the bigdumbHoosier Archive - 01.18.2001
Feeding the Web
In The State of the Internet on SomethingAwful, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka raises some important issues about the advertising crisis facing Internet media producers. If you create content for the net, or if you use the net to get content (and obviously, you do), the advertising crisis matters to you.
In theory it would be nice to get access to all kinds of great content - news, reference materials, music, art, entertainment, opinions and editorials - without the commercialism that accompanies advertising. But nobody has figured out quite how that would happen. Even without any revenue stream at all we'd probably still get some content moving on to the net, but it would certainly be less. Personally, I've produced content for pay, and content on my own, there's no doubt that the cash flow helped me to do a better job both in terms of quantity and quality. And when one is paid for producing some content, it's easier to produce some free stuff too. I think better when I've paid my house payment, and cash flow helps keep my equipment up-to-date and working.
trust me
But, as Rich Kyanka shows, the advertising model being applied to the Web is critically dysfunctional. He says that it's primarily because advertisers don't have enough demographic information about who's seeing the ad. He points out that television networks can provide detailed profiles of the viewers for particular programs, and that helps advertisers target their campaigns. In theory, it would seem easier to collect demographic information from web users than from television viewers, simply because the web is a two-way medium. But privacy advocates have a fit when they find out about information collection procedures. Unscrupulous web site operators have certainly done some bad things with this personal information, but some privacy advocates seem upset even when the data appears relatively harmless.
The solution to this problem seems fairly obvious to me - let's 'do what we always done'. Give the job to a disinterested third party polling agency: say, perhaps Nielsen. Families have been cooperating with Nielsen for decades, as they attach various little spy gizmos to the family telly to track their viewing habits. People get accustomed to that after a couple of days and don't feel that their being intruded upon. I think that's because they trust Nielsen not to reveal anything private about them. Nielsen (or a similar organization) serves as a sort of privacy gatekeeper, and if they were found to have breached that trust their company would be seriously damaged. The present problem is that we don't trust web site operators to behave ethically. Because they often don't behave ethically.
click through this
There's another, related subject that Rich Kyanka doesn't delve into, but I think it's critical. It's all this silliness about 'click-through'. Advertisers have a web site (hooray!) and they're real excited about it. Remember when you worked on your first web site? Gosh, the whole world is coming to visit, I'd better put on a clean tee shirt! Advertisers felt this same excitement, plus they were sure their web site would make them filthy stinking rich. They abandoned all of the reasons they'd advertised before: to create brand recognition, remind people of the way they enjoyed, say a Billy-Kola ®, last time they had one, and of course to convey information about their product or service. Suddenly, the only purpose of an advertisement was to make a sale. Now. On their spiffy new web site.
According to this logic, the only function of the content producer's web site is to attract people to come there, see a little banner ad for Bob's Computer Services, click on the ad and go to Bob's web site and buy a new computer. Why should Bob pay for people who saw his ad and didn't come (right away) and buy (right away)?
This logic was accepted across the industry with barely a whimper. But it is deeply subversive. Have you ever clicked on a billboard? Have you ever clicked on a newspaper ad, even a full page? Have you ever clicked on a yellow pages ad? Radio ad? Never, never, never. Do we expect people to pull a U'y on freeway and head straight to Bob's Computer Services? No, presumably they'll drop by sometime when they need a new computer and it's convenient. The point is that now they know about Bob's Computer Store. So what madman decided that content web sites have any chance to succeed if their goal is to draw people in for some kind of content, but they only get paid if people leave right away and do something completely different - that is, go shopping. How long would "Frazier" last if they only got paid if people got up at the first commercial break and went out to shop for cars. Their ratings would suffer, I would think. A bonus for click through is okay, but to receive compensation only for click-throughs is not a workable model.
