That’s right. It’s you.
The most unexpected, important and exciting online development of the last few years is how the web has turned our personal communication and life documentation into inexpensive, compelling, and highly consumable media. Is it me, or is there a bit of a correlation between the reality television of the last 8 years and the personal life publishing and consumption driving a lot of today’s online usage? Are we becoming the creators, producers and promoters of online reality programming for which we also narrate, director and star?
As more and more people place themselves under a self made Internet spotlight, more still have emerged to become dedicated readers and viewers, providing a necessary ally for any type of new media… an audience. While 38.7% of active users are writing blogs, a surprising 72.8% are reading them, with a whopping 67.5% reading the personal blogs of friends and family.
How big is this trend? According to Universal McCann's latest Social Media Tracker there are 475 million active Internet Users worldwide between the ages of 16 and 54. Of those 475 million people, 184 million are blogging. 346 million read some form of blog, while 321 million are reading personal blogs. Personal blogs are the most highly consumed form of blog according to this study. This represents 137 million people who are consuming personal blogs who aren’t blogging themselves.
How this trend will affect the business of media won’t be known for years, though it’s likely to democratize the flow of information, trends, ideas and influence in that more and more of us will be writers, photographers, movie makers, reporters, analysts and opinion leaders in one form or another. Society will be listening to a lot more voices, and that can only be a good thing. Advertisers and the corporate media will likely navigate all this change as gracefully as the recording industry is handling the digital download, or as insightfully as the newspaper industry is handling the fact that news and paper appear to be on the outs. These are interesting times.
I think the ratio between blog creators and blog consumers will level off as new technologies emerge and the sector matures. The blogosphere began as a domain of the extrovert. The fact that the word “blog” still serves as a useful catch-all for all types of web logs, be it to promote business, journalistic pursuits, or as a personal diary, is indeed proof that we are still experiencing the tip of something very large. Of the 300 million people living in the
Having a blog will more likely become essential to how we document and share life. Consider this; the activities that constitute “blogging” have been with us for generations. What is a personal blog but a collection of stories, recorded self expression, relationships and events as illustrated by our own personal media? Our grandparent’s old trunks filled with letters, pictures, home movies, report cards and family recipes are yesterday’s family blogs in analog. These silos of the past will get pulled into the digital realm someday. Genealogy has hit the web hard over the last few years. When the blogging format meets a Wiki social graph that maps our shared ancestry we will likely see the past documented as quickly and enthusiastically as the present.
The value of the web for creating and cultivating meaningful personal relationships is just half the story. The ability of the web to help us build and maintain meaningful, searchable and fully connected digital memory banks is the other half. Just as today I walk around with every song I’ve ever owned easily found and played with my iPod, tomorrow my daughter will access every important personal moment she’s ever experienced, along with important moments experienced by her friends, family members and ancestors… all on demand.
So getting back to the connection I mentioned between the exhibition and voyeurism of reality TV, and the slight hint of that milieu in the leading edge of today’s online social movement; I believe this is a phase, and a necessary one. A mistake the industry is likely to make is assuming that the needs, trends and activities of today's users, the early adopters and way-early majority, will help us predict the needs and desires of the yet to be engaged true majority. Today’s online social landscape is not yet a mainstream setting. It’s top heavy on tech and youth culture and a little short on delivering relevance and value to people who consider themselves average, everyday hardworking folk. It’s a space where being a geek is a point of pride, and where being edgy, or at least a dude helps get you around. It’s a room with countless corners, built on enthusiastic subcultures, and filled with the truly dynamic. There are also a good number of screamers, wanabe’s and lurkers to keep the authentic smell of openness in the air. It’s addicting, exciting and fun.
But it can also be a bit of a circus; noisy, endless open doors and diversions, with the occasional unpleasant surprise. I occasionally log-off wondering if I have gum under my shoe, or smell of tobacco, cotton candy and popcorn. It’s a space that I enjoy and understand, even when I'm rolling my eyes. But it’s not a place that understands what many older users, parents or young children need from this world.
My parents are convinced that they can successfully ignore the existence of the Internet. Like his grandfather who never learned to read or write, my father is intent on leaving this world never having typed-in a password or read an email. My daughter, on the other hand, has already designed the logo for her future website, savetheworld.org (I don’t have the heart to tell her the domain isn’t available). I’m convinced that the web will play a huge role in both my daughter’s and parent’s futures… even if they resist it. Yet even I broach the subject with hesitation. Where can I bring my parents online where they can enjoy a meaningful social experience? How old will my daughter be before I’m comfortable giving her the keys to the open web? What needs to happen that hasn’t happened for this medium to really reach, touch and serve everybody?
We all have family members and friends who live outside our beloved digital world. What makes the social web so valuable for some and so irrelevant or inappropriate for others? I go back to realty TV. The Internet, as it’s being develop for early adopters and youth, promotes a vibe of open broadcast over closed networks of personal relevance. Web 2.0 is about being open, being found, and being heard. These are not the attributes of intimate personal networking.
We call it social media for a reason. We want our elbows out, and we want them rubbed… especially by people we know, or we have admired, or have little opportunity to connect with offline.
Among the hot apps du jour is Twitter. What is Twitter? Why, it’s your own personal broadcast buddy and handy little lifestream of people you know, or want to know, informing you what they are all doing right now. It’s tres cool. Of course, these are the people who you know that actually use Twitter. That’s about 2 million people worldwide as of last month. What this means is your chances of building a following that is anywhere near reflective of your real life is, well… “hard”. But we face this problem with other apps, and we don’t let it get us down. Twitter, again, is a land where being a geek has great rewards… voila- all my friends!
The unique adoption problem for Twitter is that in order to expand a personal network beyond a list of appealing elbows and fellow geeks you’ll have to somehow convince friends and family members that it’s critical that they start broadcasting when they're hungry, lost their pen, fed the cat, did laundry, or had a bad oyster. What I love about Twitter is it’s ability to document life in a way that is both immediate and far reaching. What I don’t like is Twitter provides little context for all these unique moments flying past. Visiting a friend’s Twitter home is much more rewarding- seeing what they like to tweet about and where they go. Twitter is an important step in helping us realize the value of a documented life.
But part of me wonders if Twitter is more of a social experiment in being hyper-connected than an essential communication tool. What to do with all this new connection and immediacy is really being explored by the people who use Twitter. It’s fascinating. Sleep and food seem to be the top tweet topics, followed by location and work/play reports. It’s 140 characters… so it becomes an art form based in brevity. If you’re a geek you will likely continue to love reporting the play-by-play of personal life, while non-techies will find their small moments too small and their big moments too frenetic… and tweeting will likely pass them by.
Again, Twitter seems like a natural for promoting ourselves so that we can get higher in the reality game-- become known, become more connected, achieve success. I engage in this game myself, and I’m not knocking it. I’m simply stating that these needs are much more narrow than the needs of a Mom who has 3 kids and a full-time career, and would love to network with friends and family, and set up pages for the kids, and plan birthday parties, and manage the family calendar, and publish scrapbooks that are connected to grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends… and do it all online without opening a can of spam. But all that inevitable potential is not quite there yet. It’s there… but you have to really want it. The documented life isn’t an easy feat for someone with little time, especially if that someone isn’t a self proclaimed geek like the rest of us.
My point is this; I think the broadcast element is what separates today’s users from tomorrow’s more mainstream Internet. Perhaps we need a new category called “Personal Networking”. Social Networking is about broadcast, it’s about being found and being heard. Personal Networking is different. It’s about being connected. It’s about having a network that reflects the life you really lead. For many, the documented life will wait until a relevant personal network arrives… because at the end of the day it’s the network that will give online life value. Personal media without the right audience has no value. The numbers prove that people already have an enormous appetite for personal media produced by people they know. And today's technologies help consumers capture life quicker, easier and less costly than ever. We await technologies that provide a simpler means of plugging in and managing our relationships and personal moments so that we can all begin to live a more meaningful, connected and documented life.
Every week a new article attempts to redefine what social media means for brand advertisers. This communicates, accurately I think, that the advertising and media industries are still working to understand how they can best help their clients capitalize on the new social media opportunity.
Are brands being approached correctly on this subject. Does the term "advertising" even belong in this conversation? I beginning to wonder if discussing ad campaigns in the context of social networking isn't muddying the waters completely. Can a company succeed with a social presence without assembling the assets to function as a social company? The resources and talent needed to succeed socially have less to do with traditional advertising and marketing, and more to do with customer service and public relations.
Wikipedia defines PR as "the practice of managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics." Customer Service is defined as "the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase." These are the brand attributes that make companies social. These activities are grounded in listening to the customer and the market in order to address the needs and concerns of the customer and market. These departments are skilled at deciphering changes in customer perception and market environment, and know the importance of response. They are trained in the art of conversation. Ironically, just as most businesses have given up on idea of Customer Relationship Management (
Advertising doesn't know how to listen. It only knows how to talk. So talking with advertising people about social communities is like telling an accounting department how you can increase sales. Sure, you can run traditional ad campaigns within social settings, but the real opportunities being advanced are not advertising... but communication opportunities. This misalignment between the goals of marketing decision makers and opportunities being offered is why many companies are moving so slowing, and acting so suspiciously of social media .
Advertising isn't going to go away, and it isn't going to change. Nor should it. Advertising, as we know it, will remain an important way to build brand and drive sales. But developing social strategies and advertising strategies are completely different vocations. I don’t believe marketing or advertising departments are where tomorrow’s corporate social initiative will reside.
In order for companies to succeed socially, they will have to restructure to become social entities. It will happen, but it will take time. Helping companies understand where their social assets lie and how to synthesize these assets to create modern
Professor Daniel Solove, a leading thinking on the importance of consumer privacy, and author of 'I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy,' has a new book out called Understanding Privacy. Chapter 1 is available for free download. It’s worth checking out.
Undertone Networks announced this week that it has joined the Network Advertising Initiative, a self-regulatory privacy association. The interesting thing here is that customer inquiries drove the decision, demonstrating that advertisers care about the privacy policies and practices of the companies they spend with.
BI-ME just reported that some 15 privacy and public interest groups have come together to urge the US Congress to push forward proposals to limit the growing practice of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) targeting ads to subscribers based on their personal web activities.
So what are the guidelines?
The AIB and Online Privacy Alliance have both done a good job of highlighting the important aspects of a sound Internet Privacy Policy.
A basic rule of thumb is that targeting users anonymously based on your database of specified user attributes is ok. The jury is still out on gathering unspecified usage and activity data tied to User IP address. Disclosing how you capture and use data and allowing users to easily opt out are both important. Always keep in mind how costly a negative privacy public relations event can be. Your relationship with your user is likely your most important asset. A comprehensive Privacy Policy can protect your company as much as it does your users.
Here’s a very interesting report that shows how a clearly stated privacy policy and open operational practices can go a long way toward making users more comfortable.
Much Web 2.0 development continues to march in lockstep towards the evangelized vision of an Open and Free Internet. This boundless, free cyber-territory promises to keep us all connected and engaged in a growing number of personal pursuits. The most exciting promise of the free and open movement is the ability to aggregate our online activities, collaborations and content to produce more complete and meaningful personal profiles. Lifestreaming is just one more step towards this promise. Will there come a day when we all live and act as fully, freely, confidently and securely online as we do offline? Will we play a hand in managing and preserving our own digital legacies?
See also: There’s No Such Thing As Free! by Max Kalehoff, Choking on the Long Tail by Tom Foremski, Choices, Connections, Commitments by Pete Blackshaw, The ClickZ Network, Jul 10, 200, Visualizing Social Fatigue by Josh Catone and Welcome to the social mess? by Caroline McCarthy
Online Companies that depend on advertising revenue will always be valued on their ability to turn their usage and page-views into dollars. This makes creating and selling effective advertising opportunities as important as winning users.
Many online startups are bypassing advertising or other business models altogether to focus their resources on scaling communities of users around their technologies. The belief is that these companies will be able to realize significant revenue potential once they have reached critical mass. Many of these founders are more likely hoping to become acquisition targets before they have to implement money making strategies.
Pursuing an ad driven business model isn’t a sure path to profitability. Even big online successes struggle with how to attract and grow ad revenue. The release of Facebook’s Beacon and the aftermath provides many lessons. Before Beacon many big brands were beginning to explore their FaceBook strategies. Since Beacon most are working on social strategies outside the popular social networks.
How viable is the online advertising business model for most companies? Is it risky? Should you spend time and resources pursuing ad dollars when you could more easily focus on driving usage and locating other streams of revenue?
For most sites, I believe online advertising is both viable and important. Here’s why. Advertisers do more than pay for linked real estate. By associating themselves with your brand they substantiate the value you’re creating, and the value of the users you’re attracting. Advertising can also gives your users access to a wider variety of relevant products, services and resources. Building a healthy community of advertisers, business partnerships and affiliates can make your company more valuable and attractive to both your users and potential buyers.
Online destinations that build spaces around specific user missions, affinities or activities are more successful selling ads and keeping rates high. I call these holistic communities. These are websites or channels where the operators, users and 3rd party marketers all share aligned missions or purpose, creating an ecosystem of interdependent participants. You could also simply call this synergy.
To qualify your advertising potential, first take a close look at the audience you’ll be building, and what they’ll share. What ties your community together? Can you locate a well rounded universe of advertising and business development prospects that can help your users and communities succeed? Those are the relationships you should pursue.
The key is giving users relevancy. Google is the most profitable online advertising company because they deliver relevancy both on their site and across the web. Google developed a slightly better method for ranking websites at a time when Alta Vista, the former leader, watered down its search mission to compete with full service portals like Yahoo. By enhancing search relevancy, Google won the search market. In 2003 Google introduced AdSense, a tool that serves cost-per-click ads by analyzing and targeting page content on publisher sites. AdSense gives web site owners an easy way to have contextually relevant ads appear on any page, monetizing web pages without selling ads. AdSense enabled Google to spread its existing cost-per-click business across the open web.
Google demonstrates that the key to advertising success is relevance. So as an ad driven business your mission becomes centered on helping your users find relevant ads. How can you accomplish this? There are 2 basic methods. One is by targeting user consumption, and the second is by targeting user profiles.
Google’s business targets consumption. A user searches for a specific word or term demonstrating a desire to consume a highly defined product or content. Google serves advertising and web sites aligned with the consumer’s immediate interest. Google’s AdSense looks at the content being consumed and serves ads that are topically aligned with that content. Both of these methods bring users relevant options that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise, which is why Google’s click rates are so high and their products are so profitable.
In order to provide users with relevancy based on content consumption, your site must be easy to navigate based on need. Clear and thoughtful menus, channels, grouped content, keyword search tools and other drill down methods will all allow you to create user value and carve out effective advertising opportunities. Yahoo’s Auto, Finance, Real Estate, and Jobs channels each work to build user and advertiser communities around specific needs. The focus of these environments commands much higher ad rates by allowing timely introduction and fueling competition for premium placement. Unfocused pages on the Internet generate .25-.35 cents for every thousand pages viewed. Holistic communities can often achieve effective CPMs (Cost-per-thousand) of $10-$20. AdSense generates effective CPMs of $1.00- $15.
Whereas consumption targeting is time-based (I have this consumption need at this moment), other methods for targeting are user-based. By identifying and publishing your demographic, psychographic and behavioral data in your media kit, you are building the basic targeting tools that media planners will use to consider whether your audience is right for their message.
There are other technology-driven targeting methods that utilize user cookies and/or personal registration data. These methods allow companies to serve relevant ads that are not contextually tied to current consumption. If your company assigns user-cookies that track which users spend time on your food and recipe pages and search on food and recipe related words- you can use that data to serve those users food and recipe related ads even when they are involved in activities that have nothing to do with food. This type of data allows you to create more opportunities to reach specific user segments. If you have an online registration process that records user demographic information like age, gender, industry, interests, income or other personal attributes, you can leverage this data to help advertisers filter out the users who are not in their target market. These capabilities command much higher ad rates because they allow advertisers to concentrate their impressions to ideal users, which eliminates waste.
Both of these methods utilized stored user
According to Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, “The key privacy principles which govern the collection and use of PII are “notice” and “choice”. Any ad targeting based on PII needs to be transparent to end-users and to respect their privacy preferences.”
In other words your privacy policy should clearly state how you collect and use
Why is relevancy so important to building a successful advertising business? It helps to understand the economy that drives much of the free and open Internet.
"Attention economics" today is primarily concerned with the problem of getting consumers to consume advertising. Traditional media advertisers utilize a linear model that consumers go through - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention is therefore crucial. -WikiPedia
What is an Attention Economy? When you begin selling online ads you’ll hear prospective advertisers often say “I don’t look at banner ads, so I don’t think other people do either.” How many of us would say that we actually pay attention to Internet advertising? When we talk about online ads we’re talking about the loud, alluring or otherwise distracting advertisements that we find completely irrelevant to us. We become conscious of having to withdraw our attention in order to stay on mission. If we didn’t do so, we couldn’t focus. When users see an ad that is of high interest, the thought that they are being served an ad often goes away completely. Targeted messages often feel more like points of interest than sales pitches.
Consider user attention the new online currency. When your users give their attention, repaying that attention with relevance will earn you more and more of their attention. This creates an environment where your users and the advertisers who are capable of serving them can come together. The more relevant advertisers each user sees, the more attention they are willing to spend. This is how business, and a lot of it, can get done in online. Just look at Google’s bottom line.
So how do you begin? You begin by understanding that you have to start somewhere, and you’re better off starting with business development relationships and affiliates that will help set the foundation and the tone for your communities or channels. Better to make less money will smaller advertisers who you think can succeed with your audience than to accept large untargeted campaigns that treat your users like eyeballs. You’re goal is to build slowly and to keep your ads and business partners aligned. When those eyeball marketers with big budgets come calling, always consider whether their participation on your site will help you build an economy of attention or distraction. When your environment leans towards distraction, every participant of your community and economy will likely pay a price.
The following describers are helpful in assessing the health of a sites attention economy. As you visit your favorite sites ask yourself if you think their economy is based more on attention or distraction. How do these characteristics effect your relationship with the site? What’s your sites economy based on?
Attention Economy
Distraction Economy
If you can succeed in keeping your attention economy healthy, and in building holistic environments that are sustainable, reaching a critical mass of marketers and users should provide the following Network Effect:
These are the attributes that keep effective CPMs and total ad revenue potential on the rise, leading to a healthy and profitable Ad Driven business.
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