Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

In 2003 Advertising Women of New York voted Cindy Advertising Woman of the Year. Cindy resigned as chairman of BBH US in 2005, after sixteen years with the agency, in order to focus on finding something different to do for the next chapter of her career.

More articles by Cindy Gallop





Features

Monetize My Social Network? How One Can Answer the $580 Million Question

Written on
Aug 10, 2006 
Author
Cindy Gallop  |
Share
Monetize My Social Network? How One Can Answer the $580 Million Question

But when that synergy is there, the high trust ‘recommendation’ dynamic can be much more fully exercised. A high trust environment can mean a greater willingness on the part of the network members to engage in a deeper interactive dialogue. That allows for greater monetization opportunities in the form of interactive marketing ‘experimentation’ — for example, to create ‘test panels’ of members as the frontline for launches or new product/category exploration, or to brand or co-brand network features and services only available to members.

Then there’s monetization via replication.

Online social networks bring complete strangers together. They enable them to express themselves through their own creativity and through identification with particular tastes or values. They allow them to get to know each other, to make useful connections, to collaborate, to create things together. Who else could benefit from this capability? Any big company, any company comprising a number of different offices, any global company — that’s who.

And any company forward-thinking enough to know that their very own OSN — a different approach to the company intranet, if you like — could be a great tool to bring employees together, familiarize them with each other, and leverage collaboration and creativity across geography, offices and corporate networks. So, depending on the nature, technology and effectiveness of your network, you could monetize it by adapting and customizing the model for individual corporate use, and selling it on accordingly as a ‘private label’ exercise.

There’s also monetization through principle.

As an example of this, let’s take YouTube.

Everyone wants to know how YouTube plans to make money, beyond its current banner ads and selective network show promotions. So far, CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley is resistant to the idea of pre-roll/post-roll ads. He will only consider advertising that ‘helps the consumer experience’, and so far has struggled to find an ad-supported model that delivers on that.

But the fact is, YouTube already runs advertising. Vast amounts of it.

If you search ‘advertising’ on YouTube, you come up with, at the last count, just under 8,000 uploaded videos. That’s one of the largest categories on YouTube, although it’s not flagged up as an official category. The majority of the uploads are TV commercials which a YouTube user has found entertaining enough to want to share — and a large amount of them are very highly rated by viewers.

Well, here’s a thought. YouTube’s audience is already enjoying viewing the best, most engaging, most entertaining, most creative advertising from all around the globe.

YouTube is perfectly positioned to decide to run only paid-for advertising that is just that — highly engaging, highly entertaining, highly creative. That’s ‘helping the consumer experience’ in the way that Chad Hurley wants. Why not only accept and run video advertising that plays to YouTube’s ‘clip culture’, and that passes the one simple test of, would our audience find this fun to watch?

That would be a win-win scenario all round — advertisers who’ve put the effort into positioning and communicating their brand message in a way that truly engages consumers, get to advertise to huge amounts of them on YouTube; YouTube viewers get to watch even more entertaining advertising than they do already (because when it’s entertaining it doesn’t feel like ‘Advertising’ with a capital A); YouTube gets to make lots of money; and at the same time, YouTube takes a stand that would be welcomed by the whole of the advertising industry, that demands that advertisers who want a crack at their audience must up their standards and ensure that they develop truly innovative, distinctive, engaging work that lives up to the site’s own promise.

(As Kevin Roberts, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, says, ‘The only question that matters in consumer research is, do you want to see it again?’) What’s not to like about all of that?

Now — you may have noticed that I’ve focused so far on monetization via ad-supported and ‘selling on’ models. There is of course monetization via subscription, services and some other revenue-generating opportunities I can think of. But I’m right down to the ADOTAS word count wire for now….so, dependent on interest, To Be Continued (or not, as the case may be).





Reader Comments.

No comments yet

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

Pages: « previous page 1 2

Tags: , , and
Article Sponsor

More Features


  • Right now, at the beginning of 2012, what are you watching the most closely for its ad and marketing opportunities?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...


Adotas Partnership