The race of the marketers: the time value of content

Socially-driven websites present new opportunities for marketers to piggyback on other people’s content

In addition to inflating the valuations of many internet firms, the Web 2.0 craze has had a really neat ancillary affect on the way information is broken to the public.

Unlike 2-3 years ago, when most websites employed human moderators to choose what content was to be posted, today websites such as digg, reddit, and youtube allow their users to post and vote on what content is most relevant -
regardless if the user is the originator of, or an authority on, the content.

In other words, “socially organized” websites have significantly increased the ease of stealing the limelight from primary sources.

Example: a search for “Kramer rant” on youtube brings up many copies of the famous video, the first posted by Zilla2010. Zilla2010’s copy of the Kramer video has been viewed 1,426,711 times (at the time of this posting) - even though the content was original released by TMZ.com.

Zilla2010 seems like an honest person though, as they haven’t smacked on an advertisement for their own website after the video, nor have they tried to remove TMZ’s logo from the video. Some other youtubers
aren’t as nice though, and they’ve still received ~131,000 views. While the users of most geek-centric sites (i.e. digg) can distinguish between a blog referencing a news article and a primary source, I would venture to say the majority of people on the Internet either can not, or choose not to care. As a result of this, an Internet marketing
opportunity for any individual now exists to re-break content - regardless of budget or resources. The value of the opportunity declines significantly with each passing minute, as another person from the “breaking rush” releases their attempt to capitalize on the content’s significance.

So, what does this all mean to interactive media strategy?

Conclusion #1 - As the creator of content, a greater effort must now be made to be the first to post your content to the popular Web 2.0 sites, and emphasis must be given to the titling and tagging of your content to avoid others from doing a better job of marketing your own content.

People on the Internet aren’t that different that people off the Internet, and simple Marketing 101 / Psychology 101 techniques still work. As SEOBlackhat.com writes in their somewhat tongue-in-cheek article on how to make the
front page of Digg, “Make a list or tutorial headline (Top 10…), make up an outrageous statistic or claim, etc…” – in other words, the exact same techniques which have been used in direct mail and infomercial marketing for the last 30 years.

Conclusion #2 – If the content is not yours, you can still benefit from the initial wave of people searching for it by getting in early on the “breaking rush”. As shown by the second Kramer video, roughly 100,000 page views or ~ $200 of online advertising (assuming $2 / CPM) was achieved for free. I am not condoning stealing content, but rather pointing out the realities of the time value of content.

Conclusion #3 – By adding value to the original content quickly enough, you can “ride the wave” with the original. The star wars kid video is a good example of others adding value quick enough to ride the wave.

I envision in the near future (if it isn’t happening already) ad agencies employing full time staff to do just this. When a picture of the snow covered Denver airport is released on digg*,
the agency would make a (non-affiliated) blog post seconds later. In the blog post, information on snow fall records, little known facts about snow, and a blurb on the world’s warmest snow boots (which just happen to be sold by the agency’s client) would be added.

If the blog post gets written and submitted to digg fast enough, it may even beat the content creator’s own submission, as it contains more relevant information that just the direct link to the flickr page. Within twenty four hours, it may make it to the first page, getting hundreds of thousands of relevant impressions for their client, all on the coat tails of someone else’s photo.

Welcome to the race of the marketers.

UPDATE AS OF 6:36 PM
I just checked digg and discovered that someone “re-breaked” the images of Denver International Airport I referenced earlier. The new pictures add value by inserting an image of what the airport normally looks like
(from Google Maps), allowing for a “before and after” comparison. What a wonderful coincidence that someone would re-break the exact digg reference from my post!