Use your Users

Ad based business is having a rough time. So it's not surprising that more and more people are claiming that targeted ads could do a lot better than classic display ads. But how can you target users of your website? Of course, by tracking their clicks and keywords of pages they visit and then grouping users into clusters which can be marketed to your clients. That's what everybody can do and many do already. Just imagine how much more you know about your users when they become registered users and fill their user profiles with interests, things they like etc. You could target even better. 

Google is not in the targeting business. Yet. Facebook is. Facebook is using user data and its apps to create revenue. That's an interesting model for media companies as well. Media companies have information and assets to attract users and they have (at least some of them) attached communities to keep them on their site. What many of them are lacking currently is a strong set of networking tools. Both for the editors and their users. These tools can connect users on your site with users from other sites, can connect editorial staff to users. Regard your editorial team as being a part of the community.

Learn from Facebook and the Facebook apps. They are giving away things for free (apps, API, SDK) and get something in return - marketing, done by users who spread the word. And apps which attract new users and keep them busy on Facebook. And - most important - they collect data about their user's likes and dislikes and other social data. That's more than you can do with classic web analysis. Apps and modules as part of your web analysis - if these modules are made available as widgets for other sites you also learn more about your market environment.

Users are the key for media companies. They can contribute, they can become partners. Business partners, that is. Because users and their data is a value, and companies will soon realize that Facebook and others are having a head start in collecting and using this data. For example, VentureBeat teamed up with DEMO for a panel to discuss how sharing social data across the net will affect business and users. I'm sure that providing users with tools will motivate many of them to contribute to your site, not only with content and presence but also with valuable data.

How to deliver targeted ads? That's another chapter.