People flock to hits, advertisers flock to people

A nice quote, which I couldn’t agree with more:

Even with all the fetishization of the long tail these days, it’s important to remember that entertainment (and therefore online video entertainment) is a hit-driven business. People flock to hits, advertisers flock to people.

From Chris Albrecht, new editor at newteevee.com, part of the GigaOm network

Should we vertically integrate in online advertising?

While Google and Yahoo are trying to be media companies and advertising agency in one, traditional players in the media sector have to respect their legacy/background. At least that is what Publicis Groupe is planning to do as they want to play a significant role in the “all-digital advertising future” as can be read in a New York Times profile of Publicis . Not by vertical integration but by sticking to their profession of being an ad agency. How does that work for traditional media companies getting involved in digital media? Should they stick to what they are best at: producing and aggregating media or should they develop their own ad networks? And if they do try to integrate media and advertising in the way that Google and Yahoo are doing: how trustworthy will they be? Questions that popped up as I read Scott Karp’s post on the topic today:

“Pull up a bowl of popcorn — the transformation of media and advertising is only getting more interesting.”

p.s. off-shore digital ad production seems to be good business to get into, if more ad agencies will follow Publicis’ steps

Is there money deep in the Long Tail of content?

When I recently commented on a post on NewTeevee I got to think about making money deep into the long tail of content. As pointed out by Jacques Bughin of McKinsey Brussels in a recent discussion I had with him, the Long Tail was written on the evidence of online retailers. And even though the “content long tail” really does exist, the question about monetization is still open. One thing is for sure as I learned today, the audience is there.

“Every day 95 percent of the YouTube library is watched at least once” according to Google TV technology officer Vincent Dureau in EEtimes.

My argument is that if there’s an audience, there eventually will be an advertiser. Not based on the pageview advertising model but rather based on behavorial targeting advertising, as is done by Tacoda. Or based on Google’s Click-per-Action (CPA) model combined with behavorial targeting. Or it might be based on a totally new model which still has to be invented. Nobody knows…

But eventually deep in the long tail of content online, money will be made by someone. Next question is: by whom…?

Topical ad networks

Excellent article today by Jeremy Liew (thanks Yme for the link) about behavorial targeting. He argues that as the long tail of sites grows longer, the need for ad networks gets higher. And most importantly he concludes that the more targeted the ad network is, the better it might be positioned now and in the future. He calls the targeted or topical ad network “synthetic channels”.

Here’s a big chance for traditional media to get a piece of the action: through its existing channels in several media (print, TV, radio, events) it is able to jump-start synthetic channels. There’s only one warning: traditional media companies should realize that they have to open up the network to channels of their competitors as well and not only stick to their own, proprietary channels and media.

Cannot be done? Hachette Filipacchi did it in the US by buying automotive synthetic channel called…Jumpstart. Nomen est omen.

Relevancy in Online Advertising

Measurability is one, relevance is another of the challenges facing online advertisers. Interesting article on that by Scott Karp today. One of his examples:

“What struck me most is how poorly customized the ad actually is — the Tacoda ad server knows my network location, but it doesn’t know the crucial piece of data that would have informed the delivery of this ad — I’m happily married and have no interest in meeting singles. So while the ad got the geography right, it’s still utterly irrelevant.”

And his conclusion:

“After more than a decade of online advertising, you’d think we’d be farther along.”

Real Online Advertising

Measuring advertising online is changing from page-views to time spent. At least that is what Nielsen is doing, and with that “engagement” is measured. Interesting development, since it really is more sophisticated than the old traditional page-view.  But still it is based on offline media measuring: