Week 8 Response

New Revenue Models

If advertising is always going to be the main source of revenues as the report claims, whether companies try to sell news with subscriptions or pay-per-article, I feel like those articles are doomed to fail in the long run. ESPN can their “in” articles which are for paying subscribers only, and as a casual sports reader, even when there’s an article I really really want to read behind a pay wall, there’s no way I’m paying a subscription fee for one or two articles. And those articles are a relatively niche market -sports- a site I’m specifically at for sports news – how would an online news source be able to target the broad array of people reading their articles with pay articles? It would be a lot more difficult because of the wide array of tastes browsing their site. And besides perhaps some pay-per-article revenues, I think the advertising revenue stream is where news companies have to innovate, and where they will. On to advertising!

Reading about “ViewPass LINK” in the State of the Media report, the “targeted marketing” that sites like Facebook use, I can’t help but agree that this is part of the future of online advertising. I can with all certainty say that of all the online ads I’ve ever clicked on, the majority have been on Facebook and they’ve had something to do with my particular interests. Online stores, bands’ new music, new movies coming out, new products being sold, Facebook gathers all this data from the fan pages we “like” and our profile information. And we give it them willingly. So as much as like to think they’re invading our privacy, we freely give them this information. And part of me likes it. Facebook tells me I can win free Sony headphones? Great! That’s something I kind of want. Facebook tells me to check out GoogleTV? I already have but I will check out their new ad for it. A Japanese festival in my area? Awesome. I definitely want to the check that out. Facebook is leading the way in advertising that actually kind of works. It’s not just banners I ignore. I actually look to see what the new ads are.

And Hulu’s getting in on this type of advertising too. Have you noticed when you watch a Hulu ad now, in the upper right hand of the video, they ask you if this is the kind of advertising that is relevant to you?  They’re working to customize ads so if you like car commercials or whatever other kind of ad they’re showing, they’ll show you more of that and less of the ads aimed at not your age group or target audience. I actually appreciate this effort because honestly, I hate sitting through ads that are for products I don’t want or have no use to me at this point in my life. I like that the ads I’m starting to see are things I don’t entirely mind sitting through. It’s still in beta phases I believe but companies are leading the way to try and connect us with companies and products we might actually have an interest in and if the newspapers and news sources can get in on that, I think it might just be possible for them to survive.

It’s always been about the advertising in just about any type of media – maybe newspapers can start doing product placement in their photos? Probably not but they have to start getting creative somehow.

Tags: advertising, facebook, hulu, revenue stream, targeted advertising