The Baltimore Beat experiments with pay-what-you-can ads

The newspaper and nonprofit news site Baltimore Beat is rolling out pay-what-you-can ads.

“We hope this is a way that small businesses can feature themselves in the paper, keeping their services at the front of readers’ minds,” the Beat wrote in an announcement.

The Beat, launched after the city’s alt-weekly closed in 2017 and relaunched as a Black-led outlet in 2022, does not have a paywall, unlike cross-city competitors like The Baltimore Banner and Baltimore Sun. The nonprofit distributes 20,000 free print copies twice a month and relies on donations large and small, as well as advertising and other revenue.

Sites like Craigslist took a big bite out of the classified ad market two decades ago, and today big tech companies like Google and Facebook tend to dominate local ad budgets. But the Beat believes that with evidence and anecdata that Google Search is getting worse and user dissatisfaction with algorithms on the rise, local small businesses might be ready to try something different. Especially if it doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg.

“In the past, news outlets earned money through classified ads and other ads. The internet and social media made that irrelevant. Many business owners decided that they could use Facebook or Twitter or Instagram to do their own advertising,” editor-in-chief Lisa Snowden wrote on LinkedIn.

“I think now is the time to revisit [classified] ads, especially when it comes to hyper local journalism,” Snowden continued. “It’s much harder these days to use Google to find reliable information and algorithms beyond their control mean many might not even see the content being offered by small businesses. Moreover, more people want to shop locally and put their hard-earned money into businesses they can trust.”

The Beat suggests mom-and-pop shops pay $50 per ad while brick-and-mortar stores pay $150 and “big investors” pay $300.

The announcement is here.