Online ad networks or online content networks?
As Peter Caputa mentions, we had a call this afternoon. Among other things (like cool event microformats and digital identity standards), we kicked around some of our ideas about online advertising and content.
Peter posted this on my "theory":
Boris mentioned a theory that there will be online ad networks like google's adsense, yahoo's business/ad services, cnet networks, job sites, rss ad networks, etc, etc. that advertisers will turn to.
Actually, I wasn't so much talking about the ad network side of things -- although I do think there could be improvement in that area. I was more thinking about the content network side of things.
Just like radio and TV networks are actually in the business of producing content around which ads are wrapped, and they band together to have more content to be more appealing to ad networks, the same thing is/will happen online. But we are seeing it at a very grass roots level today.
Yes there are the Corante's and WebLogIncs of the world that are experimenting with this, but they seem to be very traditional models just moved online.
There are micro-networks forming. Some of them are communities of interest (I only have to think about my writing about VoIP, Skype, and related, and think about the other dozen or so high profile people in the space) and some of them are regional or based on offline social networks.
I probably link to Tris, Ianiv, and Arieanna's Cooking Made Simple (as well as other "local" Vancouver concepts) more often than not. Urban Vancouver isn't really doing a lot of election blogging this year because we helped Terminal City set up a site dedicated to that (and The Tyee is doing something as well).
Today, those networks are informal at best. Something like 9 Rules might be the start of more formal connections. These networks of eyeballs can present an attractive target for advertisers.
And I think there is lots of advertising money just waiting to spend more money online, especially as broadband enables richer advertising.
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Thinking too small
Blah, advertising revenue.
You are arguing that we should move the interweb into the space occupied by television. Oooooh, it's TV but it's interactive. Big freakin' deal.
I want to see ideas of a grander scale where you produce such great content that people *want* to pay you for it without having to see advertisments in the first place! <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> is a fantastic example of this. How do they make money: donations and selling their online product to the offline world. So far, its seems to work.
The most recent novel I read I counted one page of advertisments, at the beginning, for the author's other books. Now the production costs of books is far above what a web site/blog/homepage/whatever you want to call it so why do I have to see ads? Because, frankly, what a great number of people produce is not worth paying for or is not of a large enough quantity to want to pay for.
Not enough content to warrant a dollar? This is where I would love to see ideas like micro-payments move off the sidelines but I fear that all the current implementations are faulty. As I have read (wish I could remember where cuz then I would attribute it) : if you have to spend more than 30 seconds explaining something then you have already lost. Also micro sounds like free, not good.
Subscriptions are not a full answer either. Look at Daring Fireball and his continued requests for people to allow him to quit his "real" job. I find that it interferes with my reading of his site when the pleas come up instead of an article. A simple donation link and one post to a seperate page should suffice, it's not front page lead story worthy.
This is the real curse of the Web moving forward, getting off the advertising revenue treadmill. Create great communities, great content, and maintain that greatness then you will be able to ditch the advertising crutch.
(ps. this Drupal editor flashes like crazy in Firefox 1.0.2 and is really annoying).
That's the first time I've ev
That's the first time I've ever been accused of thinking small :P
I'm not arguing FOR this...I'm watching it happen, in real time. People who produce quality content will naturally band together to be able to get better, less intrusive advertising that matches their "brand" better. Or at least, get more money so they can focus on continuing to create good content.
As you say, some of the content may be good enough that people will want to pay to see it without ads...which is kind of like TV/cable/movies, ain't it? There will always be "free" content, and it will typically be ad supported (or funded in some way, like Wikipedia is). And in some cases, people will "subscribe" to NOT see ads.
Funny you saying that about DF: I don't actually remember his last funding drive. Almost a year ago, I think. I paid for a membership, because I like reading his full feeds and feel he's worth supporting.
I tend to agree with your micropayment assessment. Well, except for the fact that I can't really envision any scheme that takes less than 30 seconds to explain. So maybe we're more likely to macro-subscribe to get lots of micro-content. And who's likely to put together a valuable enough bundle of content to viable sell subscriptions? Sounds like a content network to me.