Media Model Must Shift From Access To Insight

As media brands continue to retreat from traditional advertising models and lean more heavily on paid subscriptions, they would benefit from casting an eye toward corporate marketers who have embraced online communities.

As publishers continue to retreat from traditional advertising models and lean more heavily on paid subscriptions, they would benefit from casting an eye toward corporate marketers who have embraced online communities.

Publishers have long claimed to be the center of communities, but very few have been willing to cede any real control to their audiences, afraid to lose their authority. (Many pay lip service to the idea by adding comments to articles, but this falls far short of building community.) Meantime, marketers in a range of other industries have invested in building closed online communities for their customers and employees and are seeing benefits in customer retention, revenue growth, and customer insights.

For publishers, community can help shift their value proposition from touting access to sharing insights. Traditionally, publishers have made money by packaging and selling access to their audiences. The pitch was simple: a certain scale of a certain demographic contained in an environment conducive to marketers’ messages. But this pitch has been commoditized. The value of the curated environment has been dwarfed by the availability of cheap reach through the big platforms and ad tech.

For publishers, the best defense is a deep understanding of their audiences based on proprietary knowledge—profile information, behavioral data, and opinion. Community offers a way for publishers to shift the value proposition from access to insight.

A recent study lead by research and consulting firm Leader Networks shows the potential of communities as a vehicle for gathering insight. The report, based on an online survey of more than 271 marketing and community leaders between Nov. 7, 2016, and Dec. 1, 2016, found that 69% of marketing and community leaders use their customer community to listen to member needs to market better. They also use the community as an explicit research channel to identify customer champions and detractors (55%), surface trends for future development (52%), and spot and resolve product or service issues (52%).

In the context of a media company, where community members can interact with much more content as well as with each other, the opportunity to connect what community members say and read with their demographic information can uncover proprietary insights.

A well-defined audience—one engaged by the combination of quality content and qualified community—can help move media brands away from the access business and into the insights business. This is a model where their publications can focus on serving their readers rather than chasing scale, and where audience insights can fuel a new relationship between publishers and marketers.

There are, of course, challenges. The same study said 72% of community leaders face obstacles related to analyzing and reporting data. And connecting the dots between demographics, behavior, and opinion to find unique audience insights is a significant analytic challenge. But this is how publishers can avoid the race to the bottom that inevitably comes with competing on the basis of access.

Some audience insight has always been part of the value proposition for media companies. Now, proprietary and defensible audience insight is fast becoming the only value proposition. Community offers publishers a way to both serve their readers and save themselves.