Scarcity: an attribute of offline ad selling that we forgot when selling ad-space online

Dave Chase leaves us his approach on declining local media businesses:

1 – Sales teams more oriented to account management than to new customers´acquisition.

2 – Lack of competence to reach advertisers that are not buying ad space. Lack of capacity to manage scalable sales strategies (tele-sales).

3 – Not having capacity to explain ROI measurements to potential advertisers.

4 – The atempt to sale many small ad placements instead of a few big placements.

5 – The fact that you sell advertising and the advertiser rarely see his own ads in the site.

creating scarcity by only allowing a certain number of advertisers in a particular section

This post entry is an interesting explanation.  I agree in all points while I would put some arguments in a different way. His most powerful reason, and the one is making ad-space a kind of commodity that we sell by tons is that lack of scarcity. As traffic grows, ad-space is solds  in tons of millions and we are losing a volume reference helping us much to understand what we are paying for (when buyin advertising).

Selling sections, or placements, by days, sections or sponsorhips elliminating rotating banners in most of our media, not only would create that sense of urgency and scarcity to appear but would only simplify our ad-selling process making it cheaper.