Matters of Potential

It may sound like I'm going out on a limb here, but I have my beliefs. Janette Toral was being a real trooper in talking about Mad Crowd Media in her column (thanks!) and she raised a few points that's worth reiterating:

Companies are now seeing blogs as potential advertising medium. If they are presented as a bunch, rather than just one site, then it becomes more practical. The more eyeballs, more diverse blogs with only a fraction of mainstream online media cost, the better. Having collective strength will allow the group to compete fiercely with mainstream big players.

Nearly everyone we spoke to -- potential advertisers to global account managers -- and whether they've advertised online before or have never even heard of blogs, have one seed of epiphany in them: that readers are reading and paying attention online, substituting the internet for print, even television (when was the last time you watched TV?). You seldom see that kind of empathic relationship in traditional media formats; such a relationship is built with a one-on-one awareness, the kind bloggers achieve with their readers. You can argue that putting an SMS number is interactivity, but clearly bloggers are not giving any monetary incentives for readers to respond. Readers respond because what they're reading matters to them.

Acknowledging that, let's turn our attention to potential. There's a belief that the Internet attracts only the AB crowd. That's simply wrong. In Metro Manila, roughly 45% of internet users fall in the DE bracket, with nearly half of them teenagers. They're doing that Friendster thing. And, surfing blogs. We are at a 160+% internet usage growth in urban areas year-on-year, and my good money is on expansion at the same pace. With Internet Cafes sprouting everywhere, the potential is clear.

Finally, there's the matter of fragmentation. If a marketer wants to talk to a particular audience, of a particular demographic, it's very hard to achieve that in trimedia. The two largest channels have focused their efforts in attracting the multinational consumer goods manufacturers and the telcos battling it out for supremacy. What of the niche marketer? Radio is only listened to by people *in* cars.

Magazines to my mind are the lone shining stars, as they are self-selective publications. It also explains why they thrive. Advertisers who want to hit a particular target audience, say gadget lovers, can advertise in any one of many technology magazines out there. Hit the teen market? Plenty of options.

So why make this point? We view the 60+ publications in the Mad Crowd Media network as individual magazines. Bunched together in crowds like "Parenting" or "Travel and Leisure" they make a strong case for niche marketers. To these marketers, that's advertising money well spent because it hits directly at who they're after. And when they see that readers spend more than two minutes looking at your site, that's a minute and 57 seconds longer than they might take on a page in a newspaper that would cost 1000% more.

We need to prove all this, of course. And I have no doubt we will. I'm a fan of blogs and I think we can spread the same belief to those who see and want to participate in these focused media channels. Janette said "nevertheless, the time for an entity like Mad Crowd Media has come. I hope it will offer great opportunities and empower the global Filipino blogger" -- yesterday, we sent out our contracts and have happily fielded plenty of questions and the overall feedback is of a group of wise and happy publishers eager to start doing business. That's potential right there.