Screw the “Pretty”, It’s about the $$$. Well done Jamaica Gleaner

So like the Jamaica Observer, the Jamaica Gleaner has pretty much tweaked a premium WordPress template to relaunch a new look website that’s more social and ad friendly. The Jamaica Gleaner launched their new look website this evening. Funny when The Observer launched theirs we said wow, to the Gleaner website we managed… ahmm oookkk.

But my fellow tech entrepreneur Colin Scott puts his own candid spin on it in an email discussion this evening and I had to share it. In essence, who needs the “pretty” when you’re making money. “Ok, Ok So we don’t like it but we are still forgetting the #1 rule…. “They DONT CARE IF YOU LIKE IT” ..its a revenue decision.So lets critique it from a revenue perspective.

“One thing I do see is less ad space – however in this case like the Wall Street Journal (now delivering 2 Ad units on most pages), less is more. Switching to 728×90 and 300×250 ad sizes will allow them to charge upwards of USD$280 weekly EACH for up to 1 of 5 rotating spots. With 5 ad blocks on each page and over 20 targetable pages that will undoubtedly lead to an increase in revenue. Let’s do the math: $280 x 5 spots x 5 adblocks x 20 Targeted Pages = $140K weekly.

Worse as they steal those “same size ads” from the Observer.

Whats more noticeable is that there are no more Kontera ads, no more Adsense Link units and they have abandoned the 160×600 Adsense block for a paltry 120×240 that looks so lost on the page. More importantly though is that they are using Google Ad Manager to deliver the ads, this means that they can diversify ad space sales based on demographics, number of impressions, number of clicks and everything that we REAL techies analyze. This is a plus and means that they can push ad sales with people in Timbuktu using Adwords – this will be a whole new ball game.

So my 2 cents – well done – Gleaner its about time…..On the “pretty looks” side though the core business of delivering content has been improved using this type of blog technology allowing for more than just headlines on the home page… more written content can be seen.”

What’s your two cents ?