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Mediasmith Anvil |
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Volume 5, Issue 6 October 25, 2006 |
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Audience
Development 2.0 |
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By
Bob
Heyman "Eyeballs
are back." The New York Times declared it so a few months ago. And who
can deny it? Once again web properties can be sold based upon size of audience.
And once again, web publishers are sold out of inventory. Gone are the CPA
deals that were rife when inventory was unsold. Back in
the day of the internet bubble, we pioneered the concept of audience
development for web properties. In an era when IPO and merger valuations were
driven by how many eyeballs a site had, this was a good business. While the
phrase had long been attached to increasing theater attendance and later for
TV show promotion, it was a new and useful concept for internet media. When
the bubble burst, so too did the vogue for audience development. Why? Sites
had more inventory than they could sell. And there was no need to pay for
more audience if they could not monetize it. And the day when you could be
acquired just because of the size of your audience was long gone.
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Mediasmith Morsel Females
Dominate
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The
time has now come again for audience development. Web media properties have
the problem again of inventory shortage. Unlike traditional print
publications, where increased readership yields higher page rates but does
not increase inventory, on the web, more visitors does mean more inventory.
Once again, web properties need to rapidly grow audience size to either meet
projections, to be able to implement an ad sales model, to seize market share
or just to meet advertiser demand. As the
tide rises again, there is an arbitrage available between the cost of
acquisition and the value of the user/reader (i.e., audience). As one
Mediasmith client stated back in the heyday, "If you can buy page views
cheaper than I can sell page views, I can make money on the difference." The
tools of internet audience development have been augmented since the bubble.
In addition to the usual tools of direct email, search marketing, contests
and promotions, banner ads and word of web, there are now blogs, social
networks, peer to peer, RSS feeds and many others. These Web 2.0 tools help
facilitate the re-invention of audience development as Audience Development
2.0. |
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Mediasmith Morsel |
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It's
important not to neglect the old mainstays, search engine optimization and
search engine marketing. Making sure the site is well listed and easy to be
found on search engines is still job one. Direct email, banner ads, contests
and promotions all still are important. Banner ads (which have been touted as
dead many times), other IMUs and rich media should not be discounted as great
vehicles for this technique. After all, they give the opportunity to tell a
story, especially with expandable banners and video units that give the
reader a clear reason as to why to try out the site advertised. So are
techniques of Audience Development 2.0 just new versions of old favorites?
"Old wine in new bottles," as the saying goes? Surely search marketing
has been transformed, mostly by the success of Google. Spend on search now
rivals spend on banners. Direct email's efficacy has declined, now that spam
has degraded the medium. Word of web has come into its own with more
measurability. Chat and listservs are now dressed up and on steroids as blogs
and wikis. Social networking technologies exponentially expand the reach that
could be achieved back in the day. Video sharing is new, though long
expected. Now, a company might build audience and loyalty by having an open
API (like Amazon), by disseminating podcasts and RSS feeds, by targeting
target-rich peer-to-peer audiences or by propagating messages on the red-hot
video upload sites. |
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Mediasmith Morsel |
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The entire trend to
user-generated content is a boon to audience development as such content
provides editorial product, draws visitors and deepens engagement. All of
these can result in greater audience potential for the site promotion. Five years ago, when
the internet tide washed out, we were just beginning to implement
segmentation and targeting techniques; the vision that had been put forth by
such writers as Regis McKenna and Peppers & Rogers were about to be
realized. Instead, many of these ideas got implemented in the form of bloated
CRM systems that are more often likely to automate annoyance than to generate
audience. Today, we have far more
advanced analytic Web 2.0 tools that enable rapid and granular segmentation
and targeting. In Audience Development 2.0 we can formulate strategies and
tactics for not only growing audience size, but also to migrate users up the
food chain from being aware to being engaged, and on to loyalty and evangelism,
thereby creating a Virtuous Cycle applicable to both web publishers and
brands. A version of this article originally appeared in iMediaconnection.com. |
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Contact Mediasmith, Inc. |
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You are receiving this newsletter from Mediasmith as part of our
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