Comments on: Stop selling scarcity

By: Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter » Blog Archive » What if Apple’s tablet hurts newspapers and magazines

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:09:58 +0000

[...] in Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do is the idea that Google (and the internet in general) killed the idea of scarcity in advertising. That coveted ad in the A-section of your local paper isn’t so coveted anymore when fewer [...]

By: The Third Way of Building Brand Equity | The Pop!Tech Blog | Accelerating the Positive Impact of Worldchanging People and Ideas

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:29:47 +0000

[...] third and perhaps most game-changing model for marketers is selling relevance rather than scarcity. Jeff Jarvis points to Digg’s new advertising system that enables users to vote on ads. Techcrunch calls [...]

By: Orbiting around us - It’s the future state of journalism | null risiko

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:59:02 +0000

[...] will be orbiting around every one of us at any given time. We will be overwhelmed by abundance. Scarcity will be gone for good. But filtering will be fundamentally necessary in order to gain value from a [...]

By: T e c Z i l l a » Werbung zum Abwählen

T e c Z i l l a » Werbung zum Abwählen — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:36:32 +0000

[...] BuzzMachine [...]

By: Adrian Monck

Adrian Monck — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:31:06 +0000

Dickens in David Copperfield:

“[H]ere is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment. Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it right…” said Mrs. Micawber, forcibly…

I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.

” By advertising,” said Mrs. Micawber, “in all the papers…”

” Advertising is rather expensive,” I remarked, dubiously.

By: BuzzMachine

BuzzMachine — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:46:36 +0000

[...] VP of marketing and communications, riffs on my post about moving past selling advertising as scarcity: Equity is the accumulation, the repeated occurrence, of actions, interactions, and transactions [...]

By: Is Advertising Dead? or The Third Way of Building Brand Equity | Blog | design mind

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:56:00 +0000

By: e okul

e okul — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:20:56 +0000

Hi,

“I’ve been wanting for sometime to have users vote on ads and tell a site which ads are worthwhile to them and which are not.”

Facebook does this right now.

By: Tom Owens

Tom Owens — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:57:00 +0000

The beauty of this model is that it forces clients to ratchet up the creativity of their advertising. This will lead to a creative renaissance and the end of committees killing great concepts.

By: jav

jav — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:42:32 +0000

.. I can see the golden age of the personal blogs comming

By: Links for 4th June 2009 | Velcro City Tourist Board

Links for 4th June 2009 | Velcro City Tourist Board — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:01:43 +0000

[...] Stop selling scarcity [...]

By: Social Media-Radar 05/06/09 – PR 2.0, Titanic, trnd, „New York Times“, Seth Godin | ethority weblog

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:32:53 +0000

[...] Neues Werbe-System von Digg Der Werber, der die meisten Klicks generiert, muss am wenigstens zahlen. Die Idee dahinter: Gute Clips vermarkten sich selbst. Buzzmachine.com [...]

By: Vincent Gable » links for 2009-06-04

Vincent Gable » links for 2009-06-04 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:33:54 +0000

[...] Stop selling scarcity "The future of advertising needs to be selling – that is, enabling – relevance instead of selling scarce space, time, or eyeballs. The future needs to be about adding value – relevance – rather than selling scarcity (extracting what the market will bear). I’m not sure whether Digg’s system is a step in that direction; Batey’s right that there could be unintended consequences. But it’s worth watching. I hope Digg shares data and experience in its fascinating experiment." (tags: advertising web2.0 digg research) [...]

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:14:08 +0000

Digg readers are proudly somewhat herd-like. Explicitly voting on what their fellows see enhances that experience.

Voting which has consequences (ad price changes) also tells Digg readers that Digg is on their side.

By: Publicidad como la experiencia esperada. El caso de los anuncios en Digg : Blogografia

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:42:14 +0000

[...] sucede (en las colas de pendientes de estos sitios hay mucha autopromoción). También lo comenta Jarvis que hace una llamada a “dejar de vender escasez”… aunque precisamente la escasez [...]

By: Sobre Tecnologia » Publicidad como la experiencia esperada. El caso de los anuncios en Digg

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:36:42 +0000

By: Digg y la publicidad como ¿contenido? | Denken Über

Digg y la publicidad como ¿contenido? | Denken Über — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:29:33 +0000

[...] P.S.: Es interesantísimo el post de Jeff Jarvis: Stop Selling Scarcity [...]

By: John Blasten

John Blasten — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:27:36 +0000

Kirk: I’m also not sure what voting on an ad does that isn’t accomplished by counting the clicks on the ad itself.

Exactly… and this is so ripe to be gamed as I can buy a day’s worth of clicks for pennies in India and China which will result in disproportionate sayings on my ad spend.

But hey… Digg’s audience is not that valuable to advertisers anyway. I think everyone knows that, including Digg.

By: Ben Lukoff

Ben Lukoff — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:59:42 +0000

“I’ve been wanting for sometime to have users vote on ads and tell a site which ads are worthwhile to them and which are not.”

Facebook does this right now.

By: Angus Batey

Angus Batey — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:52:05 +0000

> Either way, Digg wins.

I think this may be at the heart of why I’m not entirely sold on this concept. It’s all about the middleman, and doesn’t ultimately look like it’s going to work as well as one might have hoped for either publishers, advertisers or readers. This kind of thinking – apparently of the “well, it’s not quite what anyone in the whole shooting match wants, but it’ll do the job for us; so let’s work hard to sell it as a compromise to everyone” strain – is a big part of why the media and entertainment industries have got themselves into the messes that they’re in. The system that will succeed will be the one that looks first and foremost at what the, to use the dread term, “stakeholders” (and I include reader/user-ship in that) want and delivers it optimally.

And Rick – thanks: a provocative post, as was your Age of Imposition one, which I’d recommend additionally to anyone else interested in this.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=297

Cheers,

By: Kirk Caraway

Kirk Caraway — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:50:11 +0000

There’s no shortage of other places to advertise, either. I think the devil is in the details, how the rating works and just how easy this system is for advertisers and readers to understand. If their target market is high-end agencies that have time and resources to work the system, then maybe it succeeds. But if they are trying to go after Google’s small biz market, the complexity may work against them.

I’m also not sure what voting on an ad does that isn’t accomplished by counting the clicks on the ad itself. Hey, maybe I think and ad is cool and vote it up, but I’m not interested enough to click on it? What good is that for an advertiser? Seems like an extra step to me. Why not just elevate the position of ads that get more clickthroughs?

It will be an interesting experiment to watch.

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:29:24 +0000

> They have it backwards. If a company’s ad is getting voted up where more people see it, that’s added value that they should be willing to pay for, not the other way around.
Do we know what “charge more” means? Does it mean “total bill” or rates?

The difference is important. If Digg drops the rates for popular ads but increases the distribution, Digg may get more money from those advertisers and will give them more exposure. At worse, break-even/win.

> Whereas charging more for less popular ads is a sure way to lose those customers.

There isn’t a shortage of potential advertisers for Digg’s readers.

Digg is trying to maximize the product of the number of readers and the lifetime value of each reader. Chasing away unpopular ads helps with the former. Increasing their rates helps with the latter. Either way, Digg wins.

By: Max Kalehoff

Max Kalehoff — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:59:50 +0000

JEff: Google’s Quality Score system rewards relevance (by its definition) by lowering the cost of placement — and vice versa. Digg seems to be doing nothing new, but simply a manual version of that. Importantly, ads are part of the overall media experience — the chinese-wall separation is kind of bogus. When ads and content work better together, the core media programming/content becomes more compelling. But AdSense? I’m still waiting for relevance on that one!

On the topic of performance and relevance, following are the ten commandments I presented at the Brite conference, just prior to your presentation:

1. Media are commodities, but media companies often fail to acknowledge.
2. Defenders of “premium” inventory are losing because nobody can define it.
3. Inventory may be remnant, but there’s no such thing as a remnant customer.
4. CPMs will continue to drop amidst migration to performance.
5. Media supply led demand, but now demand leads supply.
6. Advertisers moving from optimizing clicks to optimizing profit.
7. Advertisers garnering power to dial up or down — as they please.
8. In deteriorating economies, tolerance for discovery and latent ROI decline.
9. This is all happening fast, and economic volatility accelerates it.
10. Like all preceding media, it will take decades to understand purpose.

Cheers.

By: Kirk Caraway

Kirk Caraway — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:53:08 +0000

I like the Digg ad system except for one thing. They have it backwards. If a company’s ad is getting voted up where more people see it, that’s added value that they should be willing to pay for, not the other way around. Whereas charging more for less popular ads is a sure way to lose those customers. This is the opposite of pay for performance.

This also ignores the danger of gaming the system, a problem Digg has suffered with for a long time on the editorial side. I think it won’t take long for some savvy advertisers to figure out how to vote their ads up, especially when you give them a financial incentive.

Google really has it right here. They charge more for popular keywords (thus more exposure) and popular ads (more clicks), while ads that don’t strike users’ fancies end up costing companies much less because no one clicks on them.

I may be wrong, but I don’t see this working.

By: RickWaghorn

RickWaghorn — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:06:08 +0000

AB,

‘I feared the Digg model might end up skewing advertising towards a position where well-resourced companies with imaginative concepts would end up being able to accrue vast online acreages at an ever-diminishing cost while those advertisers with shallower pockets would find not just their access to eyeballs dropping but their ability to pay for that access disappearing too…

Or the smaller/local businesses that don’t have time/resource to compete with the bigger, smarter guys…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=299

Best, etc