Grady Rose's president sits down with PointRoll's Andy Ellenthal and USAToday.com's Lorraine Ross to talk about PointRoll's new digital Free Standing Insert.

This past October, PointRoll launched "PaperBoy," a new rich media application that acts as a digital Free Standing Insert (FSI). Since PointRoll was purchased by Gannett in June of 2005, I invited Andy Ellenthal, senior vice president of global sales for PointRoll, and Lorraine Ross, vice president of advertising sales for USAToday.com, the biggest Gannett property, to chat with me about PaperBoy's cross-channel capabilities and how it has been embraced in the marketplace.

For the record, neither PointRoll nor USAToday.com are clients of Grady Rose Consulting.

Larry Everling: Andy, let's start with you. When did PointRoll first start developing the PaperBoy product? How long was it between initial concept and implementation?

Andy Ellenthal: We started talking with clients about the idea of delivering a local interactive circular through an online ad unit back in the first quarter of 2004. And then we approached our web shopping partner, ShopLocal, in Q2. They liked the idea as well. From there, it took a little over a year for development on our end, and another three to five months for integration with ShopLocal's database.

Everling: Then the next question is why? Can you please talk about the business rationale for creating PaperBoy?

Ellenthal: We're very excited about the opportunity for local advertising online, especially for national marketers looking for a local targeting solution. In fact, I think Local display will be the Search of 2006. We've done some one-off PointRoll local circulars over the past few years, but not on an ongoing basis. The big challenge we saw marketers facing, particularly retailers, was how to capitalize on the shift of readership from print to online. But the need to drive foot traffic and sales, promoting that "drive to stores" behavior, always needs to be reinforced with readers. So when we started to demonstrate a credible means for online marketing to push to physical channels, in each presentation, the retailers' ears perked up, and they said, "If you can do that, we'll be there."

Everling: Lorraine, what's your take on PaperBoy?

Lorraine Ross: The key benefits I see are:

• PaperBoy enables "virtual" window shopping; the ability for an end-user to shop within the ad unit, and the sale can be completed and tracked regardless of channel, at the store, online or over the phone.
• Online circulars create offer-message frequency, while reducing cost vs. the calculated breakage of print circulars.
• Now we're calling on the FSI budget holders who are platform agnostic. It means engaging in a quantifiable online reach strategy, and the print guys get it. 

Ellenthal: That's a great point. Yes, it's localized advertiser content pursued on a national level. However, for retailers, you typically have offline promotional channels, local radio, newspaper or catalogs pushing to the physical stores while online marketing predominantly promotes e-commerce. But we've made it easy for the print teams to take the lead on selling an online execution internally.

Everling: Let's stay on that topic. Lorraine, for USAToday.com and the new Gannett Online Network you announced at the iMedia Brand Summit in September, what opportunities does PaperBoy open up?

Ross: It's a huge catalyst. PaperBoy is a digital product that can be applied to multiple marketing strategies, which makes the cross-channel value proposition that much more intuitive. From a sales perspective, it's opening up category extensions for us, from print to online. As a result, it's making those budgets accessible.

Ellenthal: The early feedback is really refreshing. We're seeing tremendous willingness to test and then adopt. And the test buys are far bigger than your typical toe-in-the-water online test. Obviously, securing more test dollars is not the goal. But the print-based buyers, who tend to be higher up, are actually gravitating to PaperBoy more than the digital media buyers. To Lorraine's point, it provides the bridge between print and digital to speak in the same language. We're seeing retailers actively looking for a solution, and they can relate to PaperBoy as a solution for their marketing challenges.

Everling: Is it just household name retailers at this point? What about other FSI marketers like Consumer Packed Goods? The need for secure online coupon functionality appears to be a requirement that CPGs demand in order to pursue online advertising for both brand and sales impact. 

Ellenthal: We decided to focus the launch on retailers, but we are absolutely counting on PaperBoy to be a big hit for the CPGs. For coupon applications, we have partnered with the top e-coupon companies, typically piggybacking on the CPG's relationship with its preferred provider. But the key for migrating print FSI marketers, either retailers or CPGs, is to leverage online tools that enable them to create campaigns dynamically for week in/week out promotions -- and PaperBoy is ideally suited to deliver that solution.

Ross: Automotive fits perfectly into the PaperBoy offering -- it streamlines the lead delivery at the dealer level from broader national and regional executions online. Really, any marketer with time-sensitive promotions tied to geographical distribution, such as pharmaceutical, wireless, restaurant chains, household goods, to name some other categories, will find benefit in deploying PaperBoy.

Everling: Fair enough. One last question: how high are the expectations for PaperBoy at PointRoll and Gannett?

Ellenthal: I've been involved in a lot of product launches in this space, and I have never seen this level of enthusiasm and almost instantaneous adoption of the concept. We've already signed on a few big-name retailers, which we can't mention just yet, because they recognize the value of the interplay within the PaperBoy unit. The elements of merchandising; presenting product in a very entertaining way, move far beyond the narrow focus of instant post-click. The product is different and new, and traditional media people are accepting it immediately.

Ross: We're equally, if not more optimistic about the prospects for PaperBoy. It's an advertising solution that not only appeals to our clients that have already committed to the online medium, but more importantly, to those marketers which haven't. And the latter group represents great growth potential for our new online network that we're looking to harvest via existing relationships involving our broadcast and print divisions.

Everling: Thank you both for your time, and good luck with PaperBoy.

Larry Everling is recognized as an industry leader for driving progressive brand advancement and marketing ROI results in the online medium. Working with leading brands such as Nextel, Novartis, CareerBuilder, IBM, Sheraton Hotels, BMW and UPS, he possesses the rare combination background of 10 years of online expertise, plus client side and agency traditional campaign experience. In May 2003, Everling started Grady Rose Consulting, and has provided strategic online marketing guidance for: Forbes.com, The Washington Post, AOL/Netscape and jaffe, LLC.