“Instead of taking watching time as a measure of exposure, which is a substitute for audience attention, keyword advertising takes the language used in searches as a proxy for people’s interests, needs or cravings. In this context, the product that media (i.e. search engines) sell to advertisers is not the watching time of specific audiences, but words.” Fernando Bermejo in Audience manufacture in historical perspective: from broadcasting to Google.

The complexity of this truth comes into play in a single slide from today’s presentation Mapping Online Advertising: From Anxiety to Method. This slide explains the anxiety in one picture in his powerpoint presentation.

Consumers want content and are willing to put up with advertising so that the content is free for them to access. The advertisers want a targeted audience, more in line with search and the keywords approach, and are less willing to pay for just the audience. In addition to targeting advertisers are pushing the pricing mechanism for the media site that owns the audience closer to the actual transaction that is valuable for the advertiser. This is putting pressure on media organizations that can no longer make their revenue targets, which supports the free content consumers want, and should start to push media to find new methods to increase advertising or find alternate revenue models, can you say pay for content?

Not to say I think this is going to result in only a pay model for media but it will start to look like this second slide from Mr. Bermejo where content will come in three flavors based on the consumers desire for the content.

This anxiety from the media perspective is being compounded by the advertisers current trend toward social media and content marketing efforts which essentially make the advertiser the media agent thus making the current media audience less valuable in some cases.

This is a complex topic and Mr. Bermejo handled it very well with a mixed audience which doesn’t spend nearly the time he has in understanding the advertising infrastructure. I look forward to the follow up conversations that will take place regarding this topic.