More on monetization of Web 2.0: targeting needs.
You may have read a while ago Eric Schmidt talking about how disappointed Google was in their attempts to Monetize MySpace. I was reminded of that by a post on the BW blog, wondering “Is there something about the social part of social media that makes it hard to be commercial?“
I wonder if the reason that current monetization efforts aren’t working is almost too obvious. Seems to me that people are turning towards social media in part because they want to avoid paid media. If that’s the case, isn’t taking the same interruptive advertising model that people are escaping and hoping it will work on social media the classic definition of insanity?
Moving to a subscription model may be one answer but I think there’s another way to think about advertising on social media that could make it less intrusive and more useful. Instead of taking the same targeting models from traditional advertising and applying them to social media, I wonder if there’s merit in a completely different segmentation approach.
Here’s what I mean. Traditional targeting creates segments based upon values, attitudes, interests, behaviour or demographics. These things create great mental pictures of our customers and allow us to understand who they are but they don’t actually tell us what’s really important. What we really want to know is, “when are you going to be looking for or doing something where my product or service is going to be relevant and where you might be really open to hearing from and better buying something from me?” Traditional targeting models are actually proxies for us to guess at this.
However, because social media are digital, interactive and part of the larger Web, we can construct targeting models that don’t simply guess when you’re going to act, but instead are based solely on whether you act or not. On the web I don’t really need to know your beliefs, values, attitudes or demographics as long as I know you want to interact with my category.
It’s easy to see why social networks might not have grasped this. Viewed from the lens of traditional media, they’re capturing a host of really valuable data about my interests, values, attitudes, etc. Because that’s the “currency” in traditional marketing, it’s reasonable to think it’s also the currency in new marketing.
However, I think marketers are turning to the Web because it’s an interactions medium. A place where it’s possible to have a real dialogue with their customers. Instead of selling simulacra to marketers disguised in real looking targeting models, social networks could sell real customers with real needs who are looking for real products and services. Done properly, social network users might even see this as an added service – help doing what I want to do. Sounds fantastical and far-fetched but you never know.