Addressing Monetization for Social Media Publishers & Advertisers........

My friend Rob Deichert has a post on his blog, about challenging the status quo, and coming up with different metrics by which to judge, and monetize, the fastest growing form of media in the world, Social Media.

Rob writes:

"People have asked me before where I see Internet advertising going and I've told everyone I think the traditional model of cost per impressions will be challenged, by CPMPT (cost per impression, per time). The user behavior on social networking sites can classified as high page view consumption - kids are clicking between pages."

I was reading Rob's insightful piece this morning, and immediately forwarded his blog post to my team to read.....I said,

"Arent we working on something similar to address this issue (of time) inside of Crowd Control?" (our technology)

Let me start off by saying that my team and I at Lotame, see the social media world differently, than most publishers and advertisers out there. We think that the Web 2.0 and User Generated Content world is filled with data points, actions and behaviors that are NOT being utilized at all. One of the most powerful differentiators for us is HOW GRANULAR, we get in, collecting both "behavior and action" data. "User Engagement" may be the buzz word for some, but for us, it is our business.

One of the most important factors is TIME SPENT, in this equation. Rob rightly addresses this in his piece....

"From a direct response perspective it's easy to know if the right people are getting the right length of exposure to an ad. If response rates are inline with cost, the advertiser keeps spending. Layer on branding advertiser demand and you'll get a quick picture of the market price for the inventory. Of course measuring the branding impact takes longer and more effort."

Lotame considers time spent an, ACTIONABLE BEHAVIOR...
*Length of time a consumer views a page
*Length of time a consumer views a ad
*Length of time a consumer engages the media -- (widget, upload, comment, links t0 -- from the beginning of the click to the completing of the action)

This leads to the ability for Advertisers to be able to truly target on words, that MEAN SOMETHING.

Recency and Frequency.
The recency of ACTIONS.
The recency of BEHAVIORS.
The recency of ENGAGEMENT.

The Frequency of ----THE SAME.

Use these components to create audiences. Allow advertisers to pick unique elements to target against, which are completely different and independent, based on the Social Media community .....

These engagement based audience segments, (that Lotame helps build for our publishing clients to drive more value), make advertising and marketing, based on all, "user time" measurements, a reality in Web 2.0.

Once you combine, BEHAVIORAL ACTIONS, with BEHAVIORAL INTEREST -- and can build audiences that you can target against, you have built one the most important social profiles known to media.

Relevance.

And, it might be the most important one of all......when creating value for Social Media.

It's our mission to make the media RELEVANT.......it is what we are executing on, and building as we speak.