Facebook is poised to become the highest grossing media property in history, and doesn’t that make all of us hard working radio slugs feel great. For all of our hard work fighting and slugging it out for a share point, or a fraction of a share, Facebook has reinvented the game and continues to do so by selling relationships rather than impressions. If only we could get our hands on a little more of that advertising cash! AdAge’s Ben Elowitz predicts that Facebook will continue to thrive by creating an advertising model that has yet to be seen and there are some good lessons in here for Radio. Ben writes, “A relationship is worth a hundred or a thousand times an impression – or more – depending on how you monetize it.”
And how do you monetize relationships? Not with banner ads, which are blamed for contributing to the decline of MySpace. When it comes right down to it, don’t many of the ads you hear on the radio (your competitor’s station, not yours, of course!) sound like a banner ad? That dreaded break in the programming with an annoying distraction from what listeners really want followed by the inaudible cume-suck of radios being tuned away. So, how will (and does) Facebook compete and what can radio learn?
Ben says there are some unwritten rules. One, for example, Create an offering that enhances rather than compromises the user experience. Of course, you know that already. You try to climb that mountain every day. But, really when you listen to the radio do you hear a seamless stream of entertainment hour after hour? You might know the fundamentals of this, but are you living it? Not many stations are. As Ben suggests, look at magazine advertising in “GQ or Vogue – the advertising spread are so gorgeous and smart that readers think of them as content.” That is the Facebook model too. There are no Ad distractions from content in Facebook, they are all cleverly disguised as content. We need to apply this to radio, every day, every break, in every commercial: build a seamless stream of entertainment that keeps listeners stuck. Look at other mediums successful models and apply that to your situation.