idiomag

Well, a lot has happened since we last posted here. The big players have been buying up the online advertising market, Facebook has allowed external apps in its social network, and last.fm has finally been bought by CBS (last.fm: please don’t change - we love you as you are!).

We have some very exciting developments in the pipeline for this month. We have been working hard on tweaking idiomag’s algorithms and content-base, as well as making the magazine more readable. Also, at some point in the next month or so, we will jump on the (very appealing) bandwagon and create some groovy Facebook applications.

We have had a good range of new contributors come on board, including JunkMedia, Ground Up Hip Hop, Losing Today and Chronic Magazine. This will really help deepen our content-base, enabling us to deliver a more relevant and interesting magazine. In addition, we are now broadening the content beyond gig and album reviews, to include interactive competitions, feature articles and some podcast-style sections.

One major improvement that we are just completing, is that readers will soon be able to join idiomag using their last.fm, iLike, MOG, or MyStrands username. From this we can immediately create a very relevant magazine, from their past listening habits. Much simpler and quicker.

Its also nice to see that idiomag is still picking up some great press, with recent mentions in WebUser magazine and Precision Marketing magazine.

Well thats about it for the moment. As usual, let us know your thoughts and suggestions.

As part of a large campaign to promote their personalised shoe range, Nike have advertised through idiomag with a funky little interactive ad. This is the first campaign that we have run in idiomag that promotes a non-tech/music product, and I am interested to know what you all think. I feel it fits well within the overall interface and doesn’t interfere with the content. And it’s a bonus that the product carries the personalisation theme… you can now read a personalised magazine, whilst wearing your personalised running shoes… now I know that’s something you could only dream of a year ago!

To check out the ad, just go and view your magazine at http://www.idiomag.com (quick and painless sign-up process if you haven’t already)

Google can track our ideas and interests from conception (search patterns) to conversation (gmail) to commerce (google checkout). All great products… and I congratulate Google for lining up such a deep range of products that compete well as stand-alone services, but also can collect such valuable advertising information.

They have conquered contextual ads, they have moved into TV and radio adverts, and now bought DoubleClick’s superb technology and client base. DoubleClick’s reporting systems will certainly be useful as formats become larger and more rich-media focused - especially as TV and online continue to merge in terms of formats, targeting and reporting.

Tim O’Reilly seems confident that Google doesn’t pose much of a risk to privacy, and states that Google is being held to a higher standard than other information owners. Well, as a certain wise man once said, “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.”

Nikki Preston has written an interesting article over at mad.co.uk, questioning whether idiomag should be called a “magazine”. As she points out, a magazine is a “periodical publication containing articles and illustrations” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And although idiomag publishes new articles periodically (idiomag’s update period is every 3 hours), some might believe that the title of “magazine” should be reserved only for weekly or monthly publications.

The lines have become blurred by the proliferation of online publications, and as Arif mentions, most people nowadays are happy to leave the definition of ‘magazine’ pretty open.  Following Guy Consterdine’s assertion that when discussing magazines, one must separate content and form, I have made our case.

Content:

idiomag might be regularly updated – one of the key advantages of being online – but the content it offers could be described as ‘magazine’ content. By this I mean that it is not ‘newsy’ content, which must be immediately consumed. Instead, idiomag is designed to be consumed in a ‘sit-back’ manner, without being particularly time-sensitive. To this end, each reader’s content stays in their magazine for 30 days – so they can choose when to read it.

Form:

We have described idiomag as using a “virtual magazine format”, and this format does set us apart from most online publications. The content structure and reading style is primarily linear (like a magazine), not hierarchical (like most websites), the interface is engaging (like a magazine) rather than text-based (like many websites), and in addition, the features such as the page-turn and the archive function (which dog-ears a page to indicate that you might wish to read it later) all bear a striking resemblance to a print magazine.

Even the advertising in idiomag (when it comes) will be reminiscent of print magazines - i.e. large, glossy formats that sell a brand experience (like most glossy magazine advertising), rather than a product (like most banner adverts online).

Anyway, that’s my tuppence worth. I’d be interested in hearing your opinions!

Recently, the Editor of Precision Marketing asked the following question:

“Is digital marketing brand building or response generating? The future of the digital marketing model is currently up for grabs as competing agency types look to leverage their skills in online channels. So is online advertising, e-mail and the Web better suited to creating awareness of a brand or can it be used to drive response instead?”

I have sent my response, but I thought I would share it here as well…

It sounds very ‘Marketing 101’, but we all know that a campaign’s purpose must be 1) clearly defined and 2) used as a guide for the major advertising decisions – such as the choice of media type, channel, creative, and purchase size. All too often, online gets separated from other media types, because of a lack of understanding about what it can deliver, and its lack of a long track record. Asking if online is better suited to brand building or direct response, underestimates what it offers, and places the medium in a box into which it doesn’t easily (or effectively) fit. The real issue is “how can the different types of digital marketing support your campaign’s purpose” – whether that is raising brand profile or stimulating immediate action. To clarify the scope of digital marketing, the main methods it encompasses include search, banner, contextual, syndicated content, microsite, and community and email marketing.

Although digital marketing has elements that are similar to other media, online advertisements cannot be treated in the same way as buying the inventory of a print magazine, and email marketing cannot be considered as fully comparable to direct marketing. Firstly, online holds one significant advantage – customisability of campaigns. The minimum efficient order size for the print and broadcast media usually makes it cost-prohibitive to effectively target by context, interest, personality, or habits. These factors form and describe each individual in a far better way than solely their age, location, or job. Secondly, online allows a depth of interaction that is far beyond offline media. By creating engaging advertisements, readers become users, and the interaction with potential customers builds the memorability of the advert and also provides a multitude of direct response possibilities.

The metrics that I see (from Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms and DoubleClick’s Ad Serving Trend Reports) seem to clearly state the following: Large format rich-media adverts achieve higher brand awareness, favourability and message association than smaller static adverts, and rich-media adverts perform better than static ones in terms of click-through rates. Marketers generally seem to be very buoyant about the effectiveness of online channels, with the global online advertising spend set to rise 24% to $14.5 billion in 2007 (Merrill Lynch). And in my experience the direct response method of email marketing is very successful for achieving immediate action, with response rates around 3-5% and the low cost per delivery almost always providing a good ROI. So again, the issue for marketers is to find the best way of using digital marketing, rather than misunderstanding its many forms and purposes.

As online publishers and agencies start to offer greater capabilities to advertisers, building on the key strengths of digital marketing, customisability and interactivity, the delivery mechanism swings from push to pull, and from intrusive to interesting. And as the formats and creatives become increasingly engaging, it is vital that the digital marketing industry benefits from the discipline of direct marketers, as more solid metrics and ROI proofs are developed. I believe that as agencies get accustomed to the unique benefits of each online channel, the medium will be recognised as being integral to any campaign, whether the purpose is brand-building or direct response.

Sramana Mitra’s post at Read/Write Web got me thinking about how idiomag fits in with her ‘Web 3.0 formula’ that predicts the direction of the web.

So first the formula: Web 3.0 = Content, Community, Commerce and Context + Personalisation + Vertical Search

Sramana’s main point seems to be that the web is moving into a phase where services (Content, Community and Commerce) will be bunched around contexts, with the context providing a value-added foundation to the other C’s. And as a summary that describes the biggest players, I wouldn’t disagree. The large ‘Web 1.0′ companies do need to work hard to meet the very varied needs of their mass of users. The underlying value of content, commerce and community is inherent to its context, as it is this that draws together relevant content, a focused community, and related commerce.

As Yahoo is finding out to its cost, a lack of clear context causes revenues (advertising in particular) to be constrained. On the other hand, within a given context, personalisation and vertical search are both means of providing users with relevant (and therefore more valuable) content, commerce and community, also enabling relevant (and therefore more highly-priced) advertising.

With less mature services, the formula seems more descriptive than predictive. Most of the more recent offerings are built specifically for a context (e.g. LinkedIn is built around networking specifically for business gain, and Last.fm is built around personalised music for music lovers), or have not developed to the point at which content, commerce and community have overtaken context. It will surely be the natural progression for many of the successful ‘Web 2.0′ startups to mature into a position of providing all of the formula’s elements.

I am not sure that Sramana’s formula defines Web 3.0, but instead it seems to put a good framework on the immediate progression within ‘Web 2.0’. My comment being really that the next phase of the web, as described by the formula, does not seem different enough to be a next phase!

Now I will use it to explain what idiomag is doing…

idiomag = 4C + P + VS

Context:
idiomag’s context is the personalised magazine. It is for creative people who regularly read music magazines and have specific likes and dislikes.

Content:
Being a magazine, idiomag’s content is fundamental to the service. It is a range of text articles, videos and audio that analyses, describes and comments upon subjects relevant to each reader.

Commerce:
The methods of commerce will be more clearly defined in our v1 launch in March than they have been previously. Firstly, we enable advertisers to target very specific segments, based on their interests as well as their demographics. Through their rich-media formats, advertisers can choose to seek the response they most desire from relevant readers, whether that is a direct sale, a click-through, or brand recognition being built. In addition to advertising, idiomag’s initial focus on music content will allow users to buy the tracks they are listening to (or reading about), and concert tickets, with more commerce options opening as the content subject areas expand.

Community:
Although it won’t be available for everyone immediately, idiomag can connect readers based on their likes and dislikes, geography and demography. This will allow networks of readers to be created, allowing readers to publish pages to their network on an opt-in basis.

Personalisation:
I am glad Sramana mentioned this, and not just because it is idiomag’s strong point! In order for users to use more of, and make better sense of, the incredible resources on the web, companies will start to use more effective methods of personalisation. This will make using the web radically more efficient, and more useful for more people, because searching/browsing time will be dramatically reduced. Of course, idiomag delivers personalised content and advertising to every reader – with the magazine becoming increasing relevant over time as readers rate the content they view.

Vertical Search:
This is an interesting one, because idiomag’s initial premise is that our system delivers such personalised content that readers do not need to search for it. However, we realise that even when personalisation has effectively reduced the need for search, that functionality must be there. So in v2 (don’t even ask me when that will go live…) we are aiming to integrate some ‘vertical-search-like’ options for the more proactive users. For example, we are working to identify the functional classifications of articles, so the content type and structure is identified. For example, some readers will prefer shorter newsy content, where as other prefer a more in-depth analysis. And some don’t mind what structure the content follows, as long as it is written with a sarcastic/comedic edge.

So there we go… an interesting exercise!

Read/Write Web has recently published an article explaining how niche technology services, such as digg and del.icio.us, are now being recognised by the mainstream media. For example, the New York Times and Time Magazine have digg and del.icio.us buttons beside their online content. As Alex Iskold rightly point out, this has huge implications for the usage of these sites - and therefore their value to advertisers and potential buyers.

The fact that traditional publishers are essential to the mainstream adoption of online services (and that this dependency seems odd) epitomises the current state-of-play in the media industry. We are nearing the tipping point, when online becomes the new offline and when traditional publishers must go beyond simply using “Web 2.0″ services, and actually become them. And of course, Web 2.0 publishers (and their VCs) are betting that the payback will be swift, as advertising money follows the masses onto these services.

Google’s Adwords service has been incredibly popular, because it capitalises on the so called “long tail” by providing a cost-effective advertising method for small businesses. Within the video advertising arena, the historically high cost of video creative, and the lack of a specific enough targeting method, has prevented most small and medium sized businesses from getting involved.

Having largely been sidestepped by users of Adwords in the text ad market, the major advertising agencies are eager to be involved in the provision of personalised video advertising - which the tumbling cost of video creative and ever-increasing targeting capabilities are bring ever closer. The New York Times published an interesting article yesterday, which looked at a couple of the players in this market.

Where the eyeballs of the masses go, advertising money follows. So as 2006 was the year that online video came of age, 2007 could well be the year in which some very interesting video advertising services gain traction in the market. We believe our targeting system for large format advertising has major benefits for readers as well as advertisers, and will certainly be doing our best to move the industry forward in this area.

Here is a great post by Jeremiah Owyang which identifies and classifies the types of online marketing. It reads like a marketing textbook (reminiscent of my University days) but does a great job of structuring how marketers should think about their online strategy.

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.