"Content" is in the Eye of the Beholder

Interesting column by Burst Media's CEO and President Jarvis Coffin on the impact of ads when placed with relevant content. Burst Media is an online ad network that serves the "Long Tail-type" publishers -- the smaller, niched sites that tend to attract more passionate followers. Full disclosure, my site, Pure Contemporary has been part of the Burst network for several years. Coffin was citing a recent Conde Nast study (reported in MediaPost) that highlighted that people remember ads better if they are in viewed in conjunction with contextually-related content. And thus, Coffin states, content is king.

The study also revealed that people seemingly tend to tire of ads more quickly online than in print -- that is if they even notice them at all. (Which is a particularly nice piece of by-the-way-information to know if you have print space that you are trying to peddle!) In fact, the numbers were really not friendly to online: According to data released earlier in the year by Condé Nast and McPheters & Co., 63 percent -- of banner ads were not seen by Web users: Respondents' eyes "passed over" 37 percent of the Internet ads and "stopped" on slightly less than a third, McPheters found. The recall rate was much higher for print and tv.

Since most studies can be looked at from different angles, Coffin had an interesting theory, which I buy. He surmised that perhaps the online world is a victim of its own success: the fact that we so highly target ads that those same dang ads seem to follow us from site to site because those ads have been so tied to us as individuals and our behaviors!

I had two other thoughts as well. 1) Aside from Apple's page-dominating advertising banners, online ads are beyond ho-hum. Back in the day, ad agencies made their money creating creative -- the :30 spot and the full-color ads got the ka-chings going. Very little of those creative juices seem to be spent online. And, 2) content is king!!! But i don't take such a narrow view on what content is.




Since there is plenty of research that supports contextually relevant content increases recall, why are marketers limited to only a banner ad to market their wares? For years, the conventional wisdom has been that only media companies can produce content -- since they are the producers of news. And everyone know that news is content. But, news is not the only form of content. And this is where I drag out my soapbox and remind everyone that: If you have a website that attracts more than your mom, spouse and kids, then guess what? You are a content producer.

Not convinced? Well how about this. If a person is looking for work, the jobs listings are content. If they are looking to go out, restaurant directories -- and proximity to the reader, are now content. Looking for a flat screen tv that will fit not stick out more than 3" -- than guess what, BestBuy or Amazon are now content. All of these examples are types of content that would be traditionally categorized as ads.

Media sites and marketers need to put their chocolate and peanut butter together and make some yummy new content than can be contextually relevant to the media site's news -- and now give readers some recall that has a punch! On Pure Contemporary we offer product catalog pages -- controlled by our marketers -- that are contextually tied to real legit stories. Both the "legit stories" and the catalog pages are both considered content to our readers!!

Content may be king, in fact context may be even more kingly -- but contextually relevant content is, to some degree, in the eye of the beholder.