Designing a Web Advertising Business Model
Advertising is in a spot of a dilemma when it comes to the modern consumer. We’ve been saturated with broadcast advertising, we’re tuning them out, and mass media are becoming less and less effective over time. The bang for their buck on a good old television commercial is becoming less attractive. We live in a world of noise, with advertisers yelling over the top of each other. And how does yelling their message relate to our attention span? It makes us deaf, or at least it encourages selective listening.
With the falling revenues of dead-tree newspapers (Murdoch’s News Corp newspapers were down from $216m to a mere $7m this year) there’s a rolling dead whale in the publishing industry. Its a time of significant change and whether or not newspapers discover a workable business model, and whether that model involves the same or less revenue than their current expectations, remains to be seen. Naturally, advertising is migrating from television and newspapers onto the web.
Enter the bad ideas… the first of which is to attempt to charge newspaper readers for access to their content. I for one will never bother unless you can lock me out of the word of mouth and sharing aspect of the web community.
Its interesting that another bad idea is on the table as Media Post reports that 37 major websites are getting ready to storm your web experience with bigger, badder online advertising. To get an idea of exactly how large this online advertising will be you should check out the post by Robin Wauters on TechCrunch with relative-sized examples – yes OUCH. Yes, that’s a 418 pixel pushdown (banner advertisement) that rolls up to 66 pixels after five seconds. Close your eyes and imagine the user experience of that banner… perhaps the companies involved feel its a way to overcome the phenomenon of banner blindness by shouting even louder.
My intuitive answer to their question is that detracting from the web experience to shout louder will never work. And I mean never. So if you make bigger advertising that creates further usability obstacles for users, and if they detract from the actual visual design and the ability to find and sort information, then the potential spending consumer will go somewhere else for a better experience. What are needed in this conversation are experience designers like Bill Buxton. Because I don’t see anything in there that pays back for the consumers’ effort. We, the consumer, can go elsewhere, right? And pronto. And for free. That’s a competitive reality of the industry that has to be factored into the advertising business model. How does a company compete with free?
Just as a tip to anyone designing a web advertising business model… find ways of building relationships, loyalty and conversation. If you can get involved in that conversation it will be far more effective than shitting us off with 418 pixel banners. OK so you’re Mercedes Benz, CNN or the New York Times – get over yourself. Stop yelling and listen to those idea guys on the back bench that are coming up with new ideas. The old model has broken.
Bigger advertisements are just shouting louder. You’re wasting your money.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Thanks for your article. Very helpful. I’ve been asked to take a shot at a buisness model for this little web site—I’m an old newspaper guy and graphic designer, so am throwing out useless information as I write this. I like the idea of “conversation and loyalty.”
Best
Jim Disstte
July 20th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Hi Jim
Glad you enjoyed the article, its an interesting time to be in the publishing game. I’d hazard we’ll be seeing the demise of a few more of the major newspapers in the next six to twelve months, so its an interesting time to be looking at the newspaper business model… I think the concensus outside the boardroom seems to be that the current advertising based model won’t work any longer.
But, like all good revolutions, the opportunity to invent something completely left field is out there. The gazillion dollar question. And there’s always great opportunity serving a niche market efficiently, as opposed to a mass market with high overheads and generalised news.