Seth Godin on New Marketing
Seth Godin has a new post (“The platform vs. the eyeballs“) up about how marketing used to be about renting an audience (“we want this size of a TV audience at such and such a time”) and the metrics were how many eyeballs did you get or what was the CPM:
You, the marketer, don’t care about the long-term value of this audience. It’s like a rental car. You want it to be clean and shiny when you get it, you want to avoid getting in trouble when you return it, but hey, it’s a rental.
And so when we buy ads, we ask, “how big an audience” and then we design an ad with our brand in mind, not with the well-being of the media company or its audience in mind. And if we get a .1% or even a 1% response rate, we celebrate.
Godin’s thesis is that new marketing focuses on owning the audience and not aiming for a 1% conversion rate but a 90% conversion rate:
Old media was not the same as old branding. Media companies built audiences and then brands rented those audiences.
Suddenly the new media comes along and the rules are different. You’re not renting an audience, you’re building one. You’re not exhibiting at a trade show, you’re starting your own trade show.
If you still ask, “how much traffic is there,” or “what’s the CPM?” you’re not getting it. Are you buying momentary attention or are you investing in a long term asset?
The rest of the post concerns Godin’s ideas on how to build the platform he mentions. It’s interesting, but the above is what concerns me most since it seems to validate at least some of what I was saying earlier about advertising being a long-term, win-win relationship between the consumer and content providers. The analogy to renting an audience as opposed to cultivating a long-term audience is quite good, in my opinion.
