experience matters

Preface: This article is written by and addressed to marketers. While it certainly addresses very serious questions in the publishing industry, many pieces of this puzzle are left out as they pertain less to the advertising industry.

The concept of “Separation of Church and State” has long been the model of publishers who generate the majority of their revenue from advertising. They have been two separate departments that have had little influence on each other. But given the current economy, bankruptcy of publishers, and the now prevalent move to online-only editions, should (or rather, is it necessary for) professional content producers and their promotional counterparts to start working a lot more closely? If so, how does this effect advertiser? Consumers?

Where we were:

The internet was seen as a repository for print editions. Articles that were printed offline were transferred online and some banner ads were slapped up in the ever popular leaderboard, skyscraper, or rectangular variety.

Where we are:

Consumers are pumping out content. A LOT of content. And in order to compete with all the other amateur and semi-pro writers, big name publishers have to create more web original content. Eyeballs are moving from offline editions to online so the revenue model needs to shift to the web. Unfortunately for publishers though, they have to share their advertising revenue with the rest of the monetizable web that is taking small pieces of advertiser budgets.

Where we are going:

We are going to see a cohabitation of amateur, semi-professional, and major outlets pumping out content and vying for our attention but the ratio of content produced by non professionals will continue to take a larger slice of the pie. Advertisers are going to have a tough time moving away from two common practices:

1) Trying to align themselves with someone else’s content.

2) Trying to create their own content to compete with user generated content.

Instead of the above, we’re more likely going to see the following two events take place:

1) Powering Users: Giving consumers the tools they need to build their own content (while trying to integrate a brand or specific campaign)

2) Users Powering Brands: Dell, Nokia, Adidas and even specific brands such as Skittles have used content created by users (sometimes directly related to a brand, sometimes not) to populate a brand experience.

Who is the loser?

Church AND State. And in some ways (although less economically detrimental) the consumer.

From the editorial perspective, they have been and will continue to lose the battle of producing content for revenue. There will still be money in it, but not the kind of dollars they (and their stockholders) are used to seeing.

While advertisers are going to love the joyride of cheaper ad placements and vast choices of targeting, this gravy train is going to run dry as ROI drops because the internet audience becomes numb to “typical” forms of one-way advertising. Additionally the economics of this situation means that eventually fewer content producers will exists. Less content = more expensive ad placements. More fragmentation = less personal connection with a specific consumer group.

As for consumers, there’s not going to be a shortage of content but there is going to be a decline in quality professionally edited media. After all, if the CNN’s and Hulu’s of the world cannot monetize the content they are producing, they simply are not going to make it. If that happens then in a way all parties in this equation are going to have a decrease in quality of experience. We’re all comfortable with watching UGC while their mainstream counterparts exists because we can always go back to the content brands we’ve been used to for decades. But what if UGC is the only thing we have left? What will be the perfect balance?