More fuel for (niche) advertising fire

Diane Merimagas, of Hollywood Reporter, wrote an interesting piece recently about the rise of Internet advertising and the (relative) fall of TV upfronts. Here’s her conclusion:

Even if traditional media’s structural and psychological transformation don’t occur fast enough, advertisers now appear willing to break from convention to follow targeted consumers into customized, niche spaces. That’s the difference a year has made.
Read the entire article here

This sentiment picks up on what I posted yesterday (from Brandweek):

In late October, Amtrak launched a group on Gather for people who are passionate about train travel called Amtrak Presents: All Aboard! At 4,227 members, it is one of the largest on the site, advertiser sponsored or not. With 1 million monthly unique visitors, Gather is much smaller than MySpace. But because over 70 percent of its audience is college educated and in the 30 to 59 age range, it has a comfort level for certain advertisers that the bigger, youth market social networks don’t. For Amtrak, which generally uses the Internet for transactional marketing, Gather is the only place it is running a sponsored group. “We’re getting them engaged in a conversation,” says Gail B. Reisman, senior director of integrated advertising and East field sales for Amtrak.

As social networks, large and small, become better at creating and defining connections with advertisers, it’s easy to see how size may begin to matter less, diminishing the importance not only of the page view, but eventually other metrics, such as unique audience, with it. The more important issue will be whether the advertiser is reaching the right audience. Because in marketing, it’s all about making the right friends.

Sponsorship of teams sites seems like just the thing

If it’s true that advertisers are looking to connect more closely with consumers, and they’re willing to “follow” them into niche environments, the NFL team sites seem well positioned for growth. And from everything I’m reading and from conversations I’ve had recently, it appears that “media buyers” are NOT the ones we teams sites should be talking to. These guys are buying REACH and FREQUENCY to target demos, and care much more about quantity than quality.

Brand managers and interactive managers (like Amtrak’s Ms. Reisman) may be in a better position to appreciate the value of our passionate fan bases.

Last year Colts.com welcomed over 6 million unique visitors, who generated over 54 million page views. This is not the biggest site in the world, let alone the NFL, but this audience is chock full of people who have a high level of passion for the NFL in general and the Colts specficially. It is around this NICHE of fans that teams and sponsors could partner.

It continues to boggle my mind that local sponsors will spend MILLIONS to be inside our stadiums where only a few hundred thousand fans will ever see their message, whereas millions of fans visit our Websites from all over the world. Both the stadium and the site are EXPERIENCE ENVIRONMENTS, and while the stadium is indeed where the action is, the site is not far behind in terms of capturing emotional fans. Just look at our fan forums and you’ll see how deeply our site visitors care, and how engaged they are online.

And I haven’t even mentioned social nets yet

Yes. Many teams (including the Colts) are preparing to launch social networking platforms for fans. In fact, we’ve already got over 21,000 fans pre-registered for our upcoming launch of My Colts Network. Surely social net platforms will offer even better ways for brands to make deep connections with fan bases. But our general Websites are already rich niche media channels; and custom “sponsorsed” content programs are already available that would not require social networking systems to be built.

So far most national media buyers have treated team sites like (regional) media platforms. Instead, they should consider team sites as untapped goldmines of fan passion. While all eyes are on general social networks like MySpace, our team sites and social networks are the best kept secret in online marketing. Perhaps this will be the year we finally get noticed.