Web 2.0 Sites and Ad Dollars

By Dennis D. McDonald

In Analysis: Why Some Web 2.0 Sites Will Never Attract Big Ad Dollars, Edelman's Steve Rubel discusses data that suggests that certain "web 2.0" sites have poor ad selling potential. Here's a quote:

Based on a informal analysis, my belief is that many online communities, bloggers, social networks will never attract a critical mass of advertisers because they are not set up properly to attract visitors who have a commercial intent to buy products and services.

Rubel then goes on to say that "search" will ultimately serve as the basis for metrics that will support ad revenue models.

I'm not exactly clear what he means by relying on "search" since there seems to be a difference between people who come to a web site based on search and people who come to a web site based on some sort of prior relationship. That relationship-based behavior is what many "web 2.0" sites emphasize and what many marketers crave as they implement "communities" and other stickiness- and engagement-inducing "social" features. 

Here is the comment I left on Rubel's original blog post; I recommend reading the other comments as well:

I'm not convinced that Search is the only way to go in relation to the phenomena you're trying to measure, particularly the "long tail" stuff. I'd say you have to measure both Search and Relationship. I base this partly on what I see with my own blog. Visitors basically come from two sources. First, they use a search engine. That's about 60-70% of the traffic. The rest come due to a link or relationship. I put those two in the same category since they indicate a prior familiarity.

One set of visitors comes because of Search. Only a small proportion of them do I think find anything relevant based on my review of their keywords. So most of those folks leave without really engaging with the content I have to offer.

The smaller group come here because of relationships -- they subscribe or they use a link from a (potentially) trusted source. Their expectations, I suspect, are quite a bit different from the "Search" crowd and I figure this also will help drive their results.

In summary, a visitor's prior knowledge and familiarity with what a site is publishing will predispose that visitor to certain actions and outcomes. So I would think that such factors might be relevant to setting ad rates.

Whether we are taking about a Search-based or a Relationship-based visitor, a major determinant of ad receptiveness will be the visitor's state of mind and predisposition, what I call "purpose of visit." Whoever comes up with an effective low cost way for measuring purpose-of-visit data together with visit-access-route and on-site-behavior data will be very popular, I think.

• To see a list of other posts related to "metrics," click here.

 

Comments

[Peter Turner]

Dennis

Back in 2005, while serving with an international computing society we completed a business plan for our digital library that would guide us in its continued transformation as a vital product for our stakeholders. One of the chief outcomes from that effort was the recognition of what the next evolution of this library ought to be - a networked information resource.

This library was a jewel in the crown. Becoming one of the first digital libraries that generated revenue from its archived publishing operations, the library went through a number of innovations.

But we saw the need to innovate again only this time we felt that the digital library experience was going to fundamentally change. Instead of “search and find” we felt a digital library was going to “put people in touch with knowledge and how to apply it.”

That “solutions-oriented” experience was likely to combine a static archive of digital peer-review content with the rich contextual value of real people with real experience and expertise. If we could combine the two, it would add dramatic product differentiation by turning a traditional library experience on its head. The value our library would ultimately serve would be helping people “find and apply” solutions to their personal needs and possibly create an experience even Google might have trouble replicating through the leverage of our members’ technical expertise and passion.

So I wonder if the true killer app is not going to be a hybrid experience combining traditional "search and find" with "find and apply." Sort of the last mile argument for delivering value and maybe better ad revenue.