Business Media

Part II: Downloadable Media

More and more B2B publishers are using a multimedia approach to engage their audiences, whether it’s video (ComputerWeekly.com) or audio (www.nmapodcast.co.uk) that sits alongside their written content.

As consumers of information we like these alternative ways of keeping ourselves up to date with content from our favourite publishers. With the success of these new mediums in line with the development of smart phones, the consumption of media has become more fragmented to suit our needs.

Sources of inspiration

Think about the different methods you have used to access the internet? This morning I woke up and decided to read www.hipmojo.com on my Blackberry to wake me up! After a hard hit of business media for breakfast (!) I left my flat and went to the office where in between new business proposals, I checked out Seth Godin’s blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com) to see what words of wisdom he had for me today.

The point here is that our journey into the online world has changed because of the portability of the devices we use everyday. Now we find the content that is most relevant to us – just like this blog for you – and consume it across many forms of technology whether it be a laptop, iPod or smart phone.

Turning this into opportunity

For advertisers and publishers this produces a whole series of challenges. More importantly, for us business media entrepreneurs it means there are a whole series of opportunities out there.

Recently we spoke to Jeff Karnes VP of marketing and products at VoloMedia (www.volomedia.com ). He explained how VoloMedia is making the most of the portable media market in the USA and providing publishers with a one-stop-monetisation-shop.

“VoloMedia helps publishers measure and monetise their downloadable content with technology for advertising and reporting. We then offer a one-stop shop with our advertising sales force that is able to educate and speak directly to agencies and advertisers as to the value and opportunities surrounding video and audio podcasting.”

Already VoloMedia can offer advertisers ten content categories across which to advertise and can target specific podcasts if an advertiser requests. Most campaigns are billed on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. VoloMedia is able to offer advertisers greater reach than traditional online formats because they can track activity from the PC all the way to portable devices whether this device is online or offline. And the technology that powers their ad platform can report accountable, ROI focused data.

According to Karnes: “we can measure the entire download progression from a request and partial download, to a completed and played download. We can also report whether this content was played on the PC or the device.”

Revolutionary

VoloMedia has several patents pending on this technology and claim to be the only company in the USA that can track device level metrics for podcasts. To track whether this content was played on the PC or device such as an iPod or iPhone, they ask consumers to opt in and download a one time and light-weight iTunes plugin. This plugin provides end user benefits with features enabling e-mail to friends, bookmarking the content via social networking sites whilst also encouraging more content consumption or driving traffic to the publisher’s site. This interactivity is available all from within the iTunes video podcasting player, for the first time. Along with the consumer benefits, another purpose of this add on is to anonymously record content usage and demographic data. Based upon preliminary data (the 2.0 version recently launched last October), there is a better than 80 per cent opt in rate making available the majority of key metrics that advertisers want to see.

As a package this offering is quite compelling for the advertiser and their client list backs this up; Timex, Chase, US Air Force and Boeing.

Takeaways for the UK

So why is this important for us in the UK? For two reasons:

1. When the USA moves first, the UK tends to follow. That’s why this site is gaining interest and forging strong relationships with our US counterparts in online media.
2. Tracking and accountability gives the advertiser more data, thus increasing the value of publisher assets.

Resources

For those of you that use podcasts and are looking at monetising them, we recommend you take a look at the Association for Downloadable Media (www.downloadablemedia.org). They have some good information and tips on best practice that you will find useful.

Tune in next time for our next episode of Making Online Publishing Pay Part 3: Video

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