[warwick]

If that's going to work, they're going to have to charge advertisers sufficiently high rates. Online advertising rates are a joke compared to print ad rates.

It seems absurd to me that newspapers are willing to ask individual consumers to pay for online distribution, but aren't willing to have their online ads department use the phrase "Yes, you can put your ads on some random blog for almost nothing, but we're the New York Times. We have a premium audience, and advertising with us goes for premium rates."

[btipling]

I definitely agree that big publishers need to charge more for views for the ads. I don't think a site like the nytimes.com needs to go for cheap or even worry about pay per click. Just charge a bucketload for the views. It's the New York Times.

[ojbyrne]

Indeed. If they had put the effort into getting premium rates from advertisers starting the day they went online, they'd be there now. Instead recent experimentation with new insterstitial formats suggests its just beginning.