Inspire

Business and Revenue Models for Online Media: Options

Great post on the Long Tail blog by Chris Anderson, Fred Wilson and Michael Cader on the business or revenue model options for online media properties. With strong relevance for offline media/events and digital marketing as well. Below the business model options.

I would like to see the category 'research / metadata ' included here as most advertisers are quite interested in the metadata / research within (social) media companies. This goed beyond the stated "Sales of User Information" below as it includes all the information/comments/widgets a user associates with a topic, brand and/or product. These insights can be used for trendwatching, emergent co-marketing & partnering deals and new business development.

"1. CPM ads ("cost per thousand views"; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)
2. CPC ads ("cost per click"; think Google ads)
3. CPT ads ("cost per transaction)
4. Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)
5. Subscription revenues
6. Affiliate revenues (think: Amazon Associates)
7. Rental of subscriber lists
8. Sale of information (selling data about users--aggregate/statistical or individual--to third parties)
9. Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)
10. Licensing of content (syndication)
11. Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or Reddit but also Open Source Marketing in broader terms)
12. Upgraded service/content (ed: aka "freemium")
13. Alternate output (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)
14. Custom services/feeds
15. Live events
16. "Souvenirs"/"Merchandise"
17. Co-branded spinoff
18. Cost Per Install (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)
19. E-commerce (selling stuff directly on your website)
20. Sponsorships (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)
21. Listings (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)
22. Paid Inclusion (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)
23. Streaming Audio Advertising (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)
24. Streaming Video Advertising (like streaming audio but in video)
25. API Fees (charging third parties to access your API)"

LIFT Conference 2008 Highlights Part 4: Nokia Shows Great Ideas for New Mobile Phones

If you like mobile phones/internet, you will definitely like the following creative presentation from LIFT conference 2008 by Nokia with extensive anthropological research around the globe. Inspiring !

Event Update: Second Mobile Monday Amsterdam and PICNIC07 / Cross Media Week Amsterdam

Just finished my favorite week of this year encompassing two key events : Mobile Monday Amsterdam (MoMoAMS) and PICNIC / PICNIC07 (also known as Cross Media Week Amsterdam). In one word: inspiring ! Both were in the second edition. Below some recommendations and sharing from my side...

Mobile Monday Amsterdam : Mobile Communities
As one of the founders and organisers I found it very thrilling to see around 230 internet, mobile and marketing professionals in one room. Among them many of the leading twitterazi, thinkers and innovators in the Netherlands. The presentation by Tomi T Ahonen - author of Digital Korea and Communities Dominate Brands and leading mobile thinker (Mobile as the 7th Mass Medium) - was impressive. You can find in presentation and video format on our blog : presentation and video by Tomi T Ahonen on Mobile Communities. Some take-away case studies: Kart Writer, Flirtomatic, CyWorld, Any Question Answered (AQA), mobile idle screen tickers and OCR recognition/translation software for mobile phones. The presentation above contains more mobile community examples than the video. It also includes the best mobile internet sources around as recommended by leading thinker Tomi T Ahonen.

PICNIC / PICNIC07

• Presentation of Jyri Engestrom from Jaiku the next stage for social objects/networks/graphs and FaceRank instead of PageRank. FaceRank is based on social proximity (same connections), physical proximity (offline closeness), shared social objects and shared taste/values. Jyri was our first keynote spreaker at Mobile Monday Amsterdam. I was enthrilled by his deepening of his vision in just a few months. Definitely, one of the leading thinkers on social networks in my view.
• PhotoSynth with a incredible zoom-in and zoom-out function with breathtaking beauty and precision. Good to combine with Pixsta and Etsy.com
• Pablos Holman with a terrific and funny talk on different practical hacking stories and cases
• Stefan Sagmeister with an outstanding and highly creative overview of his work, just stunning !
• Alex Steffen with heartfelt stories on the environment and practical and positive case studies helping our world to be a better place. This video from TED by Steffen shows us the way
• Polar Rose for content analysis and searching photos
• Jack Meyers on branding and marketing in virtual worlds. En passant he gave a terrific overview of digital marketing trends worldwide, even on behavioral targeting !
• David Burden with a sublime presentation on the Metaverse Roadmap, Second Life, Augmented Reality, Mirror Worlds/Google Earth and Lifelogging. And how they interact and converge. One second favorite speech of this great week. Thrilling ! Soon you can download his presentation in this link from Platform Virtuele Werelden (PVW) and Jack Meyers prezzie is already here. Staggering to see a live presentation of real-time flight information fed into Second Life from Google Earth, opens up huge possibilities. Also, communicating with your 2L avatar using RSS. David will speak later this year on the Metaverse Summit where I can see him again :-)
• Portable Social Networks: a great workshop with Jyri Engestrom, Marc Canter, Dick Hardt, Biz Stone, Yme Bosma and many other leading thinkers. This was highly content driven (moving/synching/federating social networks, Identity 2.0, microformats, openID, lock-in, business models) and inspiring. I felt like witnessing the leading edge worldwide in social networking brainstorming for yet unknown solutions to complex, urgent and important problems and issues. No final answers as yet while I left the room but it was very special. I really hope these kind of sessions will become more commonplace going forward.
• Dennis Crowley on social networks, tagging the real world with cases like Sharkrunner and Plundr. His prezzie resonated strongly with the one from David Burden integrating real time, real data within games, virtual world and alternate reality games. 
• Nicolas Nova on augmented reality and twittering with your cat :-D  Here you can see his blog
• Adam Greenfield on Urban Landscapes, Gaming and Computing. Mobile Devices + Shared Visualisations+Tagging = Social Object = Jyri's presentation :) Extending the insights of Jyri Engestrom on social objects on location as a social object. More later in my blog and presentations
• eLens from MIT as an insightful example of city guides with personal and social overlays
• The Urban Garden: self organised bus stop with user generated content/tagging, craigslist data, narrowcasting and feeds from ubiquitous computing
• Emotion Maps and Biosensing
• Ben Cerveny on serious gaming, game culture, simulations, multidimensional and visual representations of pervasive and ubiquitous computing combined with augmented reality and GeoWeb. This was my ultimate highlight of this week. Shivers all over ! Complexity Science applied to games and real life. An extension of David Weinbergers' presentation on Everything is Miscallenous integrating different external data sources and categorizations on real life and serious gaming case studies. Here your can see his video from the LIFT Conference this year. His talk on PICNIC07 was different however, in my view even much better.

And of course all the dinners, talks and networking before, in-between en afterwards. Thanks to all who contributed, helped and organized ! See you soon at another inspiring web 2.0/3.0 or mobile event. I am planning to go to the next Mobile Monday Amsterdam (november), LeWeb3 (december) and Metaverse Summit 2007 (december; as a speaker, my first international speech on an inspiring event on lifelogging, augmented reality, web 3.0 and virtual worlds together with a.o. Jamais Cascio and David Burden).

Book Recommendation: Theory U from C. Otto Scharmer from MIT

I am reading a remarkable, high-impact, deep, original, inspiring and profound book from MIT called Theory U written by C. Otto Scharmer. It is difficult to summarize this outstanding book due to its enormous richness but in my view and experience it is in the league of the works from Jared Diamond, Kevin Kelly and Howard Rheingold. It is a spiritual, personal and business journey combined. Very special indeed. And it resonates with an incredible amount of my own experiences and observations, especially within my intensive Twitter community as a transformative, open ended journey since March this year.

I just can't stop reading it, every page is so full with ideas. Some hints on topics: blind spots, growth, spirituality, innovation, creativity, leadership, change management, web 2.0, globalization, communities, learning, smart mobs, evolution of organizations, democracy, capitalism, open source, emergence, complexity and many examples from private life, politics (Iraq) and business.

Referenced leading authors are among others (be prepared for a long shot): Brian Arthur, Argyris, Senge, Brand, Carr, Castells, Christensen, Coase, Collins and Porras, Dalai Lama, de Geus, Florida, Friedman, Fukuyama, Gladwell, Goethe, Habermas, Hagel, Hamel, Handy, Hawken, Heidegger, von Hippel, Maslow, Minsky, Mintzberg, Morgan, Nietzsche, Nonaka, Peters, Prahalad, Putman, Sen, Sheldrake, Soros, Steiner, Tolle,   Sun Tzu, Varela, Trompenaars, Weick, Wheatley and Wilber. And all combined in a structured and new way...amazing.

Highly recommended ! This clearly is my favorite book of 2007, no doubt about that :-D

My Own Presentation on Trends, Digital Media, Marketing, Digital Marketing and Communication: Why Identity, Authenticity and Creativity Will Dominate Our Lives

Here is my presentation on different trends, digital media, web 2.0, web 3.0, marketing, digital marketing and communication/branding. Dutch only as yet, English one will follow soon. Focus is on different technological, environmental, economic and political views (macro perspective) as well as psychological, social and cultural views (micro perspective) and how they intersect, converge and reinforce in many different ways on different levels of analysis.

Key take away: Identity (knowing your intrinsic motivation, purpose and talents), Authenticity (being) and Creativity (doing) as reinforcing themes and values in the emerging and increasingly open space of the next web(s), biotech and ubiquitous computing where the all-encompassing and increasing availability of more granular and personal data of all sorts make the invisible visible and explicit to the benefit of ourselves, our social network, our peers and the market/global brain/humanity as a whole. The essential used to be invisible to the eye....until now and it will bring about massive transformations for the benefit of us all.

Hope you'll enjoy it.

On Publicis and Other Classic Ad Agencies and Their Positioning Within The Digital Marketing Ecosystem

The New York Times has some news on Publicis (a.o. Digitas) and how they envision the evolution of digital marketing. In my former posts on this blog (see the eMarketing tag on the right side of this blog) I shared my view on how Marketing 2.0 might be look like on a tool level, the impact of the Google-Doubleclick merger and the evolution of digital marketing and the key underlying principles of Marketing 2.0 and the meltdown of old media and their outdated ad models. Below some quotes from the NYT post.

My 2 cents:

• I like the idea of personalizing ads with ad variants, this clearly is one of the ways digital marketing will move forward as this will boost online ad ROI. As I wrote on my analysis of the Google-Doubleclick merger, I believe we will soon witness automated integration of clickstream data of users in different digital marketing tools like banners and e-mails.
• I wonder how Publicis can integratie advertisers' consumer data in their solution
• If you have the pull (not push) data from consumers, you are in the driver seat in the evolving digital marketing space. Clickstream data on search engines - my take-away from the outstanding book The Search by John Battelle - (albeit PC-based, mobile, iTV, Augmented Reality apps, 3D Web or gaming) are key in this respect in my view. So the question looms how Publicis will compete on this level with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. In my view, Google clearly is in the lead on most fields at this point in time
  
• Publicis assumes there will be a separation between online media and online ad agencies. In my view Google, Yahoo and Microsoft see this differently. Search engines are a key connector of consumer purchase intentions and online media, connecting content and commerce.
• Unfortunately, the vision of Publicis doesn't seem to take the impact of social networks and social networking on the digital marketing space into account (this is pull advertising as well like buzz marketing and open source marketing). Same applies for user generated online ads (and its variants). Their vision doesn't resonate enough in my view with the Wikinomics principles: openness, peering and sharing. They do dig the Global Operations part though
• What is the impact of open source ad networks and what is the role of Publicis in this respect ?

Looking forward to seeing your views on this topic. Thanks.

"Digitas uses data from companies like Google and Yahoo and customer data from each advertiser to develop proprietary models about which ads should be shown the first time someone sees an ad, the second time, after a purchase is made, and so on. The ads vary, depending on a customer’s age, location and past exposure to the ads.

Digitas executives say that consumers end up with a better experience — even a service — if the ads they are shown are relevant and new. “We now know how many times they’ve seen this ad, so stop annoying them,” said Mark Beeching, executive vice president and worldwide chief creative officer of Digitas. “The more you can standardize and automate in terms of making different versions, hallelujah. That money should be spent creating more content.” Along with automation, low-cost workers abroad will help create more versions of ads."

On BANG Convergence and Three Other Key Value Drivers in the Coming Decades

Global Business Network is one of my favorite sources. To me Peter Schwartz, Stewart Brand and Eamonn Kelly are leading thinkers. In this short PDF document Eamonn Kelly - author of the highly acclaimed (futuristic) book Powerful Times - sheds some light on four key drivers of value creation in the coming decades.

The reasons for posting this one are the importance of the Gift Economy (see also the recent remarks by Kevin Kelly, Yochai Benkler and Don Tapscott), the revitalization of the Physical Infrastructure Economy (creative new insight) and most importantly the coming BANG convergence. BANG convergence is bigger than the current Digital Convergence and it relates to Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes. This is one of my favorite topics for a very long time as a result of reading the book Complexity. A life changer to me ! After reading this book in 1993, I was lured to the Santa Fe Institute as an inspiring knowledge platform for BANG convergence. It inspired me to read great books by Stuart Kauffman and Ilya Prigogine. And when we watch all those outstanding videos on TED we can see by our own senses why the BANG convergence is the biggest value creator of our times. 

How Does Marketing and Advertising 2.0 Look Like ? A Suggestion

Some musings from my side on the evolution of advertising, communications and marketing. In my view most new tools are about pull and targeted push instead of broadcast push tools. Looking forward to your ideas on this topic.

Here we go:
1) link baiting articles for Digg, eKudos, Reddit
2) Search Ads
3) SEO
4) opt-in targeted and personalized newsletters
5) iTV ads
6) viral marketing games/quizzes/contests
7) opt-in RSS ads
8) targeted affiliate marketing (ClickDistrict and RightMedia/RMX)
9) offline and online events/webcasts (like Apples' product announcements)
10) co-marketing (alliances with other vendors)
11) using digital platforms transcending marketing campaigns
12) own weblog
13) presence on 3D worlds like Second Life supplying tools for learning, networking, research, entertainment and creation
14) targeted ads within Joost
15) RFID (also infrared barcodes, QR codes, normal barcodes, shotcodes etc.) via billboards and physical shopping environments
16) presence on Google Maps and Google Earth via Placemarks in KML (pull)
17) implicit, relevant ads in games
18) buzz marketing in sociale netwerks
19) Twitter en Jaiku ads (opt-in)
20) presence on WikiCompany, Wikipedia and Citizendium
21) giving complete answers on Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers and other social search solutions within the domain of the advertiser
22) offering widgets for integration in blogs and social networking profiles
23) opening your data and commercials (albeit selectively) for remixes, mash-ups and user generated content/viral effects
24) your own UStream or Kyte TV channel
25) initiate or participate in platforms for the community or world at large (social and ecological)
26) your own social network via Ning
27) creating relevant and special videos/speeches/articles and publish in key mass media and YouTube, TED, Fora.tv
28) opt-in web survey leads in third party sites
29) Bluetooth ads (pull)

On Branding, Advertising, Communications, Marketing, Complexity, Ambiguity, Chance, Authenticity, Perfection and Conversations

Grant McCracken from MIT - in my view one of the most interesting bloggers on economics, anthropology, marketing and culture - inspires me with this post on new branding tactics. Highly recommended reading on the role of chance, complexity and letting go in branding and brands.

Personally, I do believe branding has changed the last 10 years due to increasing complexity and innovative pace, media fragmentation and proliferation and more critical and (commercially) educated end users/consumers. The Cluetrain Manifesto is a classic and visionary book in this respect. We move from a centralized, top-down, repetitive, one-dimensional, controlled, perfected, one-2-many, reductionistic, modernistic view on branding towards a new model of decentralized, egalitarian, multi-faceted/dimensional, holistic, many-2-many, postmodern conversations allowing for remixability, open source creation, interpretation, chance, ambiguity, serendipity and complexity. This is in line with Complexity Science elaborating on themes like self organization, emergence, complex systems, order in chaos etc. Additionally, it resonates with the fascinating concept of Paradessence - a paradoxical essence meaning that every successful product had an inherent paradox which is accepted, communicated, leveraged and celebrated in its richness. As a result, it is more authentic and real. Indeed, brands are becoming more like friends after all ;-) More human with more color, more personality, more depth, more surprises, more layers and more vulnerability. Brands become more biological and organic. In my view, these new brands and views on branding will trickle down from the innovators, youngsters, professionals, influential bloggers and highly educated people towards the mainstream consumers within 10 years.

"Have we ever used chance to create brands? Certainly as we embrace new and less controllable kinds of marketing devices (open source marketing, viral marketing, experiential marketing, networking, buzz management, guerrilla marketing, and so on) we embrace chance whether we want to or not.

The trick here is to mix lots more elements into the ad or the campaign than we normally do. And this means mustering our courage and hewing to a course that will test the mettle of every marketing manager. The old rule of marketing was of course sell that unique selling proposition often and loudly.  Mixing lots of interpretive options into the signal, this is a departure for which some of us are intellectual and emotionally unprepared.

What we want are brands that invite our involvement and then reward it. Involvement takes complexity and the willingness to open the brand to a variety of interpretations and the possibility that some of these interpretations will prove a little insipid. What we are doing here is buying sublime brand moments at the cost of some that are ill formed and unsuccessful. We keep saying that marketing is a conversation. Perhaps its time to make brands creatures worthy of talking to.

What I mean is that we consider creating brands through the "rigorous removal of human agency".  We must choose the elements with care, but the "folds," the outcome, should be fortuitous.

In this event, the brand message would have to unfold in the moment, and each time a little differently, until, hey presto, perfection for this fleeting moment is achieved. If this where an ad with several elements, an ad that was constructed more like noir, with complexity and ambivalence. Sometimes we would see the ad one way, sometimes another. 

The work that Arnold did for Volkswagen in the 1990s, the car traveling through a summer evening with kids who decide not to get out and go to the party. The work that Wieden + Kennedy does for Nike also qualifies. The spot that shows a girl who walks to work without ever touching the ground. I would watch it a little differently every time, sometimes it was simply odd. But sometimes it was close to sublime."

On Design, Narrative, Simplicity, Usability and Ambient Devices

Highly recommended reading on design, usability, simplicity, paradox of choices (Barry Schwartz bestseller) and decision making processes of end users in this post by Dmitri Siegel on Adobe. I agree on simplicity in most cases (see also current Web 2.0 successes and startups) but when you develop a portal or eCommerce site with millions of users it is a different story. In my view, the use of user centered design including online personas and their site scenarios as well as link rich homepages might do the job. And in my view the remarks on context and narrative are very interesting (quotes below).  

"Peter Morville’s book Ambient Findability is focused on how to make useful information more accessible and present in our environment. He observes how technologies like GPS, RFIDs and meta-tagging are changing how we think about accessibility. With his background in information science, Morville introduces the work of Ambient Devices whose motto is “information everywhere.”  Ambient Devices has a small line of products that seamlessly insert bits of useful information into everyday life. For example, they are developing an umbrella that glows when rain is forecast and a watch that reminds you when to take medications.   

The 2006 Simplicity Event One held this October by Philips brought together many of these strains of research. The expo featured exploratory designs for products aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles. The concept products take the narrative context of the user’s life as their starting place. For example In Form is a set of motivational body measurement tools, linked to an information display. The display keeps people better informed about their physical condition—weight, fat, hydration and body shape—through personal history records, and tailored advice. Body Cycle is a thermometer linked to a display mirror, which provides interactive advice to help women monitor and manage ovulation, fertility, and menstruation. Making this useful information vivid and findable means that it is likely to play a significant role in the user’s decision-making process.

These projects build on the work Philips is already doing in its CareLab. According to Ivo Lurvink, CEO of Philips Consumer Healthcare Solutions, “The whole idea of the lab is to deepen our insight into how the elderly and chronically ill deal with the new medical technologies.” By conceiving of their customers as protagonists in their own lives, Philips was able to see how important the role of context and setting is in decision-making. Carelab makes recommendations by emitting a steady stream of information into the user’s environment rather than delivering a huge glut of data when the user is least equipped to deal with it. This allows the user to make simple decisions in context rather than tackling a complex, overwhelming decision at a moment of crisis. This narrative of integrated decision-making lowers the anxiety surrounding these high-stakes decisions.            

Humans have a complicated relationship to choice and decision-making. On the one hand, we cherish our freedom and value free will. On the other hand, our innate decision-making instincts are irrational and easily manipulated. In order for interfaces and applications to truly help people make more responsible, abiding decisions, designers need to acknowledge that different types of decisions require different solutions. This point was made particularly salient by a recent RAND Corporation study of web sites providing medical information, which found that, “with rare exceptions they are doing an equally poor job.” Most interfaces either encourage maximizing that leads to discontent and uncertainty, or they reinforce the human brain’s expedient but irrational decision-making tendencies. Interfaces designed specifically for high-stakes decision-making like health care need to transcend these shortcomings by being simple, addressing the narrative of use, and making useful information findable."