In the tradition of the SIIA Content Forum being a little more nuts-and-bolts, search engine optimization is a key how-to topic that this panel parameterized. What does SEO mean in the content world, what are its pitfalls and risks, what does SEO mean to publishers, vendors and SEO experts, how can it be deployed. Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc. noted that 87 percent of clicks on Google search pages are on items in the organic search results, hence SEO's importance. Google and other search engines looks at the search itself to determine if you're a shopper or a researcher and try to deliver appropriate content, for example, if I am researching a car I may put in just the name of a car, but if I say "Ford Mustang pricing" I may get another type of response. In Web 2.0 content comes to the user via feed aggregation and embedded content, providing new contexts beyond search engines. Most Web pages with research-oriented content have at least 500 words, so the length of an item will also be important. Edmunds was creating content that was optimized better by AOL's syndication of the content - and draw more visitors. This goes into the design of the content itself to make sure that editorial content is going to be optimized for search engines.

Jill Konieczko of U.S. News and World Report notes that they "got religion" on SEO when their editors noted that their bread-and-butter college rankings were not dominating Google search results. They have ten librarians who respond to internal corporate information support requests, but recently they have been taking their traditional skills and applying them to SEO for editorial content. They've focused on licensed content as well as optimization for optimizing their content for DoubleClick ads. They combined the traditional USNWR taxonomy with a customized taxonomy to create a folksonomy of sorts that is inserted into Web content metadata. In metadata they focused on both "site" and "zone" tags for use in Healthline.com's search engine to help drive up their rankings. [Very interesting use of traditional skills - we are going to see more information professionals helping their institutions to organize their own content more effectively.]

Paul Mouton of Thomson Gale sees multiple partners involved in SEO providing different perspectives on the same problems. They saw that Google was not going away and decided to take on the challenge of using Google to expand their footprint via coopetition. Experts will try to take your content and build more personal relationships with your content via search engines, working hand-in-hand with a few manageable expert relationships to help publishers. Publishers can assert themselves as being authoritative by proper SEO techniques and to optimize their preferred content landing point. Thomson Gale's Goliath product developed with ECNext allows them to get exposure for content that also helps to have your content occupy other levels of ranking for your content - in other words, don't just get one page out there, dominate the rankings with your content.

Harlan Ratzky of Investors.com noted that they were one of the first publications to create a digital edition, but now see themselves as a crossroads. They have one of the highest levels of engagement for their audiences and they repurpose content extensively to make sure that they deliver content the way that their audiences want it. The big balancing act is to keep ad-supported content attractive while building subscription content that's valuable. Ultimately they don't see a conflict as long as you're constantly building up value on the subscriber side. Alongside these challenges is the "how much" of ad-supported content: is it all just extracts to drive traffic to full content or is it worth exposing full content. Their decision is not to dilute content quality just to improve SEO exposure.

Productive panel, good insights, and good comments from the attendees.

Labels: advertising, SEO, SIIA Content Forum 2007

George Beckerman of Marlin & Associates conducted a conversation with Cindy Hill, focusing on how to approach the convergence of media and enterprise content markets and to manage the acceptance of content from premium services with ads in the services. Cindy points out there that there's a huge "what's in it for me" from users but also a willingness to consider ads from subscription services if it doesn't impede access to content. Print-based journal providers are getting pushback on budgets not only on the basis of price but also on the basis of budget for storage, so migration to more ad-based content aimed at institutions into electronic media is going to be crucial. George points out that at the Amsterdam SIIA conference Claudia Juech, VP of Central Information Services at Deutsche Bank, was definitely open to the concept, so there was some anecdotal evidence for ads in enterprise-oriented content having support.

But Cindy point out that you do need eyeballs for content to make this work. Cindy and George have been doing research as to what the real receptivity is for ads. George points out that Steve Goldstein, CEO of Alacra, has done some experimentation with premium ads. Outsell research highlighted by George indicates that people in professional roles do respond to ads, so there is also some broader evidence for this response factor. Cindy underscores the need for ethical standards as a key factor for moving ads into enterprise-oriented content. Her research with George indicates that they would consider convergence pricing, but that they expect faster access to more essential informaiton in the process. So instead of having ads as sidebars direct embedding with useful information would be key. [COMMENT: We've been suggesting this for years, monetize context does not necessarily equate to traditional advertising.] But not everyone is in favor of ads in enterprise content - interestingly coming from individuals who were of the opinion that they were already able to negotiate pricing effectively and from those who are concerned about objectivity. So although that there is promise for this concept more insights and experimentation is required. Metrics are highly important, Cindy indicated that if a journal is not used at least one hundred times it's cancelled - a relatively low threshold of usage. Ads could help to offset the cost in these kinds of instances. There may be a number of solutions to be worked out for this, especially given earlier models for sponsored content in the financial industry.

In Q&A it came out that Alacra has done research and received strong push-back in their markets, Dow Jones is working on an enterprise-based product for financial information and news, BLR has added ads to some of their business and legal content with no pushback from subscribers.

Selling context in enterprise products can be tricky - interrupting workflow is a huge issue, but that's subject to interpretation. People are going to Google and other search engines as a part of their workflow any way, to implicitly there is a strong degree of acceptance for ads in business information anyway. The key factor to focus on is the value of context - content in context could be an ad, it could be objective content with sponsorship, it could be a database that has some content distributed on a licensed basis and other content on an ad basis, it could be the customer themselves offering that context for content that could be useful for their purposes.

Labels: advertising, business information, business models, enterprise, media, SIIA Content Forum 2007

George Beckerman of Marlin & Associates conducted a conversation with Cindy Hill, focusing on how to approach the convergence of media and enterprise content markets and to manage the acceptance of content from premium services with ads in the services. Cindy points out there that there's a huge "what's in it for me" from users but also a willingness to consider ads from subscription services if it doesn't impede access to content. Print-based journal providers are getting pushback on budgets not only on the basis of price but also on the basis of budget for storage, so migration to more ad-based content aimed at institutions into electronic media is going to be crucial. George points out that at the Amsterdam SIIA conference Claudia Juech, VP of Central Information Services at Deutsche Bank, was definitely open to the concept, so there was some anecdotal evidence for ads in enterprise-oriented content having support.

But Cindy point out that you do need eyeballs for content to make this work. Cindy and George have been doing research as to what the real receptivity is for ads. George points out that Steve Goldstein, CEO of Alacra, has done some experimentation with premium ads. Outsell research highlighted by George indicates that people in professional roles do respond to ads, so there is also some broader evidence for this response factor. Cindy underscores the need for ethical standards as a key factor for moving ads into enterprise-oriented content. Her research with George indicates that they would consider convergence pricing, but that they expect faster access to more essential informaiton in the process. So instead of having ads as sidebars direct embedding with useful information would be key. [COMMENT: We've been suggesting this for years, monetize context does not necessarily equate to traditional advertising.] But not everyone is in favor of ads in enterprise content - interestingly coming from individuals who were of the opinion that they were already able to negotiate pricing effectively and from those who are concerned about objectivity. So although that there is promise for this concept more insights and experimentation is required. Metrics are highly important, Cindy indicated that if a journal is not used at least one hundred times it's cancelled - a relatively low threshold of usage. Ads could help to offset the cost in these kinds of instances. There may be a number of solutions to be worked out for this, especially given earlier models for sponsored content in the financial industry. Great insights, would have loved to have heard more.

Labels: advertising, business information, business models, enterprise, media, SIIA Content Forum 2007

The strong weather back east prevented LookSmart CEO David Hill from delivering this address so Mike Schoen stood in to deliver his insights on advertising buys. All media audiences fragment over time, forcing advertising buys further into high-demand media and publishers ramping up their own sales efforts as they try to control and sell as much advertising as possible. As audiences fragment the pricing goes up for buys, but it requires technology that supports both the advertisers and the publishers. Mike sees publishers need to be able to build their brand their own sites, much as YouTube has managed to get its content embedded in other sites. Publishers need to do this in a way that protects their own brand.

In the face of fragmentation LookSmart focused on increasing audiences to leverage the trends falling out of fragmentation. More content, better SEO tools, one of the first social bookmarking tools Furl, focused on introducing vertical sites - all of which grew their audiences 4x and to build a deeper relationship with advertisers. This has resulted in LookSmart owning more ad relationships with a more focused sales force. Looking at ad networks and ad technologies as well as SEO and audience development systems there is a myriad of services available, including LookSmart's own auction based sales and service systems, Quigo, Doubleclick for banners, Google, Yahoo and others.

Faced with all of these forces and choices, there are some key factors to consider. Is your brand going to get the proper brand recognition? Is the right strategy being pursued for verticals, do you understand the demographics clearly? Do you get complete control over ad systems providing whit label services and pricing/terms control?

A good basic primer on managing online advertising, would have liked more leading edge insights but good content.

Labels: advertising, SIIA Content Forum 2007

I've been getting ready for my own panel so I haven't tuned into this panel too much, but from what I am gathering is that sales forces are still largely separate for print and digital advertising, in part because the two audiences are seen as so different. That may be true in some instances, but I am wondering whether it has more to do with the print advertiser and agencies being so different. I think that we're going to see that change over time but there's no doubt that print is going to remain a distinct advertising platform that has a different purpose with different outcomes.

Labels: ABM, advertising, Digital Velocity, events