|
01.21.09
Maximizing The Value Of Your Content
 By
James Cherkoff
When Channel 4's boss, Andy Duncan, writes in the FT, ‘The future must be about maximizing the value of our content,' he undoubtedly speaks for media executives around the planet. So what's the problem? Why has the value of content suddenly become so newsworthy?
The answer lies in the media ratings industry and the challenges it faces from the web and digital technology. Ratings in traditional media are vital as they allow the commercial world to work out what content they should be backing with their marketing bucks. For example Nielsen's Television Ratings, the mother of all such services, which has reported on the TV viewing habits of 9,000 American households for more than sixty years, determines the destiny of $25bn of advertisers' cash annually. Here in the UK the same job is done by BARB, which monitors televisual preferences in 5,100 homes. Both are centralized systems that extrapolate trends from a relatively small group of individuals and use them to create a commercial marketplace, in which C4 and others have been able to operate successfully for many years. However, as Duncan's quote suggests, this marketplace is now under pressure because advertisers question the value of ratings services which have struggled to keep up with the web. Or as one grand media fromage memorably told me: 'We know the bike is broken but it's the only one we've got.' The difficulties arise because the concept of ‘ratings' is very different online. The goal is still to judge the value of content but the similarities stop there. Online ratings services normally refer to...
...an open system where an unlimited number of people vote on content, however serious, however personal, to assign some value and raise the best above the cacophony of the mainstream web. But the aims of the people participating in such systems are not commercial. They are there to express opinion, exchange views, swap tips, garner some kudos or one of many other social aims. Call it the share-and-compare economy, where people share items with their online social networks and compare what they are offered back.
Digg is probably the largest example of such a social ratings marketplace. It's based on a simple voting engine that allows users to ‘digg' content up or ‘bury' it below. Such is its success that some webmasters fear being featured on the site in case their technology buckles under the pressure of attention. This is known as The Digg Effect and is created by the site's massive subscriber base all arriving at the door of your website simultaneously. It has been estimated that the Digg front page alone originates 54,000 clicks per hour or 1.3M clicks per day. Each one an online rating.
That's not to say 'online good, offline bad'. Both have their blind spots. Traditional ratings systems still employ methods that sound hopelessly outdated, such as the two million paper diaries Nielsen uses every year, into which respondents manually describe their viewing habits. But if the problem offline is plenty of business models but not enough viewers, online the reverse is true. There are plenty of 'funny numbers' in online video and other web media which go unchecked, as Jim Louderback succinctly describes.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
James Cherkoff is a Director of Collaborate Marketing, a consultancy in London which helps companies in Europe and the US operate in networked media environments. He is editor of the blog Modern Marketing and contributes articles to the FT, BBC, Independent, and the Guardian. James speaks at conferences and events around Europe and the US, including MIT MediaLab and Reboot in Denmark. You can here him here. When he isn't knee deep in the blog-world he is likely to be discussing Arsenal FC or playing peek-a-boo.
|
EuroWebPro is brought to you by: