Steve Yelvington
8 April 2005

What business are you in?

The audience business
• Aggregate an audience that is of
commercial interest
• Sell the attention of that audience to
an advertiser
• On the web, that means targeted
marketing, not just mass marketing

Forget about paid content
• Charging for content works only when
there is a shortage of content
• We now live in a world where
information is in extreme surplus
• The very few paid-content success
stories all exploit spot shortages
• Print is going free

Info scarcity <-> Info
overload
Our products, processes,
organizational structures and basic
journalistic forms all evolved in an
environment of scarcity
Today's scarce resource isn't
information ... it's time and attention

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
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90
100
Compound growth is a cool thing
Column B
Column C
Column D

A $1.5 billion business in 2005
• Most reporting profit margins > 50%
• Targeting, search, CPC-based “mom
and pop” ads still largely untapped
potentials
• Most laggards have internal issues in
committment, compensation

Source: Phillip Meyer, “The Vanishing Newspaper

Take it seriously, but don't panic
• Even if practically nobody reads a
paper every day, newspapers are still
likely to be the strongest mass ad
vehicle, because all other media are
suffering the same way
• Supporting the print edition is still a
viable business model for the web

Why targeted advertising is key
to our future
We must break the connection between
sponsorships and content
We can now focus on building an
audience with features the audience
wants and delivering that audience in
ways the advertiser wants

News junkies are a niche
market
12-17 18-24 25-34 35-49 50-64 65-74 75-84 85-up
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
Registrants vs actives, 1 week, Athens
Registrants
Audience Population

The participative network
It's a many to many world. Anyone can
play. Eventually anyone will play.

An emerging view
It's all about ME!World
Local
ME

It's all about ...
• Me
• My family
• My friends
• My neighborhood
• My little circle
ME

Participation
• 'Citizen journalism'
• User-contributed content
• Weblogs
• Photo blogging

Bluffton, SC
• Adjacent to Hilton Head
• 15,000 households, mostly high-end
• Extraordinarily high broadband penetration
• Explosive growth – planned/gated developments,
golf courses
• Morris plan of attack: Free daily newspaper with a
participative website, flowing web content to print

 Major Communities
Bluffton
Beaufort
Hilton Head
Rural Areas

Everything has changed
Guides not gatekeepers
Facilitators and participants