Despite the lukewarm reviews (see below), Wired's IPad app appears to be doing well:

Wired magazine sold 24,000 copies of its $4.99 app in the first 24 hours of its release, according to a tweet by John Abel, the mag’s NY bureau chief. With the 70 percent revenue split, that means that Conde Nast took away $83,832. It helps that Wired’s tech audience tends to be early adopters, so it remains to be seen if other Conde Nast titles will enjoy that same immediate sales jump.

Not surprising, the Wired app has already shot up to number one among the paid apps, way ahead of Vanity Fair, whose $4.99 app was released two weeks ago and is at number 90. The Wired app number is impressive, especially since Conde Nast has already counted about 63,000 paid app downloads across both the iPhone and iPad since November, all of which go toward its total circ, under the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The publisher is planning a few additions to drive paid downloads further.  For example, unlike Conde Nast’s GQ app, there’s no automatic subscription notice for the Wired app yet, but execs told paidContent earlier this week that this feature is coming soon.

From paidcontent.org. Full story here

From today's New York Times comes this story of how newspaper web sites are having trouble attracting larger brand advertisers consistently.The reason boils down to two problems we have spoken about on this blog many times - newspaper sites are too expensive and the ability to target is poor.

Full story here.

Part of the story:

It was a good day for newspaper Web sites when Mercedes-Benz USA introduced its updated E-Class cars this summer. Mercedes bought out the ad space on the home pages of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and had those sites create special 3-D ads for them, at an estimated cost of $100,000 a site.

The days after were not as good. While Mercedes was happy with the newspaper sites’ performance, it shifted money to cheaper, more tightly aimed ads bought through networks, which bundle ad space from many Web sites.

When Mercedes advertises its more basic models next year, it will largely avoid newspaper Web sites and rely on networks. That lets Mercedes “be very targeted and efficient with our dollars,” said Beth Lange, digital media specialist for Mercedes-Benz USA.

But that also explains why newspaper sites are not holding on to ad dollars, even while overall Internet advertising is creeping back. Newspaper sites are the patent-leather stilettos of the online world: they get used for special occasions, but other shoes get much more daily wear. The beneficiaries of this behavior are networks and exchanges like Advertising.com from AOL and DoubleClick Ad Exchange from Google, which dominate the buying and selling of extra space.

 From MediaPost. 

An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40% of all active U.S. Internet users, according to the Newspaper Association of America, citing research performed by Nielsen Online.

This is the most unique visitors recorded since the NAA and Nielsen began tracking newspaper Web site audiences in 2004; the previous record was 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.

Although year-over-year comparisons are difficult because of a big increase in Nielsen's panel size in June, the active-reach figure appears to be remaining stable, as newspaper Web sites have hovered around 40% for the last two years. 

Full story here.

Late this afternoon I opened the latest "Growing Audience" alert from the Newspaper Association of America. I got excited when I saw the title to a posting on the NAA blog: "E-alert: Innovation Highlights from the Poynter McCormick Big Ideas Conference"

Any time there is something that mentions newspapers, magazines and a big idea, I have high hopes. Here at Mediabids, we believe that the time is perfect for big ideas which address some of the difficulties being faced by newspapers and magazines around the country. We constantly speak to publications and advertisers about our big idea - how to sell more print ads using an online marketplace -  so we are big idea people. We embrace big ideas.

I suppose calling a conference the "Poynter McCormick somewhat interesting and marginally relevant idea conference" isn't really that compelling but it would have been more accurate.

There are a few clever ideas but I expected more (a lot more) given the current state of the print industry and the projections for the future.

Here are a few of the allegedly "big ideas:"

7 to 7 Breaking News Blog -- The Providence Journal hosts a breaking news blog Monday through Friday with ads and creates a blog stylebook, best practices for linking, and a sets protocol for fast breaking news.

Reader Interactivity in Exactly Six Words -- The Times Union asked readers to submit what they thought was best about their region in exactly six words.

Today in Brevard -- Florida Today created a half-hour, live streamed daily newscast broadcast on floridatoday.com.

Buzz Style -- The Sun/Inland Valley Daily Tribune creates a no-nonsense news presentation for need-to-know news consumers.

Monday, Monday* -- How the Anniston Star set about to create a more lively Monday paper, jumpStart, and the lessons learned along the way.

Here is the only one I could find that had anything to do with sales:

Sales Force of the Future -- Morris Communications is mobilizing around strategic innovation with one focus around creating a best-in-class multimedia sales force.

This can't be the sum total of big ideas in the print industry, can it? Maybe it is just because we are focused on sales but isn't that what matters most right now? Wouldn't you think that innovative approaches to selling print inventory would be the most important thing to all the smart people in the print industry who were at this conference? I was disappointed at the almost complete lack of attention to the revenue stream. Isn't that what an organization like the NAA should be most worried about right now? Do you think that at some point one of the attendees at this conference said to another attendee: "these sure are some neat ideas, hope we can stay in business long enough to try them out."

Here are a couple good (non-revenue generating) ideas: 

The Reporter's Notebook* -- The Twin Cities Daily Planet encourages the audience to participate in the news gathering process by posting upcoming story outlines to their online Reporter's Notebook inciting readers to comment, upload documents and contribute to the process before publishing.

Curate Your Community -- The St.Louis Post-Dispatch created more than 300 microlocal news sites.