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Pinning down how the web is more than just another channel

Platform: Internet | Author: Michael Bayler | Source: NMA magazine | Published: 24.05.07

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It was very last century to point out that the internet is just another channel. Those who actually used the web knew better. But it was harder than you'd have thought to counter this regrettable claim. We said things like: 'Yes, but it is very very different,' and 'But you must admit, interactivity does change the communications landscape.'

What we were driving at was an explanation of what we deeply felt and saw but couldn't yet explain. It was, with hindsight, something like...

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... this: that the experience of online communications was changing the way we experience our world. The internet, we now know, changes everything.

With the Rights Marketing team, I try to help all sorts of diverse players find their way in the space. We've had the rare good fortune to work with firms that are willing to go way beyond 'just another channel' to learn what's really going on, and what it means for the brand, the media owner, the rights owner and, most of all, for the consumer.

We've discovered that the impact of digital media is more profound, far-reaching and permanent than even the most crushing riposte to 'just another channel' could convey. Outbound communications are far from being the big story in media futures. Peer-to-peer, socially based and motivated communications are now part and parcel of the most humdrum media plan.

In 2007 these developments are, in the light of the market's twists and turns over the past two years or so, the stuff of Media 101.

As networked consumers in affluent societies live their increasingly mediated - yet paradoxically media-independent - lives, they play hide and seek with advertisers and media and rights owners, who are desperate to add some sort of value simply in order to grab back a little of the wandering attention they crave. We instinctively - and not entirely wrongly - wrack our brains to find the flowers that will attract these discerning bees to brush up against our pollen.

Likewise, buzz around the brand, or its related activities in media, becomes an area of increasing interest. We search for a mechanism to evaluate ROI that matches the new value dimension. We sometimes call this engagement, perhaps best modelled as 'time with the brand versus percentage of active attention captured'.

And yes, this does tell us how well our outbound campaigns are performing, and feeds into our understanding and calculation of achieved individual and group engagement with our brands, our channels and our content. And yes, it does enable us to fine-tune our campaigns using the accepted tools of AdTech, through to some fascinating behavioural techniques.

But we're missing the biggest trick here. It's not the media consumers are looking at that holds the true promise of the marketing future, it's the real-time insight from our access to what they're doing, what they say, what they like and, most of all, how we can then act to enhance their experience of this mediated life with 'experience plus' support from the supplicant brand.

Digital media represent infinitely more than 'just another channel'. Most of us grasp that by now. But they're also far beyond being merely another very different channel that's changing the rules of communication. They offer the beginnings of an intelligent dashboard for the risky, punishing game of real-time marketing, that today and tomorrow is the true challenge of every major media stakeholder.

Michael Bayler is a director of consultancy The Rights Marketing Company and co-author of digital customer value manifesto Promiscuous Customers: Invisible Brands. His blog is at rightsmarketing. wordpress.com