That's what PepsiCo North America Director of Digital Shiv Singh championed this morning during his Social Media Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe.
So what is it? Basically, instead of simply
paying for the direct impressions generated by a display advertising buy, Singh says it should also incorporate the ancillary impressions generated by "shared" media, or what social media and PR pros
call "earned" media. You know, the kind that consumers circulate among themselves via social media, retweeting, etc.
"Imagine that, we're used to thinking in just the CPM or clickthrough rate
model," Singh said, adding that he's now asking publishers to think about something new: "Don't just tell me about impressions, tell me about what the sharing capability is. That's the model to think
about."
"A few publishers are already doing this," he said citing BuzzFeed, which will guarantee 1.5 times the number of user shared impressions relative to the ones he buys directly from his
paid display ad exposures.
Singh said he's also doing a beta with The Huffington post using a similar approach.
"If a user comes to site, reads an article, shares the article on
Twitter, my brand name carries through into the tweet as well," Singh said, adding, "I'm not just paying for that media, I'm paying for that sharing as well."
"Unfortunately, there are not
many publishers doing this today, but I can't wait for the day I'm talking ot the New York Times, or another publisher, and they are going to guarantee me X number of impressions, and X number off
organic impressions as well. That's the impression plus model."