Contextual advertising and BringMeTheNews

I.

I haven’t had a chance to post about BringMeTheNews yet, but there are some things that we’re doing that are cool and you should know about them.

First, we’re using a custom short urls to track clicks around the web, not only pageviews to our site.  In doing so, we’re putting together a new metric for gauging our reach/value as an online news service.

More about that in a minute.

The custom short urls are something that @tomelko has been working on for awhile, and we’ll hopefully also have a comment system in the near future that tracks your comments around the web via the url.

On top of that, we’re using Creative Commons for our copyright (the same version used by the White House), and we’re very focused on using various social media outlets to deliver local news to the places where people consume — and where people can easily share — the news.  In our first four weeks of being live, we’ve built up a network of 1,100 fans, which is awesome.

What I really want to rap about, tho, is the new ad model that we’re using.  It’s something regular mediation readers will recognize, but it’s also a little more involved.

II.

Let’s step back for a sec.

Contextual advertising is starting to emerge as the most promising direction for online advertising because, well, the current ad model simply doesn’t work for media.

I won’t belabor that point; you can just read “Let’s Kill the CPM”, or even just this graph that pretty much sums up current advertising online:

The CPM has done more to stunt innovation and drag down quality products than any single thing on the Internet. Maybe it works in other mediums, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on the Internet. Having been both a small and big publisher (now small again), it’s been my experience that the collective focus on CPMs and counting eyeballs by marketers, agencies, and publishers has led to a whole mess of unintended consequences that have produced a series of “solutions” that work for none of those parties. And perhaps more importantly, it’s been terrible for users.

Contextual advertising is an alternative to this CPM approach.  Google has, just like with everything, so far been leading the contextual advertising charge with AdSense and keywords, etc.  (This slideshow is something you should check out to get some background.)

BringMeTheNews features a slightly new take on contextual advertising, and it’s the same approach I’ve previously played around with on this tumblr.

We don’t gauge the value of our service/media product solely on impressions and clicks to our page.  BringMeTheNews organizes and delivers content, and measures clicks around the market using short urls, and because of this change we’ve opened up the possibilities for providing greater value to our user and our advertisers.

Since user experience is hurt with the CPM model, we went a different direction.  Instead of running standard ad sizes that users ignore, we’re running informative paid-for content integrated alongside our news content.  Because we’re multi-channel, we also include the sponsored content in our avenues of distribution.

III.

There’s a couple ways this works.  When there’s a news item that leads into new questions, we post sponsored content alongside the item.

For example, one of our sponsors is the Minnesota Association of Realtors.  There’s a lot of news about the current state of the housing market now that the housing bubble burst, and when a story about the wide-spread use of the first-time homebuyer credit popped up, we converted existing MAR content on the tax credit into a tutorial for folks potentially interested in the credit.

Another sponsor that we have is Optum, and myOptumHealth.  With the constant stream of hini news, we integrate — and clearly mark, too, btw — informational content on the H1N1 virus and how to treat it, etc.

MyOptumHealth has a treasure trove of content on their site.  The service provided by BringMeTheNews, the way we monetize in this situation, is to contextualize and distribute this content to our networks (including radio, too) when and where appropriate.

So instead of super intrusive drop down ads that block you from seeing content, we’re working with sponsors to help them provide content to our users that our users would want to see.

As I mentioned, because the ad content is contextual to the total package of information that we’re delivering, sponsored content also makes its way into social media channels like facebook.

There’s a bunch of other stuff going on with this model, but you get the general point on how we’re doing contextual advertising.

This is also cool: it’s still early, but our ad model is working for our users and our sponsors.

Because these ads don’t stand alone in a vacuum and don’t occupy the pre-determined spaces that you’ve taught yourself to ignore — and they have value for you as a user — BMTN’s sponsored content has a much higher click-through rate than tradition CPM-based ads receive [.pdf].

We often see sponsored content as some of the most-read material on our site and our Facebook page, and we also see sponsored content included in the most read items on our page.

When we get more details on the hard numbers, I’ll try and share them for the wonks who read this site.

(And we understand that this model isn’t for everyone; it takes some work and it doesn’t fit within most media websites.  But this isn’t just an idea on a blog, it’s working in practice (so far).)

IV.

One more thing.  I did a presentation at the first IgniteMPLS event that talked about the radical changes happening in the media landscape.  These changes are between media institutions and audiences, and there are definitely radical shifts happening.

But media companies are businesses and they need to make money.  And that means that the real drivers of change in the media environment will be the ad models.

That said, contextual advertising looks like it will more and more be a part of the new media environment that’s developing and that you’ll come to know and love.

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