Digital Marketers Need To Listen to Beyonce

Last month when I blogged I was inspired to connect the transformative powers of Pink at the Grammy Awards to the transformation happening in the living room between the laptop and the TV. I’d like to revisit that general neighborhood. This time my guest for all you digital marketers is Beyonce. To paraphrase the princess: “I need to upgrade ya.”

Here’s why. I’m starting to see a disconnect between what Internet content properties offer to brands and agencies and what those brands and agencies are valuing. This disconnect quite frankly is dangerous. It strikes at the heart of what we here at Fox and other content properties do well, and my concern is that advertisers are not appreciating audience, branding, and business model flexibility. Internet advertisers by and large want to buy a house in Malibu but they only want to spend 100 grand. And up until now, content owners have sold the real estate at a below market price. I believe that is about to change. Like Beyonce says: “I need to upgrade ya.”

Let’s look at three elements of that change. First and foremost, let’s look at the cost-per-click or cost-per-action deals that are happening all over the Internet. Let me pose a question to the top 500 brands in any vertical: Why are you letting online universities and questionable health tonics take your valuable real estate? If brands spend more on CPA deals, they win. The smaller brands, the ones that can drag down the overall image of a content property, and win out on network bidding are dominating Internet advertising. Right now, those maintain an even level with any other brand. Even a slight uptick in spending from the top 500 could turn that around tomorrow. I’d lose my lowest CPA deals in a heartbeat to get fewer but better profile advertisers.

Second: Maintaining the audience targeting technology is expensive. Just as a brand has to pay trade promotion, customer data services, and advertising to support sales, a content site has overhead. Yet, I don’t feel the love when it comes to that. Brands and agencies think a company like Fox can just “set and forget.” Not true. We constantly update and optimize our stuff, our content, our audience data. We provide a service that connects you directly to your best customers. Yet, I hear some short-term arguments that the ad payment models we provide are too expensive, or not generating short-term results. Believe me; I’ll put us up against a lot of different media. Give me 30 minutes. I’ll take that argument apart.

Finally, let’s look at the overall picture. With my sales team I keep coming back to the overall state of the market -- March 2010 -- customers are online: They watch video, they noodle around on social networks, they get news, they play games, and they do all this while they watch TV. Brands need to be online as much as they need to be on TV. They need to be there when the potential customer is. The real estate is just as valuable online, in my opinion, yet it is still not seen that way. Bad perception! I would not want to be the brand manager who gets called on the carpet for letting a competitor get to that understanding first.