Remember back in the Paleolithic era of the Internet, when people said things like "paradigm shift" and "information superhighway"? Back about that same time, it was the informed wisdom that
"content is king."
Marshall McLuhan observed that the content of any new medium is the previous medium. Thus the printing press saw the typesetting and publication of oral histories, cinema
led to films of books, and films became early content on television. So of course when the Internet came around, "old" media became Internet content -- including newspapers, magazines, radio
programming, TV programming, even the medium of retail.
Still, online we assumed that there was some value to branded, professional, differentiated quality content. Say what you will
about the death of the newspaper, you go to the Web site of the
New York Times and you know what you're getting, thanks to 158 years of brand equity.
But there appears to be a
movement afoot in the digital metrics space to attempt to deliver the audience of a specific publisher site -- let's say the
Wall Street Journal -- by finding the people comprising that
entity's audience across a myriad of other, long-tail, far-cheaper sites. In a recent article entitled "A Pricing Revolution Looms in Online Advertising,"
Business Week notes, "WSJ.com,
for example, charges advertisers as much as $64.60 to show a banner ad to 1,000 viewers... But what if marketers could find new ways to reach the same audience-with ads on sites that won't charge
nearly as much? What if those other ads cost as much as 95% less?"
What indeed? What happens if the business of advertising becomes so commoditized that it no longer matters where or
how you reach an audience, only that you reach them as cheaply as possible? Suddenly, the vehicle becomes irrelevant. Invariably, if you follow this to its logical conclusion, much of the money
that has funded the creation of content for the last 150 years will dry up. If it stops being economically feasible to BE the
Wall Street Journal online, then there will be no
Wall
Street Journal audience to reach elsewhere.
In this age of Web 2.0, where content is portable and everyone is blogging, vlogging, friending and tweeting, it is important to remember
that much of the content that comprises Web 2.0 is in fact good old branded content -- forwarded, linked, posted or retweeted. In fact, I just checked TwitterFon to see how many of the latest
tweets from people I follow are references to traditional media. I can't help but note the first one I see is from our chairman Gian Fulgoni, and it says "Advertisers pay more to reach
consumers." Turns out it is a
MediaPost article that was posted on Facebook, and then tweeted by
Gian. I see tweets referring me to
PR Week, MSNBC, the
Wall Street Journal, and an online radio station -- and I only follow 36 people. The point being, pull the rug out
from all that traditional branded content, and you've really pulled the rug out from most of the Web.
Does content matter? I'm convinced that it does. I've asked this question
for years, and it is a simple one: If I reach the same person with the same ad in two different vehicles, does the ad perform differently depending on the vehicle? This is a fertile ground for
testing, and I hope to be able to do some work in this area soon. And if you've done any research in this area -- the impact of vehicle on ad effectiveness - please let me know about it.
Consumers have relationships with marketer brands, but also relationships with branded media content. The value of these relationships is embodied in the concept of vehicle engagement
(as distinct from ad engagement.) The premise of vehicle engagement is that the job of the media vehicle is not just to attract an audience -- like a watermelon attracts flies on a summer day --
but also to engage that audience in a way that adds value, providing a halo effect to the advertisers reaching the audience within that content. If I am a loyal
Wall Street Journal
reader (or visitor to wsj.com), exposure to your ad in the
Journal or on the digital version makes a difference in how that ad works on me.
I worry that we might be in danger of
moving from "content is king" to "content is irrelevant" in 10 short years. This is not a trip any of us should be anxious to take. The consumer relationship with branded content is an important
part of the media planning, buying and selling equation. Marketers are extremely careful in selecting marketing partners in every other part of the marketing equation -- in sponsorships,
co-branding, trade deals and so on. The media brands that you choose to partner with are every bit as important.