Business Insider’s Blodget responds to Wolff

Business Insider editor in chief Henry Blodget wrote a response Monday to USA Today columnist Michael Wolff, who wrote about the business news site.

Blodget writes, “At Business Insider, our goal is to create value for our readers and clients, not to protect a legacy business, so we charge native digital prices. We also encourage clients to use our “private exchange” to target their advertising in real time, which offers an even more efficient buying option. And we create custom native advertising solutions for our major clients, allowing them to reach our readers — the next generation of business leaders — more effectively and efficiently than they can on other professional news sites. Our clients see such value in our solutions, in fact, that, in contrast to USA Today’s concern, the ad revenue we are generating per reader is actually rising.

“In short, the pressure on ad prices at traditional news organizations is good news for our clients and us. We are also much better at serving digital readers than many traditional news organizations, so we can thrive on these “digital dimes. We also have a successful subscription business, which we and our members are very excited about (which USA Today did not mention).

“So, we agree with USA Today about the trend of declining digital ad prices at traditional news sites. For the sake of us and our clients, we hope this trend continues.”