speedy,OD Rob, RG53,Ph@ntom we decided the leather Jacket is all you BIG Daddy now if we can just get the hat back from Rob to complete your wardrobe

As many of you know, including Matt <g>, I have not been a fan of PBM for a while. I think they need to think out side the box to compete with the internet and I hope they do so. However I shre as hell don't think they owe me or anyone else a tee shirt! Thet are in the publishing bussiness not clothing.

I'll tell you something I have never been able to afford free stuff so no bigs to me on the tshirt...


But, PB magazine might have better web appeal if you could read the blog from their excellent writers on an IPad... Can they catch up with the times?

I have to agree with this. Publishers keep treating content like it's different on print/web/ipad - etc. To an extent, that is true - but you have to make your content available in all forms, so the reader can choose and conveniently access it wherever they want. Maybe even just parts of it at a time.

That calls for a different economic model, better technology - etc. but that's the way things are going. The information is the commodity - you just have to be able to deliver it in forms people want....at a cost that makes sense. Modern publishers don't look at web and ipad content as "cannibalizing" print - it's all just the same. You have to figure how to make it pay for itself across all the platforms.

More and more - it's the advertisers who are doing most of the paying.

Advertisers have always done most of the paying. Much as they are appreciated, subscription rates and newsstand sales don't provide significant revenue in magazines such as Powerboat.

Beyond that, I agree with everything you and Padraig (other than his opinion of Powerboat) have said.

You are absolutely correct - I realized what I was actually thinking was that, more and more - they will probably be expected to do ALL of the paying - particularly where the web is concerned...

Agree completely. The "pay for membership" model for web sites, probably with the exception of porn, has been less than successful. Advertising will carry the load online, and right now that means $27 billion in online advertising revenues. For the first time in history, online ad revenues have surpassed newspaper ad revenues. (How they compare to magazine ad revenues, I have no idea.)

But here's the thing I find fascinating: Click-through rates for online ads are, generally speaking, abysmal. If you doubt that, try to recall the last time you clicked on an ad. So not only does the content world have to do a much, much better job (as Padraig points out of) of rethinking and presenting content, the advertising world needs to create online ads that people will actually open. Otherwise, frankly, those ad dollars, which by the way don't come from the ad companies agencies but companies paying them to create compelling ads, are being wasted.

Today's online ads, most of them anyway, seem to be digital versions of print ads. And that isn't cutting it.

At the very least, online ads needs to be entertaining and maybe even ... interactive.

Right on. I have been in bussiness, for 33 years.

The online ad question is a fascinating one, to be sure. The money is being spent online because advertisers know [today] that's where the eyeballs are. But that's pretty much all they know.

IF and WHEN anyone ever really figures it out, it will be interesting. Actually, I think the only value current display ads have is for pure impressions - to increase top-of-mind awareness in the most general sense. No one clicks on them, and expecting them to "sell" is, I think, asking too much. In the end, I think the environment of the web and the interaction it provides will change our perception and definition of "what advertising is" anyway... We're using a 20th century yardstick to measure, judge and analyze somthing that will end up being completely different....

You know, I'm all for a guy making a living and all but don't you think some advertising methods are downright obtrusive? Some ads, and possibly interactive ads, have that potential. I was getting gas the other day, got out of the car, put in the nozzle and began to think about a troubling comment someone said at a business meeting when "HELLO!! HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT YOUR AUTO INSURANCE LATELY??? G---O CAN SAVE YOU MONEY. JUST CALL --- --- ---- AND SEE FOR YOURSELF..." It was maddening. It interupted my train of thought and I couldn't shut it off. It is getting harder and harder to escape being advertised at all the time.