When you move away from the ad-adjacency model,...

“When you move away from the ad-adjacency model, however, things get a lot more interesting and exciting.”

Felix Salmon, after reading Columbia Journalism Review’s 143-page report, “The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism.”

Salmon is right. For too long, editorial enterprises online have been dominated by an outmoded business model that has stunted the growth of the very products they are designed to support.

Banner ads are a crutch, a relic of a different medium. They can be profitable for some, but they are largely the domain of traffic giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Craiglist, AOL and Yahoo!

It’s time to move on.

Media companies have been beat at their own game. These internet and social media companies have created economies of scale that newspapers and magazines could never fathom decades ago and can never hope to rival.

This leaves 3 options to media companies who are trying to turn a profit online:

1) Try and leverage a parasitic relationship with the big boys a la Huffington Post. Just know you are going to have to play by their rules (SEO, link baiting, etc.) and the odds are against you.

2) Make content your loss leader. What you’re bringing them in the door for, well, that’s anyone’s guess.

3) Depart from the codified world of standard ad sizes. Create unique advertising opportunities based not solely in content, but in design and reader experience. Create a compelling, unique experience online (identifying what that is is basically the purpose of this tumblr) and not only will readers flock, advertisers will, too.

And what’s the great thing? You don’t have to choose just one! Mix and match.