idiomag

So Youtube has now joined the growing number of social networks that motivate their contributors to produce popular content by sharing advertising revenue. And now, because Youtube is the daddy of all things cool (with good reason), everyone is talking about this model.

So that contributors can be rewarded fairly, idiomag decided six months ago to use this model, but with one significant difference: idiomag includes a moderation process. This is in line with our focus on delivering quality content, not just the rantings of every Tom, Dick and Harry (there are many sites that can do that). It also prevents the drive for lowest-common denominator content, or highly controversial content - both of which attract large viewing figures. For ourselves, the goal is to create a loyal readership that are attracted by consistent quality, rather than boosting short-term pageviews.

For advertisers, this is the latest announcement in a push for monetisation of the social-web, but simply filling the advertising inventories of the social networks is not the final frontier.

The big step up in both campaign effectiveness and user experience needs to come when forward-thinking advertisers start to use the mass of personal information to actually personalise their advertising. There are immense opportunities for adverts to become so targeted, and so linked to user action, that they reflect the same characteristics (relevant, helpful and unobtrusive) as the search advertising phenomenon.

Instead of users being force-fed advertising; it needs to be desirable and even sought out. As adverts start to actually add value to users (whether by being funny, engaging, or just plain relevant) the increasing effectiveness of campaigns will ensure that, through the strengthening of the ad-revenue-share model, contributors will get their just rewards.