At NextNewsNet/SunValleyOnline, I joke that our motto is “we make mistakes faster than anyone else…” (just don’t repeat them). While we are also trying to be innovators on the production side, I’m 100% convinced that addressing revenue will be the only way to the promised land.

One example relates to the obstacle mentioned above around Measurement. We just completed a research project that fit into a bootstrapped startup’s budget. What we believe is that local sites have done a horrendous job of quantifying the value of their audience to advertisers (e.g., we now can tell our advertisers that there $x of opportunity in the next 12 months in their category just amongst our users). Next week will be critical for us as we take that to advertisers and see how that affects their buying behavior. My gut tells me that they’ll find it compelling but if we’re wrong, we’ll course correct as needed.

A word about AdSense and mass ad networks. I have great respect for what Google has built but there’s no way I’d put that stuff on our sites. The biggest reason is money. Why would I put something up where I get $0.50-$1.00 CPMs when I’m successfully selling at $35-40 CPMs (actually higher on our e-newsletters). Secondly, I think it hurts the site aesthetic. We don’t want to be like most overly cluttered local news sites. We are selling to authentic, local businesses and having the text dense or schlocky ads that are on most ad networks hurts our ability to sell $40 CPMs. To me, it’s criminal that local sites are undervaluing their audiences by taking the low-ball CPMs.