Black Friday Ads site offers data of questionable origin — but in an innovative way
You’re familiar with ‘Black Friday,’ right? The Friday after Thansgiving? Traditionally, one of the biggest shopping days of the year?
It’s the reason our Thursday and Friday newspapers are so huge: They’re stuffed full of ads and sales inserts for retailers who want to attract customers.
They can put their money into online and television. But when it’s make-or-break time for retailers, you see who they turn to: newspapers.
Lucky for us.
There’s a web site out there that attempts to give shoppers an early heads-up on Black Friday shopping ads: It’s called — not surprisingly — Black Friday Ads 2007.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone this site. In fact, I’m pretty sure The Virginian-Pilot’s ethics policy specifically prohibits me from giving advertising information to folks outside the building. I’m sure you have a similar policy at your paper.
And our general operating methods — our work habits — don’t really put me in a position to know much about our ads in advance, anyhow. I don’t know what ads are running, when they’re running or what they’ll look like.
I’m not sure this site is a good thing. But it could be useful to know about it. And there may be a thing or two we can learn about it.
Black Friday Ads posts only advertisements that pertain to post-Thanksgiving weekend shopping specials. They’re mostly ads for major retailers: Wal-Mart, Target, K-mart, Linens N Things, Office Max, etc.
News about each new ad is posted in blog format, with links leading to specific data from the ad. Or, in some cases, to a PDF copy of the ad.
It appears that most of these ads are reader-submitted. In one entry, the owner writes:
If you or someone you know have access to a Black Friday advertisement, please submit it through our Submit an Advertisement page. You can be compensated for your efforts.
In another entry:
Our apologies that the last couple pages are blurry, the anonymous submitter told us that they decided to take pictures instead of scan the last pages; we hope to get better copies of those last couple pages soon.
And that’s part of what’s bugging me. I don’t know where the scans and photos are coming from. But I would imagine that newspapers around the country already have Thanksgiving sales inserts in their warehouses, packed on skids, ready to be inserted two weeks from now.
I’m wondering how many of these submissions to Black Friday Ads are coming from folks who work at newspapers. And that thought bothers me.
But then I scroll down a little more and I read this entry:
We have developed a stripped down version of Black Friday Ads for mobile devices. If you have a cell phone or handheld device that can get online, you can view and search Black Friday deals and edit your shopping list directly from your mobile device. This may prove to be especially useful for many people on Black Friday.
You can access Black Friday Ads Mobile at http://m.bfads.net from your mobile device.
Features:
- View stores item lists, filter by category and Early Bird items.
- Access the 2003-2006 archived lists
- Search for items
- View and edit your shopping list
- Mark items on your shopping list as purchased.If you give it a spin and have any comments for us, please let us know!
Well, damn. Now, that’s utility. These guys know how popular shopping on that day can be. So they’ve set up a way to peruse ads all day Friday from your iPhone or Blackberry.
The ability to create shopping lists, compare prices of items on your lists between stores and then check them off when you buy them — that’s damn near genius.
And it’s the kind of thing we — newspapers — ought to be thinking of.
Perhaps someone in our industry ought to track this guy down and offer him a job.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Charles. Isn’t the reprinting of these types of inserts BEFORE publication in some way illegal? I’d think the advertisers themselves would be pissed. You’d think they’d be tracking this guy down just to shut him down.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Yeah, I would think this violates copyright, at the very least.
.
First, though, you gotta catch ‘em. And the site appears to be anonymous. It’d take resources to track these guys down.
.
Still, they sure have their reader-utility tools well-built. You gotta admire that.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
So, tell me what’s so wrong about “Black Friday” websites?
[OK, so someone at a newspaper signed some non-disclosure paperwork; but who the hell really cares?]
Who is being injured by these actions?
The so-called “leak” occurs somewhere between the retailer and one or more newspaper printing facilities. So why does the retailer’s legal team threaten the website owner, yet NOT go after the “leaker”?
The web-publishers of this give-away material are displaying absolutely nothing covered by copyright law.
BOTTOM LINE: The “offended” retailer draws many more shoppers into their store to buy a few “loss leader” items, usually along with many more NON-discounted products. [Note: These bargain items are usually limited to 20-30 per store, along with a no-raincheck policy, so the retailer really loses nothing!]
Isn’t that the whole idea behind retailers’ having Black Friday prices in the first place? For one short moment, the average consumer gets a SMALL break from the usual 100-200% markup policy!
Of course in this sick world, populated with too many under-employed pettifoggers, anyone can sue anyone… Duh!