Everyone wants their profit from the web

Jonathan Bowers, August 30th 2006, 10:17AM

The UK's most prominent political bloggers have seen the future. They're centralising their content in a bid to make revenue from advertising. Not just any advertising though - advertising that their readership want to see.

This news is followed hot on the heels by an online advertising conundrum. A number of media companies are suggesting that there is a shortage of expertise in the online advertising arena and this is slowing business opportunities to capitalise on the audiences across the web, particularly on social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo and YouTube.

Does this mean that the sector is not growing as quickly as we would all like it to? Start-up Spiralfrog obviously doesn't think so. The online music outlet, launching in December, is planning to be the first to provide free and legal music downloads. It's going to fund itself, the music labels and the artists through advertising on the site.

In this circumstance 'build it and they will come' is probably a fair assessment. Who is likely to turn down free music with the added bonus of a clear conscience! However, can the net sustain itself across other markets funded purely by advertising?

I'd be interested to know other people's thoughts as I suspect ROI in online advertising will at some point become much more challenging.

Tags: advertising, internet, marketing
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The web's best industries

Jonathan Bowers, August 23rd 2006, 4:51PM

I'm working with Internet consultancy Harper James at the moment to produce a list of the UK's best industries online.

In order to build an extensive list, I'd love to consider people's thoughts on the best and worst of those online. We're all aware that certain industries - like the travel sector have been revolutionised by the advent of the net and many of these sites are designed and run in a very professional manner. But which areas are racing to catch up, which are just getting a foothold and which are still down right ugly?

I'll be working on this over the next few weeks and considering criteria including the look of a site, its navigation and search success amongst other things.

So if you'd like your say, post a comment here.

Tags: websites
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Revenue drives difficult decisions

Jonathan Bowers, August 22nd 2006, 9:55AM

The Internet is driven by the need to monetise, that's a given, but as the fastest growing industry in the world it seems to work much faster than any other.

Just as articles spring up on the Internet about the gap between social networking sites and brand advertising the solutions also start to present themselves.

It's interesting that while articles like 'Pairing the Odd Couple' look to the brand managers to access the way forward, the actual steps are being taken by those who are likely to benefit massively - the social networking sites. YouTube's decision to create defined areas is guided by the desire to attract advertising from brand builders determined to achieve relevant environments for their images.

Similar to the content producers versus connectivity providers argument, there will always be a solution that brings greater wealth to both parties.

However, the world's traditional content producers need to start to work at the rate of the Internet entrepreneurs such as YouTube and MySpace if they want to stay on top of the viewers when the big switch to Online TV happens.

Tags: advertising, socialnetworking
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What makes you an author?

Jonathan Bowers, August 16th 2006, 11:13AM

One of the Time top 50 websites of 2006 is blurb.com. Time concentrates on the site's service of turning blogs into hard copy books and it got me thinking about what gives information authority.

The web has nurtured the emergence of amongst other things, blogs and citizen journalism and their popularity has proved that people will read and be influenced by certain things. In varying amounts; good quality writing, individual opinions, insightful thinking, an original eye on a topic and authenticity have combined to deliver a new accessible genre of writing that suits both mass consumption and niche groups. And those that make connections with their readers grow to become respected and successful.

So why do we need to combine individual blogs in a print format? Do we feel that our opinions and experience come with more clout if they are bound in hardback? Do we believe that selling our knowledge is the best way to gauge how valuable it is? It's not as though the web has no other ways to chart this.

Will the success of blurb.com depend on the ego's of writers who feel that there is still an important devide between published and unpublished writers?

Tags: blogging, influence
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The world's content providers no longer?

Jonathan Bowers, August 14th 2006, 12:50PM

While Disney is currently ruling out big Internet partnerships, Viacom is trying to gain ground on Murdoch as he continues to gallop away in the broadcasters online race. Not only is Viacom looking closely at Bebo, but Techcrunch tells us that the media giant is buying Atom Entertainment, home to Atom Films, which highlights short films and also has a series of gaming sites.

And with new surveys telling us that the younger generation spends less and less time watching tv and more and more time online, it's no surprise that the world's content providers are no longer the world's content providers.

But can they pull back the mantle? News Corp seems to be having a go. It's about a year since Murdoch brought MySpace and he's about to start selling his broadcast content direct to its users.

What is Viacom waiting for? And what does Disney have up its sleeve?

Tags: disney, viacom, broadcasters
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