FYI: Sponsoring Content, Context Are Not the Same
ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Sometimes you experience a new product online, and the penny drops on a whole new understanding of how media is changing. I recently had just such an experience, and you should have it too.
The product is called “Feedly,” and it’s available right here for that shiny new Firefox 3 browser you just downloaded.
Feedly rather humbly bills itself as an “attempt … to create a more social and magazine-like start page.” It’s a browser plug-in that delivers the Web 2.0 version of what we used to call a “portal” back in the day, the home page that kicks off your journey through cyberspace each time you start your browser. There are more than a few of these things out in the world already, most of which leverage Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology to compile content from disparate sources on the Web into a single interface. There are great introductions to RSS already, so I’ll skip that to focus on what it all means for the advertising business.
What it means, gentle reader, is that the space where the vast majority of promotional spending is nestled cozily right now is starting to disappear like arctic coastline. Don’t see it? Skeptical? Let me explain.
Generally speaking we’ve always thought of “free” media as being enabled by the marriage of content and advertising. Newspapers paid reporters to write stories, and the money came from auto dealers who wanted to put pictures of Abraham Lincoln next to those stories. Broadcast television networks paid producers for video of people eating tarantula parts, and the money came from pharmaceutical companies who wanted to air clips of affectionate older couples in wheat fields between leg courses. Web publishers paid their own pizza delivery guys, with change from ad networks eager to tell users they’d just “WON!” next to the blog entries on their sites. You get the picture.
The system worked. Life was good.
Then one day the newspapers and the broadcast networks realized they could put the stories and video they’d already paid for on the Web. Ad networks, who of course wanted to tell people they’d won next to that stuff as well, paid the newspapers and the broadcast networks for the privilege of doing so.
Soon nearly all the stories and all the video were on the Web, next to the blog entries that had been there all along. And next to all that stuff was Abe Lincoln; couples in wheat fields, and opportunities for users to win, refinance and connect with their high school sweethearts, hopefully in that order.
Eventually, there was so much stuff online users could no longer process it all. They got tired of roaming the Web, wandered less frequently to places they’d never been, and hunkered down in their familiar online hangouts like mall rats in a food court. It was still possible to get traffic to a new Web site, but it began to cost money. You had to advertise in the food court. Which is great if you own a food court (Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, MySpace…) but not good if you’re a boutique (everyone else.)
Still, the food courts – the portals – had to compete with each other. To do that, they needed content from the boutiques, which the boutiques were eager to provide in return for desperately needed traffic, especially in lieu of cash. Since nobody did exclusive deals with anybody, a standard was needed to make sure the content from boutiques A, B and C could make its way easily onto the portals run by food court landlords 1, 2 and 3.
RSS emerged as that standard, and thus began the RSS revolution. Content – stories, video, blog entries and the rest – increasingly became available outside the Context – the boutique, in our analogy, in which it originated.
Which brings us to today.
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