Baby mined
Commentary: Marketers dig for new audiences
By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
I recently created a blog for my two-week-old nephew on Google's Blogger, and within minutes he received a response from a woman to check out her site.
I was aghast at the quickness of her post, and the irrelevancy of it.
I thought: "Clearly, he's 21 inches, 7 pounds and his occupation is a baby. What is she thinking?"
I realized soon enough that her post was likely some form of marketing she sent out to every new blogger. While as insidious as this may seem, we really can't object to these overtures.
I created the site as a way for family and friends to easily view my nephew's first week, first bath, first Christmas, etc. It's far better than receiving jpegs of pictures that clog our email boxes.
But the convenience does create a transparency that's costly, as many parents fear, I'm sure. My nephew and the growing world of wired infants with their own email addresses and Web domains may be the youngest targets of solicitations, for better or for worse. See New York Times story about wired infants
So for the cost of being that target from birth, my nephew and his parents, or any blogger or small publisher for that matter, might as well take advantage of the advertisements that can supplement the cost of being transparent and even the fees for monthly Internet access.
If the digitally-savvy-name-my-preferences-take-control-and-I-am-because-I-blog generation grows up viewing and experiencing the world as they designed it, they'll likely enjoy controlling, choosing and getting paid for the advertisements they see. By the time they reach their teenage years, it may very well be the advertising paradigm.
As long as these ads are entertaining, relevant and the receiver gets a fee as a lead generator for seeing them or passing them along to friends, it's not farfetched. After all, these ads can be as much a utility as getting email alerts about sales. The ads would also change throughout the years, of course. One year, they're about binkies, then bikes, and then beauties.
Targeting those ads
For instance, my sister, who just had the baby, is an avid runner. She's looking for information about nutrition, healthy diets and sports as she returns to her normal weight. If she decided to accept advertisements on her son's blog, she might find some relevant ads regarding fitness programs for moms, such as baby boot camps in the area. It wouldn't be a nuisance for her to see those ads on the site, since they're relevant to her condition. Plus, she'd get paid for clicking onto them herself. It's like someone paying us a dime for every time we opened junk mail.
Kanoodle, whose executives pioneered contextual advertising at Sprinks, which was eventually sold to Google (GOOG:
google inc cl a
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 466.25+2.62+0.57%
4:01pm 01/13/2006
Add to portfolio
Analyst
Create alertInsider
Discuss
Financials
Sponsored by:
GOOG466.25, +2.62, +0.6%) at the end of 2003, lets blogs or small publishing sites place Kanoodle's ads on their sites. Additionally, unlike Google's AdSense for content program, Yahoo's (YHOO: Yahoo! Inc.
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 39.90-0.99-2.42%
4:00pm 01/13/2006
Add to portfolio
Analyst
Create alertInsider
Discuss
Financials
Sponsored by:
YHOO39.90, -0.99, -2.4%) Publishing Network for small publishers and Quigo, Kanoodle lets small publishers choose the type of advertisements they want advertised on their site.
So, for my sister, we might choose the topic "newborn baby." Kanoodle will then check this request to make sure the sites are relevant to the topics they choose. Advertisers pay about 50 to 75 cents for every click to Kanoodle for that topic, said Mark Josephson, chief marketing officer at Kanoodle. Kanoodle splits the fee 50/50 with the publisher, in this case, my sister. Now, most ad specialists would say the average click-through-rate on a content site is lower than the click-through-rate on search. So, let's assume the click-through-rate is about half a percent of all the traffic on a content site. With those assumptions, the publisher would only need 22,000 hits a month to bring in about $40 - enough to cover Internet access and blog hosting services.
Google's AdSense doesn't let publishers choose the ads, nor does it let the small publisher know what slice of the fee he or she is getting. But many observers believe Google shares a big chunk, or about 80%, of the ad revenue with many of its partners - search and content.
Context vs. search
Of course, Wall Street cares less about contextual ads these days, and focuses far more on search advertising - that is, advertisements that are linked to searches.
That's largely because content-targeting or contextual targeting is nascent, and Google, which received 42% of its $1.578 billion in third-quarter sales from search and content distribution partners, doesn't break out the percent of advertising dollars it receives from content partners.
Kevin Lee, co-founder of Did-it, a search-marketing firm, estimates that about 15% of the revenue generated from Google's ad partners comes from content sites, and the remaining 85% comes from Google's search partners, such as Time Warner's (AOL:
time warner inc com
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 17.27-0.21-1.20%
4:00pm 01/13/2006
Add to portfolio
Analyst
Create alertInsider
Discuss
Financials
Sponsored by:
AOL17.27, -0.21, -1.2%) AOL, and InterActiveCorp's (IACI: iac interactivecorp com new
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 29.32-0.14-0.48%
4:00pm 01/13/2006
Add to portfolio
Analyst
Create alertInsider
Discuss
Financials
Sponsored by:
IACI29.32, -0.14, -0.5%) Ask Jeeves.
Additionally, Yahoo, which reports after the close Tuesday, launched Yahoo Publishing Network self-serve beta for small to midsized publishers just six months ago in August 2005. See Yahoo's earnings preview.
|
