New Advertising Models
Posted on July 18, 2006
Filed Under Insights, Advertising/Marketing |
Over at TechCrunch a pattern is emerging. Sites with big visitor numbers (YouTube serves 100 million videos a day) and no real revenue model.
Rafat Ali over at PaidContent is today making the point that Web 2.0 bubble stories are already beginning to appear.
I’m not so convinced but the pattern that’s emerging is that advertising will have to be targeted at user generated content and that means finding ways to do a multiplicity of very small deals.
The elements of an emerging pattern are: all those blog and podcast aggregators providing advertisers with one-stop access to an audience with specialist interests (and high traffic stats from lots of link-love) - think pluggd, media swamp, and Batelle’s Federated Media; specialist video servers like Brian Storm’s mediastorm and Gary Murray’s Mixcast (formerly Ooh.tv) providing video programmes to specialist audiences.
And there’s the beginnings of performance TV on the web. Bix (above) gets a tentative thumbs up from TechCrunch and Paltalk which is yet to find its niche.
There’s automated content from the likes of MyBlogLog, and the growth of IPTV at the local level and to serve specialist cultural interests. And the more obviously user generated content sites.
The point is these are all sites with viable revenue models but not with 100 million videos to serve (and the corresponding bandwidth charges) daily. Behind Google’s Ad Sense a number of smaller more speicalist ad networks are developing too.
There’s biography site ourstory.com and the more controversial dandelife now in beta (dandelife aims to use biographies to provide brand marketers with case studies and marketing data - I like the visuals).
Leave aside YouTube and you still have a vibrant level of innovation that has the right hallmarks: audience building content, specialist interests, appealing to the ego and creative needs of users, and mechanisms for advertisers to connect.
It just can’t be done through traditional media buying departments and it’s got to have advertiseers thinking: I’ve always known half my ad spend was wasted but now…. Will it be only half? Might it be none? It’s the sheer uncertainty that’s got people worried.
But look what Google has done with Ad Sense. Not only has it cornered a market, it’s managed to bring new companies into the advertising pool. I’m constantly amazed by the small scale of advertiser I see popping up on my screens.
I regularly see a consultancy, for example, that’s failed to return a couple of e-mails. The ad when I see it speaks to me in a very personal way. Or I find new product and service suppliers who are just trying to cut a living out of a changing world. My PC screen is turning into a sociological survey that centres on me and my activities but shows a lot of the spokes that feed into my world.
Is it the thought of being lost in the maelstrom of Ad Sense that frightens brands? I’d be more impressed if they found a place alongside the cast of characters I’m happy to see each day.
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