Archive | Advertising

State of Behavioral Targeting in B2B Media

In my most recent benchmarking project, I asked a series of B2B digital media brands if they had a behavioral database that the editorial, audience development and sales could use. All of them responded “no,” which means they are not able to operationalize behavioral targeting. This was surprising, as behavioral databases are required to answer such questions as: Which audience members read the latest news on a particular topic? What news is the most popular for which audience members? Which audience members read a vendor guide or some other directory? Which audience members are researching information on a specific type of product? Answering these questions allows media companies to behaviorally target editorial that drives audience engagement, to behaviorally target metering […]

Why Churn is a Problem for Digital Media

At what point does churn rate inhibit growth and profit in a digital media business model? Both in the information services and SaaS industries, a churn rate over twenty percent is problematic for the business model. In both of these industries, sustainable profits exist at around ten percent churn. In controlled circulation of print media, a twenty percent churn rate would have been difficult to sustain. In digital media, the lifetime value of audience members is a key success factor to creating a profitable business model. This research note begins to explore the dynamics of the lifetime value of a digital audience. In September of 2011, Scout Research began tracking several audiences on B2B publisher sites to understand the lifetime value of the […]

What is the Revenue Potential of an Event? Measure Your Audience

Through 2015, much of the B2B media revenue growth forecasted by Veronis Suhler Stevenson shows a substantial portion will come from events — both live and virtual. Most notably, over 70% of clients are increasing investment in geographical events that can be replicated in multiple locations – geo-cloning, as one client called it. And because events require longer lead times, extensive production and marketing investment, optimizing event revenue becomes dependent on trade-offs – specifically, trade-offs between the revenue potential of various events. So how do you measure revenue potential of an event? Event revenue mainly comes from two sources: vendors and attendees. In the case of vendors, their revenue directly correlates to the number of attendees to which they gain […]

Profit is More Important than Monthly Unique Visitors

Do publishers measure what matters for digital? If profit is the goal, then monthly unique visitors and page views are not relevant performance indicators. What matters most for profit is revenue capacity and contribution from the loyal, profitable audience. When a Fly-by is worth less than $0.20 and a Fan is worth 250 times more, it’s hard for publishers to make profitable revenue off Fly-bys. Unfortunately, few publishers put a monetary value on their audience members or develop strategies to build and reward loyalty that yields profits. The monetary value of an audience member is defined as the combination of advertising and direct revenue (e.g., subscriptions, events, e-commerce, etc.). However, analyzing the relationship between loyalty and advertising revenue demonstrates the […]