Packaged Goods Media vs. Conversational Media, Part One
Posted by Harry on the 2006/12/07 at 02:04
in Media, Monetization, Newspapers, Revenues, User-generated content -
Federated Media’s John Batelle has begun a multi-part post on Searchblog on how traditional media companies have come to terms with their maturing, ever-more-profitable interactive business units. The telegraphic summary; dump the seasoned interactive “cowboys” that started these interactive businesses and parachute in the serious revenue posse, senior executives that can turn these businesses around so that they can realize their full revenue potential! They’ve gone from “lab” to just another unit with an aggressive scorecard. No surprise there. Ah, but Batelle’s point is that interactive is not like any other traditional media business, it’s Packaged Goods Media (old media) vs. Conversational Media (interactive). The post is peppered with good insight and real world examples, it’s worth the read. However, the crux is that it is about economics (ad revenue) vs. relevance (interactivity/user content). How much interactivity are these media conglomerates willing to let through the filters, and would they do it all if it’s “at the expense” of advertisers and advertising revenue. We now know that relevance has value with users/ consumers (Web 2.0), the question is, is there enough net margin at the rendez-vous for traditional media companies that potentially have a lot to lose vs. start-ups that have way less to lose…
March 13th, 2007 at 12:25
[…] John Batelle has posted part three of a four-part post on conversational media over on Searchblog that caught my eye. I linked to the first part here a while ago, where I, uh, proclaimed it was all “about economics (ad revenue) vs. relevance (interactivity/user content).”. Still applies. But back to part three, it’s a very long post that at first explains the origins of Federated Media, and how scale, quality and safety are the three pillars of this new enterprise that groups quality blogs/ conversations and intermediates them with advertisers. He goes on to show how Wired magazine clued into the fact that advertisers want to join in and be part of the conversation with their readers, and how later Adsense made strides harnessing many advertiser messages and relevancy using their algorithms. Sidenote, the BoingBoing blog asks its readers if ads are ok. Coincidentally, I did the same thing two years ago for MoCo Loco in a post called… “Relevance vs. Economics” and got the same answer from readers (yes, if the ads are relevant). And then examples of advertisers that actively participated in conversations with their ad concepts and succeeded. All superlative examples of relevancy. There’s a lot to chew on, but in essence Batelle sums it up nicely by saying “when an [blog] author approves a company to advertise on his or her site, they are, in essence, inviting the company to join that sites’ conversation.”. […]