Audience, not revenue, is the problem
Cory Bergman May 28th, 2007
Terry Heaton points out a great quote from a senior Google exec:
“(Google) accepts that some projects will never have an associated revenue stream.”
A Microsoft biz dev manager told me something similar a few months ago, much to my surprise. What a concept! Media companies these days are up against the gun to create new digital products that drive revenue, but as Heaton explains, “Revenue isn’t the problem; audience is the problem. And we need to fix the problem.” So how do you do that? Empower a few smart web people in your company to conceptualize, build and launch cool stuff that users will like. Do this independently of your existing product development team, which is scrambling to keep your core products competitive (and is reacting to short-term revenue opportunities). Give this new team the time, resources and technology they need, without the influence of television thinking. The revenue will follow. And at the heart of all this is finding the smart web people in the first place. If you need a refresher on the urgency for local TV to do this, read this and this.
5 Comments Add your own
1. thedetroitchannel | May 29th, 2007 at 6:35 am
ok, i mentioned a large campaign a week ago being run by the local paper in which a CEO-turned-john hodgeman wannbe tries to convince the shrinking tv audience to forget about their core product (the paper) and instead look to them as the local “media” company.
unless the alexa (statsaholic) chart is loading in an inverted fashion, the campaign ain’t a workin’. check it. it looks alot like many tv station site’s graphs i’ve been watching.
even the domain names need some help: detnews(dot)com and freep(dot)com.
truth be told, they should reconsider the entire campaign and hire a YOUNG slender guy in a t shirt.
2. David Johnson | May 29th, 2007 at 7:45 am
hmmmm… i’ve gone around on this one. i’m creative, and i want to play and see others play and win. but, i also ride herd over a server ranch and i gotta tell you, traffic ain’t free. i’ve had a lot of -dare i say- brilliant ideas that were too far ahead of the curve that had to fold because even though we had audience, we couldn’t find buyers for those audiences.
business logic can be just as creative as application logic or presentation logic. products that win find a service need and market/audience niche and grow all three pillars simultaneously. the danger in preaching the grow audience mantra in short form is people will take it as a free license to go wild while others greenlight them not because they get it, but because they are afraid that they have to do something.
the first big question in building audience is what kind of audience do you want to attract, and then how can you monetize that audience once you’ve got them.
3. Cory | May 29th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Yes, we still need focus when building an audience. For local media, it’s local information.
The problem is that every project that’s pitched is evaluated on revenue potential before a single line of code is written. It may be the start of a terrific idea, but the revenue prism kills it before it evolves. I’ve witnessed this happen again and again in TV stations, and that’s why we’re losing online. Instead of creating great content products, we’re creating revenue vehicles that attract short-term advertising and then “poof” disappear because they didn’t deliver long-term for the advertisers.
4. David Johnson | May 29th, 2007 at 10:21 am
i see your point and agree. there’s a standing culture — air it and move on or today’s paper is tomorrow’s fishwrap — that is so short-term focused and deeply ingrained that it is very hard to see potential in long-term projects or even mid-term shelf life. and the expectations for online are often painfully unrealistic.
5. Rob | May 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Cory … the pain in my forehead comes from beating my head against a wall in regard to your last comment. I pitch content ideas and the first question almost always asked deals with revenue potential.
You build the content first, if the audience responds then you have the revenue opportunity waiting in the wings to capitalize on the audience. You can’t build a revenue channel and expect the content to meet the requirement of the advertiser to have their product or service viewed. Compelling content drives the web.
Compelling advertising rarely drives content with the exception of, say, the Super Bowl and user-generated brand-name ad creation contests.
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