Ty Ahmad-Taylor is the founder and CEO of FanFeedr, a real-time personalized sports feed. Previously, he was SVP of Strategy and Product Development at Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and, before that, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA). He tweets at @tyahma
If you are a consumer-facing startup pitching to VCs, the conversation is very short if your monetization strategy leads with advertising. It may, in fact, actually be a longer conversation if you simply say you don
When it comes to news and social gaming, prediction markets make the most sense as the next step. Eventually, prediction markets on politics and current events will be integrated into more news sites (especially political ones). They’d have a bigger effect if real money were involved (especially for newspapers’ bottom lines), but they certainly get readers engaged, compel politicos to spend more time on news sites, and provide more stats to feed the 24/7 news cycle.
Excellent article Ty. Prestige has long fueled consumers online (think of all the “online social celebrity” lists), but it’s only now proven to be a successful monetization model. We at gWallet continue to hear from new publishers and content owners that they want to de-emphasize banner ads and replace them with virtual currency options. A hundred dollar eCPM vs. $1 CPM? Definitely a smart move.
I would disagree with all of this
I didn’t understand this comment “The idea of prestige as a monetization model is new” especially when pinball games from the early 1920s kept the high score or even in 1980s when Pac-Man and Space Invaders had a leader board where people can put their initials. Casinos have been using this prestige monetization model also, correct? That’s why the casinos have the Players Club.
Do mass media want a mass of shallow sheeps to sell demographics to advertisers or a small flock of “leaders” with deep and insightful thought on media content? What was presented has already matured very well in the gaming industry as I see all these prepaid cards in the video game section at the store.
However, when discussing the news, it has to go back to the same core issue – why would entrenched editors and publishers who live off status quo titles and egocasting their perspective upon others want the audience to have any say so or feedback? I can see them doing this competitive gameplay with virtual currency using their crossword puzzle section but that’s about it…
They may as well go for real money. In the UK certain newspapers run fantasy football leagues.
Readers pick their own team from a pool, pay an entrance fee, then play for a prize of around £100,000.
The Football League takes nine months to complete so the “players” are interacting with the newspaper for all those months. The number of entries they get far outweighs the prize fund.
It has worked well.
Can’t see the point of playing for virtual money.
“Prestige” is a loyalty & promotion variant – not particularly new. As a “tag” for a marketing expert, it is very good. Ty, you should be receiving more call for advice.
Let’s also remember it was newspapers who originally had “prestige monetization” in classified ads. You can pay extra for bold type if you want in your classified ads. Also, on Valentine Day, you can take out a big chunk of the classifieds for everyone in town to see. Some of us think Facebook who is peddling icons on people birthday invented this process when the newspapers did.
It’s interesting how the newspapers invented the majority of these monetization models, eh?
So let’s be honest – it’s not the newspaper model, it is the non-diverse, status quo people who commute in from the suburbs that is the real issue. That’s why I laugh when I read about these “status quo panels” instead of hearing about audience/viewer participation in newspaper monetization solutions. Because in 2010, these editors and publishers are still about egocasting and pushing their bias upon their consumer base instead of retooling their process for the 21st century.
Ty, you raise a good point in whether virtual currencies can be applied to sites outside of gaming. However, how do you consider this to not be advertising? Gambit/Offerpal/whoever go out and match up offers with your visitors. That’s advertising, regardless of whether a display ad is used. Perhaps more importantly, isn’t the reason for the high CPMs related to the scammy offers these virtual currency networks are so well known for? (Obviously this has been well-documented on paidcontent and elsewhere: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-amid-scam-accusations-social-ad-firm-offerpal-installs-a-new-ceo/)
@ed: it was a mistake on my part to say that prestige as a monetization model is new. What I was referring to is that the use of prestige to make money in *social* games is new, because online social games that sit on top of Facebook and Twitter are a new segment.
@Haydon: you can’t bet online in the States, so badging is as close as most folks are going to get to the lovely smell of casinos in Vegas.
@CoryJ: The end result is advertising, you are correct. My point is that this permission-based advertising is of a different scale in terms of dollars and effectiveness that traditional brand campaigns, and it is monetization that the consumer opts into, rather than having it thrust upon them. I am working on a piece about the lead generation market for April. At FanFeedr, we are using TrialPay, and we haven’t had any issues with low-quality or scammy offers. gWallet is also held in high regard on this front.
HI-END FOR ADVANCED USERS
Hi-End in meaning of Prestige and something extremely new! Along with technical development there is another big (or even bigger) part – marketing!
In the article – http://vas-inventions.com/index.php?page=hi-end you will find marketing ideas of how to sell your stuff with more profit!
Say briefly – most important in this job is to find right sticker! It’s valid nor HW producers, not just SW and Appl.