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Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Simple Path To Publishing Profit
by Jaffer Ali
"For rational beings will of course try simple things first
and thereafter be driven step by step towards an ever
enhanced complexification."
-Nicholas Rescher, Complexity: A Philosophical Overview
I have been writing and commenting on Internet marketing,
online publishing and e-commerce for over twelve years now.
It doesn't take much self reflection to see that the vast
body of my work has been a critique of conventional wisdom.
Nowadays, however, faced with an industry panicked and
bloated by its own excesses, there is precious little
"wisdom" to critique. What I mean by excess manifests
in many ways, not the least of which is our penchant for
seeking solutions to basic problems by employing more and
more complex methodologies.
Behavioral Targeting is just the latest incarnation of
complexification. It's a great example of what to avoid
when at first we don't succeed with something simple. We
have bypassed simple common sense in favor of complex-
ification.
Professor Rescher would say that this is not rational.
To ignore simplicity for complexity's sake is to act/react
irrationally. The Internet is God?s gift to complexif-
ication because so much of what we can imagine can now
be rendered by 20-something technicians who lack the
experience to consider the ultimate wisdom of their ways.
After all, theirs is not to reason why; which explains why
few of them do.
Publishers and advertisers alike are caught up in the same
mad dance of complexification.
So let's try to simplify things for publishers through a
more rational approach by asking them: With your revenue
per thousand page views now less than $1/M, couldn't you
make more money if your content was viewed on an
advertiser's site?
Stop a minute to ponder this simple statement. Slow down,
turn down the music in your head and read it again.
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Let's say for example that someone visits your website to
read an article on Lebron James. They read the headline
on your home page with a link for the full article. Now
here's where it pays to get simple: Deliver that reader
to StubHub where the article appears in its entirety. You
have now bundled content and visitor to an advertiser
ready and willing to pay for both.
If not StubHub, perhaps Nike or Adidas would like that
visitor (and content) on their site. My informed opinion
is that advertisers will pay more for visitor-chosen
content and content-qualified visitors bundled together.
How so informed? We own and operate EVTV1, one of the
first video portals ever created, an actual predecessor
to YouTube.
But we, too, found ourselves in the inexorable grip of
complexification: we bought big-time into pre-roll and
content syndication, imbedding our video player on hundreds
of websites and sharing sparse revenues while developing
ever-more sophisticated tracking systems. All of it seemed
perfectly "reasonable" at the time, but all of it proved
every bit as irrational as Behavioral Targeting. Our
earnings on EVTV1 and across our syndication network sank
to $3 per thousand visitors.
But then one day in the shower I heard myself ask: What if
the video view took place on the advertiser's site? We
already have great licensed video content, and we have a
player we can imbed on any site. Why not imbed the player
and play the video snack on the advertiser's site? Why not
use video snack thumbnails (instead of ads) as bait to
attract qualified video snackers? After all, no one wants
more ads, but everyone with high-speed access snacks on
video.
So we began to bundle and deliver the streamed video
snacks and the video snackers directly to select branded
destination pages ? in exchange for a negotiated bundled
snack and snacker fee. Of course the advertisers must
develop special branded destination pages with campaign-
specific calls to action, but they appreciate the fact
that the only brand exposure (or risk) across our entire
publisher network of more than 20,000 sites occurs on
their own branded destination pages. True accountability,
virtually no network fraud, and no need to invest in any
expensive and spurious targeting technologies, just three
reasons why our cost-per-visitor fees are so far below
the industry average.
Yet just when we had it figured out, we actually stopped
trying to sell to outside advertisers. We turned our focus
inward instead through the creation of product-specific
destination pages for products from our own (already
successful) e-commerce site. We decided to eat our own
clicks the moment we realized that we made more money
delivering bundled video snacks and snackers to our
own product offers than we do by selling them to third
parties.
Plus, since we don't pursue outside advertisers, we waste
virtually no time and energy on relationships with
agencies, almost all of which live (and bill) for
irrational complexification. The publishers in our network
are happy making more money than if they imbedded the
player on their site and we are own best client.
To see a live example of video snack and snacker bundled
together, check out this classic comedy clip!
http://www2.pulsetv.com/prodinfo-tv.asp?number=5103&evtv=12519
This is simple, effective and delivers the right audience
to the advertiser, which in above case is our sister
company. The path to profitability is simple: let go. Let
go of your traffic. Let go of your content. Let go of your
specious targeting algorithms. Let go of complexity. Let
go of failure.
We always knew content could build audiences. It only
stands to reason that it should deliver them as well. And
so, in the words of Budweiser, that's what we do: we build
and deliver audiences, period. Simple, don't you think?
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5. The Muppets
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Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
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