Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Narrow & Deep - What Porn Can Teach Advertisers

An interesting interview with Brian Shuster on iMedia Connection talking about the tactics that he and his competitors pioneered and how they helped build the basis for not just adult internet but also mainstream marketing .

What he discovered was that rather than spending time money and effort working out how to keeping his audience on his site they could actually be more valuable when they left.

"The internet works in a very counter intuitive way," Shuster explains. "Adult webmasters like myself figured out pretty early on that they could often make more money advertising their competitors than they could selling their own product."

The internet is a medium that rewards depth above all else, catering to individual passions that go narrow and deep, rather than the wide yet superficial pastimes enjoyed by the masses.

For example The New York Times ought to dedicate quality ad space to The Washington Post, Shuster says, explaining that both publishers make the mistake of treating internet users as a depletable resource. People know they are only a click and search away from more of the same content so why fight it, embrace it.

"People who go to either one of those sites have already expressed an interest in news," he says. "Visitors might actually want more news, so you need to take them there and figure out a business model that makes that profitable. The truth is that you can often make more money steering traffic away from your site than you can by trying to keep it on the page because users are looking to use the internet to dig deep on a given subject."

He goes on to talk about brands and how they should, counter intuitively brand together to service an audience, so in the case of automotive, Ford & Lexus should collaborate to feed the passionate and interested user. Likewise Facebook & MySpace should work together on joint ventures to bounce users between them.

"They're different enough to be distinct, but similar enough to make a lot more money working together," Shuster says.

Interestingly innovations in search tools built into your browser from companies like Autonomy which scans the context of the page and suggest similar content not only circumvents the Google monster but does exactly what the porn boys have been prototyping...

So sex does sell.

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