08
April
2010
|
06:10 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Perfect Market: Optimizing Media For Search And Social Networks

[Here is a follow up to yesterday's story Offline Publications Earn 50 Times More Online Than Web-Only Media.]

Perfect Market conducted a survey of offline and online publications and found that traditional publishers had a key advantage in terms of earning revenue from their content, because they could leverage their offline brands and also their relationships with advertisers.

I spoke with Stephen Walker, COO of Perfect Market, about how he conducted the survey and what his company does for large publishers. Here are some notes from our conversation:

- We determined how much revenue companies can make on their content based on our historical data working with large publishers.

- Large publishers with offline properties have an advantage in that they can cross-promote across their properties. ESPN is a good example in that it can promote its online content through its TV channel.

- Perfect Market works with publishers to maximize the revenues they get from different sets of readers.

- The main visitors are what we call the "brand" visitors, they go directly to the site. We work on the "intent" users the ones that get to a site through search. Our technology helps to match the content with the user in near real-time.

- There is a big difference between the brand and the intent users. Most web sites are set up to service the brand while the intent users are neglected. This is what I call the "publisher's dilemma" it is difficult to serve both types.

- We host the content and make sure that it is search engine optimized to attract intent users. It runs under the same IP address as the publisher so they get credit for all the traffic. The content is also 'social network optimized' to make use of the power of social networks such as Digg, Twitter, and Facebook, in driving traffic.

- We can typically double the traffic from search and also increase revenues per page of content by as much as ten times. We also run ads to help drive traffic to a site.

- We work with advertising networks to match the ads to the user.

- We work on a revenue share basis with publishers. Right now we are focusing on large publishers but we will also start working with smaller media companies.

- We spun out of Idealab in 2007. (http://www.perfectmarket.com/about_us/)

Please see:

Offline Publications Earn 50 Times More Online Than Web-Only Media - SVW

Perfect Market Blog