The good news is that NZHerald is loading super quickly today. The not so good news for APN is that they are using Google ads instead of more lucrative display ads.
I’d be really interested whether they are generating real revenue out of those Google ads, but I suspect not after looking at the advertisers. Qantas is present, but the rest of the ads I saw are very small players – and they may be shocked by their increase in traffic and fees.
This has to be a temporary thing while APN fixes the ad server issue. I can’t find another decently sized newspaper that uses Google ads exclusively – not even Google News.
Smart nimble advertisers will use this as a quick way to get cheap exposure in the NZHerald. The threat to incumbents is that this will kick-start Google ads in New Zealand… Or is this sign of an incipient partnership with APN? now that would really throw the market..
Lance Wiggs 