There’s No Free Lunch

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One of the big discussions in which I find myself engaged with clients and others concerns monetization. More specifically, how the heck can any of us pay for all the cool content and technology we offer to our consumers. If you’re web-savvy enough to be reading this blog you’ve probably encountered this argument in one form or another even if indirectly. You know what I mean: free, ad-supported content vs. subscription content vs. “free-mium”, which seems more to be about services than content but is still a valid model for that space too.  So where do you stand?

The basic value exchange in “old” mass media was pretty much you give me your attention for a few minutes to pass along to advertisers and I’ll give you many times that time back in quality content.  In print, where the attention demand was less intrusive than in TV and radio, publishers charged a fee for the content which helped to offset the costs of physical production and distribution.

Somehow, the broadcast model ended up being the web model – free content supported by advertising.  In my mind this has always been a square peg in a round hole.  Sure, there are the home page takeovers and odd ads which dance across your page (where is the “close” button!??!) but in general the ads aren’t intrusive enough to warrant that value exchange.  When the web was a shiny new thing for most of us, it might have been (click-through rates were many times what they are today) but not any more.

It’s interesting that as marketers and publishers move to take advantage of what the technology can provide with respect to viewer-tracking and more targeted ad delivery, the backlash against them has grown to the point where legislative bodies are becoming involved.  That may not be good for anyone.

So what’s the answer?  Would you pay for content?  How special does it have to be?  Should the web follow the cable TV model (you pay the ISP a “content fee” each month)?  How would that money be distributed to publishers and what happens when the mobile web is used vs. the wired web?

There’s no free lunch in free media!