Chris Pirillo has posted an e-mail he received from a newspaper after he posted an article about Bug Me Not which is a site/tool to get around those annoying newspaper splash pages that either want you to sign up for an account to access the newspaper or (and worse IMO), simply ask you for demographic information like your age and zip code when you visit the site.
Ed Leighton-Dick of Gazette Communications wrote to Pirillo to complain that,
Advertisers go where they can get the most “bang” for their buck, and if we can provide a little aggregate information for them through registration to allow them to target their advertising, they will advertise with us. Many advertisers will not advertise with a newspaper site without that information anymore, and without the advertising, the only option is to erect subscription gates. (And for the record, I know of no newspaper companies who still sell e-mail lists to third parties nor any who send e-mails without permissions. That undermines the credibility we’re trying to maintain.)
Leighton-Dick doesn’t come out and say it, but he seems to think that the aggregated demographic data his newspaper has from such registrations is accurate. But does anybody really fill out this stuff truthfully? I usually register as an 80 year old woman from New York.
I can’t believe that a potential advertiser would accept this data as accurate. The newspapers I’ve dealt with for online advertising usually have much better sources of demographics — the best have hired outside firms to do formal random surveys to determine how widely read the web site is in the surround area and then report on specific demographics of those who are, say, frequent vs. infrequent visitors.