With the announcement that JobDig is launching its next market in Indianapolis on August 4th, I came across Indianacareerconnect, a job board operated by the state of Indiana. I have been tracking Minnesota’s job board, Minnesotaworks.net, for years and I have been continually baffled as to why states feel the need to offer this service to jobseekers and employers in their states. Bafflement would turn the frustration and anger if any of these state operated, publicly funded job boards actually attracted any traffic or offered a viable alternative to the for-profit boards that offer job listings on the web, but luckily they do not. In this case, I am quite happy to report yet another example of government incompetence.

But why do states feel the need to be in this business? Most state boards I’ve seen do not charge for their listings, so they are not generating any revenue. In fact, they are simply undercutting and competing against the for-profit sites and publishers in their state that could be generating additional tax revenue and job growth. The states are not filling a need that isn’t already being met by other free and paid listing sites around the web. And they certainly are not improving on the service that those other service providers are delivering. No state operated, publicly funded job board I’ve seen offers anything unique in the way that they attempt to help employers and jobseekers. On the contrary, most state operated, publicly funded job boards are pretty mediocre, run-of-the-mill type sites and many are a complete disaster.

The obvious conclusion is that these state operated, publicly funded job boards are the result of a bunch of feckless politicians and clueless government bureaucrats who think that operating these sites is actually a good use of taxpayer dollars. I have been told that Minnesota is investing $20 million into its job board – a complete and utter waste of money. This boondoggle is especially atrocious when one considers all the things the state should be doing that it currently isn’t. And once a government program is created and funded, entrenched bureaucrats will see to it that it’s never eliminated or shrunk, no matter how ineffective or counter-productive it might be.

The other likely, more cynical possibility is that state operated, publicly funded job boards offer politicians and bureaucrats something tangible to point to when asked what they are doing to create jobs and help local businesses in their states. Of course, pointing to these boards is a complete joke, but that’s never stopped a politician’s propensity to spin, especially around something as challenging as creating jobs and building a healthy, supportive environment for business.

My recommendation for Minnesota (which applies to other states as well) is to cut the investment in their state operated, publicly financed job board by $15 million and either return the money to taxpayers, or reallocate it to something that is actually going to generate a positive ROI for the state and its citizens. With the remaining $5 million, the state should evaluate and partner with a handful of talented, intelligent, knowledgeable stakeholders in the space from the private sector. Iideally, these partners would be located in the state and would include both for-profit companies and non-profit organizations who work in the jobs and job training space. A thoughtful collaboration among qualified players in the space and a prudent investment of $5 million in those companies and organizations would, without question, result in a better, more comprehensive solution, a unique offering, or at least unique aspects integrated into the overall solution(s),and a service that would truly help jobseekers and employers alike.

It seems that more and more stories are popping up about the value of multimedia, multi-channel advertising strategies. The most recent was a study by Integrated Media Measurement which found, not surprisingly given both the source and the topic being studied, that advertising on more than one media platform increased the effectiveness of the campaign (see the June 24th press release from IMMI). Being a part of a company whose value proposition is founded on that principle, these stories are always both rewarding and amusing to read. They are obviously rewarding because they further validate JobDig’s business model based on delivering recruitment advertising solutions to employers that truly incorporate print, the web (web ads plus digital media such as podcasts, email, digital newsletters, etc.), radio, and TV.

But these stories are also amusing for many reasons. First, the value of real multimedia, multi-channel, multi-platform media and advertising is so obvious. I am not talking about the fake, weak, or silly attempts that so many media companies and ad agencies have tried over the years, but the legitimate cross-platform integration that has always existed in various forms (at least for the past few decades) but is becoming more and more prevalent every day. It’s like reading about a comprehensive, multi-million dollar study that proves that exercise and smart eating habits are good for you. They have to be done and people need the hard proof, but they always run the risk of being somewhat pointless.

Secondly, the pathetic attempts that some media companies and ad agencies make in how they construct multi-channel campaigns and media offerings are a mockery. There are plenty of solid solutions that do truly qualify, but there are even more that are worthy of scorn and derision. It is these shallow, misguided, and completely flawed assemblies that justifiably generate skepticism and make it both akward and challenging for people to talk about the power of multimedia and cross-platform content and advertising delivery. It’s like the humorous scene from “In Good Company” when the CEO of the media behemoth gives his ridiculous speech to the newly acquired sports magazine about the cross-platform integration he envisions, complete with his silly handshake gesture. The charade is revealed when a befuddled Dennis Quaid asks why a reader of a Sports Illustrated type magazine would want to see content and advertising about computers and technology.

But as Dave Morgan points out in a good piece from May, the world is not only different today, but changing at an increasingly rapid pace (trite and obvious, but true nevertheless). What is missing from his list of reasons why multi-media is becoming more and more ‘real’ is the basic fact that newer media companies and ad agencies (at least the ones who ‘get it’ – a phrase I hate to use but it does, on occasion, apply) have been born into today’s world. It’s the same reason why I get my ass kicked every time I play Call of Duty 4 on XBox live – I grew up with Intellivision and the original Nintendo. New media companies today have never known anything but how things can, should, and must integrate today. JobDig, for example, was founded just 7 years ago and from day 1 we have built, integrated, sold, and distributed content and advertising across multiple platforms. We never had to adapt, transition, change, or fumble through the mis-steps that have derailed so many media companies that try to mash together disparate parts to create a cohesive whole. We’ve never known anything but what we do today and there have never been internal struggles or battles among various fiefdoms and competing platforms. We’ve certainly had our issues to overcome, like any start-up, and there are constantly new technologies and media forms to understand and integrate (social media, for example), but new media companies today inherently possess a different mind-set and perception of the world than their older counterparts. And it is that unique perspective that gives them an advantage in today’s media landscape.

Last month, a French court ruled that ebay must pay $61 million to LVMH for allowing the sale of fake luxury goods on its site. Though ebay is appealing the ruling, it’s a fascinating case that is garnering widespead attention for its implications on how business is conducted on the web. There are good arguments to be made on both sides of the issue, but I basically feel that sites like ebay should make reasonable, good-faith attempts to prohibit sales of the types of merchandise at issue in the ruling. The site should not be required to bare unreasonable costs to do so, but the auction site and others like it should be required to implement reasonable, appropriate, and sensible policies that attempt to prohibit, block, or remove from the site such transactions. I will clearly admit that I have no idea exactly what those policies, technologies, or restrictions would look like and what impact they might have on ebay’s business model, but my guess is that we’ll soon find out thanks to the French court.

In some ways, the same issues inherent in the ebay ruling are akin to those that could be applied to a media company running advertisements for its clients/advertisers. What responsibility does a media company have to screen its customers and the products or services they are advertising? It’s a tricky, complex topic with few easy answers. But despite the grayness surrounding the issue, there are, without a doubt, some easy answers that at least begin to bring a hint of clarity to the issue. Unfortunately, not all media companies choose the right side of those easy answers.

The Employment Guide continues to run scam ads, the worst of which is the postal jobs ads that run every week in every single issue of the Employment Guide nationwide, that take advantage of the most vulnerable in our society and prey on ignorance and desperation. I’ve written about this topic quite a bit over the past few years, and will continue to do so until the Guide and other newspapers stop running these heinous ads. There is absolutely no question, none whatsoever, that the Employment Guide is fully aware of how fraudulent the advertiser is in this case (it takes a 5 minute phone call to figure it out). That alone makes them guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal.

But even worse, the company running the postal ads is undoubtedly the Employment Guide’s single largest customer, spending what I’d estimate is somewhere between $500,000 – $1,000,000 per year with the Guide (50+ markets, $200-$300 per week, 52 weeks a year). That fact alone places an even higher level of responsibility on the Guide to ascertain the legitimacy of their biggest customer. The fact that they blatantly shirk this responsibility to their readers, their employees, and their legitimate advertisers (however few remain) is a testament to both how negligent the Guide is and how desperate they are for revenue. The French court would undoubtedly rule against the Employment Guide in this case. At the very least, anyone considering buying the Guide should substantially reduce their offering bid to account for the facts that not only is the Guide’s largest customer a fraudulent company, but the Employment Guide has engendered years of ill-will among its readers and customers by running these horrendous ads.

Surprising no one since all of the other bidders had dropped out, NBC, with support from Blackstone and Bain, purchased the Weather Channel and Weather.com for just under $3.5 billion. Landmark Communications, a private equity group owned by the Batten family and owners of the Weather Channel as well as a number of daily and weekly newspapers including the Employment Guide, had expected to sell the cable channel for $5 billion when they placed it up for sale in January. It’s unfortunate that they had to sell in such a dismal capital markets environment, but still a very nice return for a company that was started in 1982.

And now the real fun starts – seeing what kinds of prices their daily and weekly newspapers will fetch. Of particular interest will be the Employment Guide. As I’ve written previously, my guess is that Landmark would be happy with anything even close to $30 million.

As I have written about previously, Landmark Communications has put its media assets up for sale. In addition to The Weather Channel, the crown jewel of the group, the private equity firm owns a bunch of small and medium-sized dailies and community newspapers, shoppers and weeklies, and the Employment Guide. Lehman Brothers, who is handling the transaction, has split the assets into two groups – The Weather Channel and Weather.com in one group, and eveything else in the other.

Bids for the The Weather Channel were due a few weeks ago, and according to Multichannel.com, Time Warner has dropped out of the auction and Landmark has entered into exclusive negotiations with a consortium that includes NBC Universal, Blackstone, and Bain. Their bid reportedly included $1.8 billion in equity and $1.7 billion in debt for a total of $3.5 billion, well below the $5 billion asking price.

If the top bid for a premium asset like the Weather Channel was 30% below expectations, wait until the bids come in for Landmark’s daily and weekly newspapers. I’d be surprised if the print assets end up being sold as a block, and my guess is that the Employment Guide will fetch a price somewhere between 25-50% of the asking price. Using a very quick and crude, back-of-the-envelope calculation, I’d guess that that number is somewhere between $25-$35 million (my best-case estimate is revenue of $50-$60 million, slightly positive EBITDA (maybe) although they get favorable distribution subsidies from Dominion, the distribution company also owned by Landmark, and break-even or negative net income. I will say, however, that if the Employment Guide is struggling as badly as they appear to be in the markets where we’ve seen them, these numbers are all way too optimistic). The numbers are obviously just a guess, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few months.

As detailed in a new study by Yankelovich in association with Sequent Partners, traditional media delivers a significantly more positive impression on consumers than digital media. The study, entitled “When Advertising Works” was released yesterday and tested people’s reactions to various advertisements across 16 media channels. The traditional media, which included TV, billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio, and movie theater ads, generated a positive response from 56% of the survey respondents as compared to only 31% from digital media. 13% of survey respondents reported a negative reaction to the traditional media versus a 21% negative response to the digital media ads. As to the reasons behind the findings, J. Walker Smith, president at the Yankelovich Monitor division of Yankelovich in Atlanta explained,

“A principal reason for those results was that for ads that made an impression, consumers using traditional media were in a more positive mood and more likely to be interested in entertainment and relaxation. By comparison, consumers using digital media were more likely to be in busy moods, seeking control or solving a problem and they were more likely to be by themselves. In contrast, traditional media are often watched, listened to or read by people in groups.”

Smith further explained that consumers are not as accustomed to seeing ads in digital media and may not be as receptive yet to those advertisements. Whatever the reasons for the findings, the study should serve as a shot in the arm to everyone who naively lumps all traditional media together and/or dismisses the value that those media channels still deliver.

As the New York Times story reported, Smith is a strong advocate of multi-faceted marketing campaigns that take a multichannel, multimedia approach. He recommends that the best strategy for marketers is to combine both digital and traditional media, leveraging the best aspects and attributes of each.

I couldn’t agree more.

On occasion, I have and will continue to deviate from my vow to not write about JobDig in this blog, and today is one of those days. With a completely shameless plug, I’d like to promote two of our great advertising vehicles that target HR professionals – eTreat (our weekly digital newsletter) and JobDig’s weekly HR Podcasts.

HR eTreat - A Weekly Digital Newsletter For HR Professionals

Every week, we email a digital newsletter to an opt-in list of over 26,000 human resoucre professionals, recruiters, and hiring managers in companies all over the country. The newsletter contains phenomenal content from some of the best authors, columnists, speakers, and industry experts in the HR and recruiting field today. The open rate is well above industry standards, and the response we get from our readers is tremendously positive. We have begun selling banner ads in the newsletter for an absurdly low price of $150 per week. If you would like to advertise in this newsletter, please contact me by sending an email to diggings@jobdig.com. (By the way, if you’d like to reach jobseekers, our eTreat newsletter for jobseekers is sent every week to over 20,000 jobseekers and the banner ad pricing is also $150 per week).

HR Podcasts

Every week, we produce a podcast specifically geared towards HR professionals. Our podcasts are downloaded, on average, about 1,000 times per week, and we are ranked #2 on Apple’s iTunes in the HR category. If you would like to reach HR professionals, we can produce a high-quality audio commercial for you or you can send us a spot if you already have one. We offer a number of different ad packages for our podcasts, as detailed below. (And similar to eTreat, we also produce a weekly podcast for jobseekers that reaches a similar-sized audience).

Tags: Advertising in Podcasts, Advertising in Newsletters, Advertising in Digital Newsletters, How to Reach Human Resource Professionals, How to Reach HR People, Advertising to HR, Marketing to HR, Alternative Advertising, Newsletters For HR, Podcasts for HR

JobDig launched in Amarillo, Texas this week, with our first print edition hitting the streets on Monday morning.

Tags: Texas, JobDig, Multimedia Recruitment Advertising, Multi-channel recruitemtn advertising, Free Weekly Jobs Papers, Who Will Buy The Employment Guide?

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about Craigslist’s theoretical valuation, I have a few other points to make regarding the classified behemoth.

First of all (and I am fully aware of how old, tired, and overplayed this comment will be), the site remains one of the great aesthetic abominations on the web today. I know this specific critique of Craigslist has been beaten to death, but every time I go to the site, I am re-amazed at how atrocious it is. It’s just awful, and I actually think it is getting worse. And because of the fact that the design is intentionally horrific, it should stand as a massively offensive affront to everyone who even touches, however remotely, the space(s) that Craigslist occupies. It’s just inexcusable.

The site is also a technological travesty. I’ll admit (happily) that I don’t use the site a ton, and this critique will be superficial at best, but how can a company like Craigslist not have a search box on its homepage? How can you start a new blog and not deliver an RSS feed for it? And it wasn’t until recently that the site finally appears to have at least made an attempt to segregate personals from job opportunities, but the job listings are still a mess.

And lastly, in virtually every article I’ve read in the past 5 years about the death of the daily newspaper industry, Craigslist is the almost always the only company credited for having ripped classifieds away from the dailies. It happened again recently in one of the best articles yet on the demise of the dailies (Out Of Print, March 31st, New Yorker). Author Eric Alterman, refuting a Guardian article entitled ‘Not Dead Yet,’ states, “Perhaps not, but trends in circulation and advertising – the rise of the internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising – have created a palpable sense of doom.”

Nearly every article on the topic cites Craigslist in similar fashion and no doubt, the classified site has done much to fundamentally transform the classified business on the web. I’d even say they delivered some crushing body blows to the newspapers. But rather than solely grabbing market share from the dailies, Craigslist has dramatically expanded the classified market by offering free classifieds in most of its cities. The vast majority of listings on Craigslist today were not past advertisers in the dailies. Nor have the dailies ever run ‘erotic services’ ads or personals, at least as far as I know (though that could change any day now given how desperate they are for revenue).

The real damage to the dailies’ classified business has come from the thousands of punches delivered by sites like Monster, Yahoo, Google, and the 50,000 other job boards that have come online (including Craigslist and JobDig and LinkUp). Somewhat less so, but important nevertheless, has been the pain inflicted by the free weekly jobs newspapers (like JobDig, the Employment Guide, JobFinderUSA, and Job News, for example) that are published in metro markets around the country.

Make no mistake, and as I stated unequivocally yesterday, Craigslist is an awesome web site that delivers incredible value to its users. It also stands as one of the true ‘paradigm-shifting’ sites on the web today. And they are clearly one of a handful of 800-pound gorillas stomping around the classified playing field. But Craigslist is still ugly, it is still lacking technologically, and it is not the daily killer that everyone credits the site for being.

Tags: Craigslist, Online Classifieds, Daily Newspapers, Who Killed The Dailies, Free Jobs Weeklies, Free Jobs Newspapers, The Employment Guide, JobDig, LinkUp, JobFiderUSA, Job News, Monster, Yahoo, Google, New Yorker, Out Of Print

Silicon Alley Insider Henry Blodget recently wrote a post that Craigslist was worth $5 billion. It’s an interesting question to consider what Craigslist might be worth, and Blodget runs through what appears to be a decent, back-of-the-envelope type analysis. But in the end, the valuation of $5B is overstated and the entire exercise is just as pointless as Kyle and his South Park buddies handing the Canadian government official a check backed in the currency of theoretical internet dollars to end his country’s strike.

Craigslist is basically run as a non-profit, its growth and sustainability are nearly entirely attributable to the fact that it allows free listings, and its business model depends upon those millions of free listings to generate the type of traffic the site enjoys. Blodget’s costs are underestimated, as are his estimates of customer defections, while his multiples and revenue projections are extremely high (since when is 10x revenue a very conservative multiple?). More importantly, Blodget wildly underestimates the deafening uproar that would ensue once the concept of fully monetizing the site was introduced. What happened recently to Facebook serves as a small hint of how ferocious online communities can be, and my guess is that Craigslist’s community of users is among the most zealous. The change that Blodget proposes would cause rapid and massive revolt and the site would quickly become a hollow, abandoned shell of what it is today.

Craigslist is an incredible phenomena. It’s growth and traffic numbers are staggering and the site clearly delivers enormous value to its users. And while Craigslist possesses substantial value, it’s not worth $5 billion by any stretch of the imagination.

As an aside, the South Park episode, ‘Canada on Strike,’ contains one of the all-time great South Park scenes, certainly in the top 10. As Canada goes on strike (the episode is a complete mockery of the writers’ strike), Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Butters turn to the web to raise the funds necessary to end the impasse. Butters’ YouTube video becomes a hit, and they go to the internet office to collect their money. Sitting in the lobby waiting to also collect their long-awaited windfall are the Star Wars kid, Chocolate Rain, sneezing panda, laughing baby, Ninja Afro, the Tron guy, and the ‘leave Britney alone’ freak. After all these YouTube stars kill one another off, Kyle finally collects his payment in ‘theoretical dollars.’ It’s yet another hysterical and brilliant South Park commentary.

Tags: Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget, Craigslist, What Is Craigslist Worth, Online Classifieds Site. Free Classifieds, Online Communities, Passionate Online Communities, South Park, Canada On Strike, Theoretical Internet Dollars, Star Wars Kid, Chocolate Rain, Laughing Baby, Sneezing Panda, Ninja Afro, Tron, Leave Britney Alone, Britney Spears, Piercing Satire, The Writers’ Strike