Isn’t the Customer King?

Posted by: Matt Shanahan

“Technology is king” according to a recent MediaPost article; “content is king” according to a paidContent.org article; and “curation is king” according to a Business Insider article. For all the talk of monarchy, why isn’t the customer king?

I guess it has to do with the definition of king. For this post, I’m proposing a king be defined as the entity paying the way for everyone else in a particular market. Let’s face it, without a king of my definition there is no market (i.e., no kingdom).

Interestingly, in paid content most people wouldn’t debate that the subscriber is king. Sales, marketing, and product management teams are driven by the need to improve their offering and serve more subscribers (kings). In response, the subscriber pays for access and the paid-content provider benefits.

For publishers with ad models, there is sometimes the confusion that the audience is king, but they aren’t. For ad models, the king is the advertiser. Attention economics can help clarify this distinction.

Attention economics states that the source of economic value for a publisher is the specific share of attention provided by an audience. Now, it’s not that a publisher can actually sell attention, but the publisher can sell an impression, an attention-getting opportunity. That is how economic value is generated because advertisers or marketers are constantly hunting for where they can grab the attention of their target buyer. Specifically, a publisher sells advertisers the opportunity to compete for the attention of the right audience in the right context (i.e., placement). In this model, the customer is the advertiser; the manufacturer is the publisher; the product is an impression; and the raw materials are content and audience. That’s what makes advertisers the king.

What is difficult in today’s market is that the king’s expectation is rising. The rising expectations about advertising performance will challenge every business model in the ecosystem between the advertiser and the buyer and provide opportunities for new entrants. To stay in good favor with the king, publishers will need to be innovative and form ecosystem partnerships (e.g., iAds).

Back to the argument about monarchy, technology, content, curation and more are needed to maintain audience attention and to please the king. Arguing which is more important seems to be like arguing whether the fuel or the motor is more important in transportation. Advertisers like any customers want solutions.