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Source:CenterNetworks

Robert Scoble posted a message on Twitter this morning mentioning something about how audience size doesn’t matter. Tonight I noticed a full post from Robert on the subject and I’d like to provide my thoughts on the topic.

He begins by noting that Perez Hilton has a huge audience but can’t monetize it. That could very well be a poor sales team more than it is that he can’t monetize it. Also, Perez is in a tough spot as advertisers might not want their product shown next to Britney’s crotch. Perez has also used blogging to get other perks including tv slots and a tv show. In fact, I’d argue that in mainstream more people know Perez Hilton than combining the top 10 tech bloggers reputations.

Then Robert makes the following statement, "In the past few years I’ve had some success building audiences, but I found that that’s not really what’s important. It’s not what advertisers REALLY care about." He says advertisers care about three things: do you have unique content, does this unique content cause conversations to happen and does it get the most credible to link to you.

I agree that unique content helps but "big" can overcome this. Look at the top tech blogs — are some of them "copy bloggers" now? Yet advertisers will still go to them first. And let’s assume that I read major blogs a, b, and c. Blog A and B have the same content today, blog C has unique content. If I didn’t know that blog C actually found the story on blog M, then to me the content on blog C is unique.

Now let’s take a look at the "most credible link" topic. If inbound links were counted based on authority, then would the Top 100 on Technorati be where it is? Probably not. How many links are spam links? And who is to decide what’s credible? Here’s the bias that he doesn’t realize when he makes this statement. He wants the top to stay on top and by this statement he gets his wish. In his example, he uses Make Magazine as one of the most credible in the do-it-yourself movement. But will Make be on top in 6 mos or a year? Who knows, but if we continue to always benchmark against Make, then no one else will ever be able to climb up to the top of the mountain and take over that "authority" slot.

The big issue Robert misses is that the ad business is still working from the audience-size phase. It’s been this way since I started and ‘they’ aren’t ready to move yet. When you signup for an ad network, they don’t ask you who linked to you yesterday. They want your traffic numbers otherwise — aka your audience size.

Would I love for advertising to be based more in the direction Robert discusses - hell yes. It would help CenterNetworks immediately. It just won’t happen when marketers and advertisers want to buy in bulk rather than go from specialty shop to specialty shop. This analysis is based on managing millions of dollars in ad spend over the past 12+ years. And I do believe that CN is in the slot of getting ads based on reputation now.

Lastly, for Robert, he’s in a different place than most. He’s at the top of the mountain (some would argue otherwise) and so he doesn’t need to fill the audience size question as everyone else does. Companies want to advertise with him because of his brand. Advertisers want to associate themselves with good brands but they must have a return as well.

Building your brand can lead to advertisers based on brand alone, Robert’s absolutely correct about that. But for some that can take years and years and until you reach that point, it’s only about audience size.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 8:30 pm and is filed under advertising, Insights, Robert Scoble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.