I've been waiting for the chattering class to start talking about things related to the really revolutionary part of our business plan, the part that puts most of the content-creators to sleep.
Jarvis, et al. are calling it "Consumer-driven advertising" (emphasis mine):
What we really want -- the endgame -- is consumer-driven advertising.
Says John [Battelle]:
Ideally, commercial media would consist of equal partnerships between three parties: publishers, the audience, and advertisers. In reality, advertisers, the group with the most money, hold all the cards. Publishers have been relegated to the role of supplicant, and the audience—well, we pretty much have to swallow whatever deal the publisher and the advertisers cut.
For the most part, the Internet has inherited this model from print publishing: on the Web, there are far more publishers trolling for ad dollars than there are advertisers doling them out. But the Internet’s interactivity suggests an alternative economy in which the long-standing imbalance between publisher, audience, and advertiser could be corrected. A system of Internet-based marketing, which I’ll call Publisher-Driven Advertising, or PDA, may be soon possible. In this system, publishers would pick and choose from a vast supply of advertisers.
The idea, to recount it as simply as possible, is that rather that advertisers would make ads available; publishers would pick up the best ones for their audiences and interests; advertisers would pay only for performance.
In the previous discussion, I tried to take this another step by suggesting that publishers (bloggers, that is) and consumers should create advertising [link mine]. Yes, there'd be screeching that the creative wouldn't match the advertisers' brand messages -- but when you think about it, that's damned silly: Who better to create the brand message the works than someone who has bought your product?
Now I will take this one step further, arguing for consumer-driven advertising and ad transparency: In this new medium with all its targeting power, how much better it would be if we could tell the targeters: Don't give me car ads because I'm not in the market for a car now, thank you. Don't give me feminine products because I'm a man. Don't give me booze ads because I'm on the wagon. We'd be telling them not to waste their money paying for our eyeballs. That's better for the advertiser: far more efficient. It's better for the publisher: far more efficient. It's better for consumers: far less irritating. It makes advertising actually useful. What a revolutionary concept!
See Jarvis' First Law of Media: Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don't give the people control of media, and you will lose. (More broadly expressed: Bet on that which gives citizens control. And bet against those who try to maintain control apart from the public.)
See also Oren's corollary: Every ad a wanted ad.
Ahem, yeah. That's pretty much the business plan, chapter and verse. (Been there on the right rail since day one.) That's what we're going to do. Every bit of that.
And we can do it in print too.
AND the technology is so simplistic and cheap, it's scary. It's already out there. All we're doing is weaving a few things together.
As Jarvis points out, it doesn't work for everything -- that's why there are still some "wide-market" ads in the model. (BTW, Jeff: This is what I was, albeit badly, explaining to you when we spoke. We still have some work to do on the manpower of taking it down the long tail. )
But, the pay-for-performance model means that a lot of folks who would never talk to an upstart paper will talk to us. And unless I'm missing my bet, this model doesn't work (in transition) for an incumbent with a lot of entrenched revenue on the old model at risk.
It should also be noted that it would be very hard for an individual blog, or even a small network of blogs to gather enough user data to make such a model sing. Not so for an aggregator and large-scale content provider.
And don't forget that most purchases are made locally. That's why hyper-local news is so important.
The execution of this ideal is our innovation. This is how we think we can change the world.
Merry Christmas. We'll see you next year...
“Consumers should create advertising…” This should be an interesting experiment. After all “consumers” already create films (http://www.atomfilms.com/af/spotlight/collections/starwars/) from films and music (http://www.mash-ups.co.uk/) from music. Citizens create journalism. Why not ads? It might be very popular with the advertisers, considering the level of participation and the cost-free content of it all.
Posted by: curt | July 10, 2005 at 07:55 PM