Dreamer
June 13th, 2005, 03:49 AM
The whole premise of ymmss is that one day, putting it in their words, "advertisers will be clammering to do business with us". The whole idea of being a $10billion driving force would be appealing to advertisers isnt going to work. You dont need a PhD to figure this out. So, if anybody would like to discuss anything releated to advertising on ymmss, positivies or negatives, post here.
There is ultimately 2 reasons why people advertise. Okay, well, 3. The third one I'll discuss first since it doesnt play that big of a role.
1. To get rid of product. If I have a baseball card collection that Im considering tossing, i might put an add in the newspaper to sell them. When a retail business is about to go out of business, they may do some last minute advertising getting rid of their product before they liquidate it out. While this is technically selling product, i put it aside becaue many times people will sell at a big loss just so they dont have to pay for storage fees or throw it away. People that sell this way look for the cheapest available advertising. They dont have time to make up a fancy ad or pay big bucks so everybody can see it. Local newspapers are usually the best or trade related journals. The point is not to turn a profit but to get your ad in front of the likely people who might buy your product.
Now, with businesses they can simply liquidate out their store to a liquidator who might pay 3 cents on the value dollar just so they can sell it out for 10 cents on the dollar to a 99 cent type store who will sell it out for 20 cents on the dollar. That type of money is guaranteed (well, maybe the percentages might be higher or lower, but they can call to get quotes). Now, if a business is going out of business and has a quote for $.05 on the value dollar, would it be worth spending $500 to try to sell to 100k members? Well, even if money might be made, the truth of the matter is its usually crunch time when going out of business, so they simply dont have time for somebody from Nigeria or somewhere else to offer to buy their product.
So, one category down of people who might not use ymmss.
2. Name branding. Everybody knows Nike. Everybody knows the symbol to pepsi. Thats product branding. I think kim alluded to this to convince people that these companies will want to shell out billions to brand their product with ymmss. Well, it doesnt work that way.
People tape tv shows. Even if they edit out the commercials, the potential of commercials longetavitiy is forever. I enjoy watching commercials from the 50s. There are tv shows just devoted to commercials. People watch the superbowl for the commercials. The truth of the matter is, while the 30 second spot is the most important consideration when producing a spot, businesses will go out of their way to insure the longetivity of the commercial, to get people to talk about it, for free advertising.
People actually record radio. Old time radio is popular. are commercials edited out of that? I'm not sure. Old radio jingles are also very popular. Billboards can get recorded on the 6pm news, or by a vacationeer showing everything they saw. People save newspapers for childrens birthdays. Even video games, while advertisers are starting to consider that as a viable means of advertising, i personally still play old coleco vision games and other classics. I still read old comic books showing how you can get your very own binoclears if you sell their envelopes.
In any matter of advertising, there is longetivity. Does that exist on the internet? No. Can anybody remember any significient event on the internet worth remembering? Well...there was that dancing baby of years ago. Now, where they selling anything? I dont know.There are sites that come and go, but there is nothing really rememorable that people will talk about in 50 years and want to have images stored of that one day they visited that one website.
But even while longegativity is not a criteria for product branding, it doesn't hurt. The thing with all of these advertising they are all first hand advertising. You watch the commercials directly, you see the billboard directly. But, before I go on to my next point, There is a potential number of people that might see the tv commercial. That number is all the people who might be watching tv and that station at that time. There is a number of people who might see the billboard based on how busy the highway is on a given day.The potential market though is everybody who owns a tv, a computer, everybody who might ever drive in the state.
Now, what kim is doing is more focused and less successful. I consider it second generation level of advertising, meaning that a certain criteria must be met before somebody might see the ad. Now, i suppose you can argue u need a tv to view a tv commercial, or a raido to listen to a ad, or buy a magazine to read a classified, however, most people have tvs, most have radios, but buy the magazine regardless of the ads.
A second generation ad is something that requires a prerequisit. To view an add on ymmss the people must be members. to view the wall at the baseball game, you need to have purchased the tichets to the game. As i said earlier, companies are considering advertising in video games, placing a pepsi machine somewhere instead of a generic soda machine. But in order to see that soda machine you have to buy the game.
This level of advertising only works for branding. Have a pepsi logo shown at a baseball game and when ur thirsty, it goes from get me a soda to get me a pepsi. Say that enough times, and when you run to the store get me some pepsi. Why wont this work with ymmss? If the video game sells 100k copies, you can safely assume that 100k people will probably see the ad and intereact with it (if its a good ad to intereact with). Same with a baseball stadium. But what is the viewing rate of ymmss? Well, they like to tote around 20,000 members, so 10,000 hours of viewing. But ymmss is not set up for 30mins a week per retail advertisement.
Well, lets be fair before i jump to my conclusion. They are being paid to read advertisements, right? Well, what incentive is there to do their job well? When I was overworked and underpaid i slacked off at work alot. If I was going to get paid either way, the same amount, whether or not the shop was clean or not, the shop stayed dirty when i felt like i wasnt being appreciated.
What incentive is there to read ads at ymmss? u might get paid either way. Well, according to kim, all the members know that by supporting the advertisers they wil advertise more. Well, i'll get into this part later. As of right now there is no incentative to read more than just the same ad week in and week out.
So, ymmss fails on longegativity, copability, and viewability.
3. ROI - The most imporant reason why 95+ plus copanies advertise. Simply put, if i invest $1000 tomorrow with a certain company that promises results, by the time the advertising campaign is over, if I didn't get $1000 plus in sales from that advertiser, i will not use them again. The truth is businesses are the business to make money not to make other people rich by their own poor decisions.
ymmss will fail here also. The math just doesnt work out.
There is ultimately 2 reasons why people advertise. Okay, well, 3. The third one I'll discuss first since it doesnt play that big of a role.
1. To get rid of product. If I have a baseball card collection that Im considering tossing, i might put an add in the newspaper to sell them. When a retail business is about to go out of business, they may do some last minute advertising getting rid of their product before they liquidate it out. While this is technically selling product, i put it aside becaue many times people will sell at a big loss just so they dont have to pay for storage fees or throw it away. People that sell this way look for the cheapest available advertising. They dont have time to make up a fancy ad or pay big bucks so everybody can see it. Local newspapers are usually the best or trade related journals. The point is not to turn a profit but to get your ad in front of the likely people who might buy your product.
Now, with businesses they can simply liquidate out their store to a liquidator who might pay 3 cents on the value dollar just so they can sell it out for 10 cents on the dollar to a 99 cent type store who will sell it out for 20 cents on the dollar. That type of money is guaranteed (well, maybe the percentages might be higher or lower, but they can call to get quotes). Now, if a business is going out of business and has a quote for $.05 on the value dollar, would it be worth spending $500 to try to sell to 100k members? Well, even if money might be made, the truth of the matter is its usually crunch time when going out of business, so they simply dont have time for somebody from Nigeria or somewhere else to offer to buy their product.
So, one category down of people who might not use ymmss.
2. Name branding. Everybody knows Nike. Everybody knows the symbol to pepsi. Thats product branding. I think kim alluded to this to convince people that these companies will want to shell out billions to brand their product with ymmss. Well, it doesnt work that way.
People tape tv shows. Even if they edit out the commercials, the potential of commercials longetavitiy is forever. I enjoy watching commercials from the 50s. There are tv shows just devoted to commercials. People watch the superbowl for the commercials. The truth of the matter is, while the 30 second spot is the most important consideration when producing a spot, businesses will go out of their way to insure the longetivity of the commercial, to get people to talk about it, for free advertising.
People actually record radio. Old time radio is popular. are commercials edited out of that? I'm not sure. Old radio jingles are also very popular. Billboards can get recorded on the 6pm news, or by a vacationeer showing everything they saw. People save newspapers for childrens birthdays. Even video games, while advertisers are starting to consider that as a viable means of advertising, i personally still play old coleco vision games and other classics. I still read old comic books showing how you can get your very own binoclears if you sell their envelopes.
In any matter of advertising, there is longetivity. Does that exist on the internet? No. Can anybody remember any significient event on the internet worth remembering? Well...there was that dancing baby of years ago. Now, where they selling anything? I dont know.There are sites that come and go, but there is nothing really rememorable that people will talk about in 50 years and want to have images stored of that one day they visited that one website.
But even while longegativity is not a criteria for product branding, it doesn't hurt. The thing with all of these advertising they are all first hand advertising. You watch the commercials directly, you see the billboard directly. But, before I go on to my next point, There is a potential number of people that might see the tv commercial. That number is all the people who might be watching tv and that station at that time. There is a number of people who might see the billboard based on how busy the highway is on a given day.The potential market though is everybody who owns a tv, a computer, everybody who might ever drive in the state.
Now, what kim is doing is more focused and less successful. I consider it second generation level of advertising, meaning that a certain criteria must be met before somebody might see the ad. Now, i suppose you can argue u need a tv to view a tv commercial, or a raido to listen to a ad, or buy a magazine to read a classified, however, most people have tvs, most have radios, but buy the magazine regardless of the ads.
A second generation ad is something that requires a prerequisit. To view an add on ymmss the people must be members. to view the wall at the baseball game, you need to have purchased the tichets to the game. As i said earlier, companies are considering advertising in video games, placing a pepsi machine somewhere instead of a generic soda machine. But in order to see that soda machine you have to buy the game.
This level of advertising only works for branding. Have a pepsi logo shown at a baseball game and when ur thirsty, it goes from get me a soda to get me a pepsi. Say that enough times, and when you run to the store get me some pepsi. Why wont this work with ymmss? If the video game sells 100k copies, you can safely assume that 100k people will probably see the ad and intereact with it (if its a good ad to intereact with). Same with a baseball stadium. But what is the viewing rate of ymmss? Well, they like to tote around 20,000 members, so 10,000 hours of viewing. But ymmss is not set up for 30mins a week per retail advertisement.
Well, lets be fair before i jump to my conclusion. They are being paid to read advertisements, right? Well, what incentive is there to do their job well? When I was overworked and underpaid i slacked off at work alot. If I was going to get paid either way, the same amount, whether or not the shop was clean or not, the shop stayed dirty when i felt like i wasnt being appreciated.
What incentive is there to read ads at ymmss? u might get paid either way. Well, according to kim, all the members know that by supporting the advertisers they wil advertise more. Well, i'll get into this part later. As of right now there is no incentative to read more than just the same ad week in and week out.
So, ymmss fails on longegativity, copability, and viewability.
3. ROI - The most imporant reason why 95+ plus copanies advertise. Simply put, if i invest $1000 tomorrow with a certain company that promises results, by the time the advertising campaign is over, if I didn't get $1000 plus in sales from that advertiser, i will not use them again. The truth is businesses are the business to make money not to make other people rich by their own poor decisions.
ymmss will fail here also. The math just doesnt work out.