Paul Douglas's New Forecast

On a laptop computer, Douglas runs through a demonstration version of NoozMe. Suppose the user is a woman named Janet, who lives in Maple Grove. Suppose the content providers for her NoozMe service include KARE, NBC, and some citizen journalists who upload video of high school sports or Maple Grove city council meetings. The opt-in model for content and advertising needn’t be limited to straight news, so let’s also add Comedy Central to pick up The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Selecting from a list of general categories or a lineup of current, individual stories, Janet can tailor a newscast to her interests. She might cherry-pick stories for an individual broadcast. But she also could set up a standard template: “Feed me all local and national political stories; anything about gasoline prices; the top nightly CBS news story from Katie Couric, because I like Katie; two minutes of weather; something from The Daily Show; and any game highlights for the Maple Grove High School girls’ soccer team.”

"We think the experience of the Internet is that people like free, people expect free, and people seem willing to put up with some level of advertising."

But before Janet can run her free custom newscast, she must select a certain number of local or national commercials that will appear among the news stories she chooses. Again, she can pick from categories or among individual advertisers. Maybe she’s in the market for a new car or a new computer. Maybe she’ll watch any ad for Macy’s, or for shoes. Maybe she wants to hear from any Italian restaurant within a 10-mile radius of her zip code. If a particular commercial really grabs her, she can pause her broadcast and click for more information from the advertiser—a menu and driving directions to the Italian restaurant, for instance.

NoozMe’s revenue model most likely will resemble pay-per-click: Advertisers wouldn’t pay (or wouldn’t pay much) simply to be listed as options but only when their commercials were selected by NoozMe viewers. Douglas suggests that this would open the door to many small and local businesses that can’t afford broadcast-TV ad rates.

“We think the experience of the Internet is that people like free, people expect free, and people seem willing to put up with some level of advertising,” he says. “Our theory is that if you give people what they want for ads, you’re going to have much greater interest from local advertisers because they’ll be able to focus their messages in a way that hasn’t been possible until now.”