Most Widely Ignored Monetization Concept: Access to Analytics
As a content creator, a marketer, a strategist, a business man, and a realist, I know that measuring the impact of my marketing efforts — my content creation strategy and its reach — is central to my success. That means that one of the most important assets in my marketing arsenal is the data (or the access to data) for any channel I’m participating on.
If you’re building anything on which marketers will participate by creating, consuming, or sharing content, this article is for you. Its central message: you can easily and effectively monetize your platform by allowing marketers to pay for deep analysis of their audience and yours.
Access to your data is a premium service
There are few content-creation or content-sharing platforms that charge for — or even offer — the ability to see in-depth demographics or even aggregate information about how their content is consumed.
Tumblr Stats View
Tumblr, a microblogging service, gives you little more than basic counts. For example, you have 10 followers, or this article has been reblogged 18 times. The problem is that this kind of information is only great as a teaser.
I want to know more. Tell me ‘who’ these people are? How old is the average reader? Who are my most ‘powerful’ followers? What is the gender breakdown for my content? Even this broad-stroke kind of data is worth paying for.
As a channel, you have the ability to charge me for even more insight. I want to know how my content performs relative to the rest of the content on the platform. What’s the average stay on a microblog entry? How does my content compare to that? How fast is my impact growing? What professions are these people in that follow me?
YouTube could pocket $100MM a month
One of the best channel analytics tools is free. Youtube.com provides everyone with insight into each and every video uploaded to their platform.
YouTube Statistics View
This kind of data is unbelievably insightful. So valuable, I’d pay for it! I’d easily pay $10.00 a month for access to this data. Let’s play this out, just for fun.
Let’s assume that YouTube has 100MM registered users. Let’s say that only 1% of those users (1MM) would pay $10/month for access to the data YouTube currently gives away for free. Each month, YouTube would pocket $10MM. I think that’s conservative.
Let’s say YouTube turned off even the view count for any video with less than 100,000 views. Now, that data is even MORE valuable. I would imagine as many as 10% of YouTube users (most likely every corporation playing on YouTube) would pay $10 for stats access. Now we’re talking $100MM a month or $1.2 Billion a year.
Here’s the math:
100MM YouTube Users × .01 × $10 × 12 = $120MM/year
100MM YouTube Users × .10 × $10 × 12 = $1.2B/year
That sounds like shareholder value to me.
Monetizing early
Now, the key to making this work is ensuring that you build tracking and analytical data into the core of your product. Why? Because we’ve seen too many channels (like Vimeo) scramble to add this kind of in-depth analysis into the product after it’s gaining traction. Twitter should have been analyzing their data mining capabilities from day one, Facebook is focusing on selling ads with its data — but how about just selling access to the actual data.
Stop giving this stuff away for free! In the adoption and gestation phase, start-ups and venture capitalists should be pushing their teams to understand what analytic information is valuable. Even Ning, which must have a huge amount of user data, should be selling access to the aggregate analytics data.
The takeaway
If you want to generate revenue on a new media channel, capture the data and start selling access.
About the author
Andrew Davis -
In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.
Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.
When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.
He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.
"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."Popular Posts
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Awesome! Marketers spend millions of dollars on expensive research projects to understand the most basic consumer behaviors. Do you think Coca-Cola will care about an $120 a year expense for access to in depth analytics about those same consumers?
Great article. Compelling. All the more reason you should be consulting for social media channels.
Jason,
Thanks so much for chiming in. I really appreciate your vote of confidence. Hell, forget coca cola I know some small businesses that would pay $200/year for the data!
We’ll see what happens!
Thanks again!
Shhhhh! :-)
“Let’s say that only 1% of those users (1MM) would pay $10/month for access to the data YouTube currently gives away for free … I think that’s conservative.”
You are crazy.
There isn’t a shred of a chance that 1% of YouTube users would pay a single dollar for analytics. You severely overestimate their average user. I highly doubt even 0.1% would. People on YouTube are consuming, and doing light sharing, and they don’t really care to know the demographics of their viewership.
That said, they could probably charge much more than $10/month for their service, if it were detailed enough. For a corporate entity, even $1000/month rounds down to zero.
Hey, Thanks Voice of Reason for your comment.
Let’s assume then, that there are 50M businesses in the United States. Let’s assume that 10% of those have YouTube accounts (5M) and that they need access to their analytic data at $10/month. That’s $50M a month or $600M a year. Is that more digestable?
If all the videos weren’t uploaded via copyright infringement maybe they would charge 10,000 grand a week, but since it is all copyright infringement, youtube Must let it be free, cause it keeps the eyeballs glued and them from being sued (more)
For companies that do have channels formally on Googube, they should be provided with in depth analysis at a price, so your idea does have merit, just not as large a scale…yet.
Rich,
Thanks for your input! You make a good point. Although, I don’t think that because a lot of the content is illegal – you can’t charge for access to the analytic data. Using your reason, we’d have to assume they should not be running ads either.
I’ve heard a lot of people question the scale of my numbers. Fair point. What I’m trying to get across, is that Access to Analytic data is very powerful for a subset of users.
Thanks,
Andrew
I don’t see how the not running ads has anything to do with what i’ve typed, quite simply, since the analytics are derived from copyright material, Youtube can’t say, “we have something you’d like, but you have to buy it, since Youtube had no permission to host it, and thus the entire success of their business has a lot to do with giving the world free access to content that they, Youtube, Do, Not, Own. So if Youtube policed their content that was uploaded to determine if it was legally the property of those doing the uploading, then most of their content that has made them the goto spot for video online wouldn’t exist. skateboarding dogs and premediated viral wedding videos aside, the analytic info that is valuable is based on content youtube has no right to possess, so therefore using this logic they can’t charge for it. like i already said, any content company that has a formal channel should also be charged with in depth analytics. those that don’t have arrangements with youtube and haven’t given permission and are only getting info based on a practice that is not exactly endorsed by big media, youtube can’t charge for that, yet that content brings billions to their site, a that does have finally, formal albeit pathetically laid out advertising, which is getting promoted more so by content that isn’t formally supposed to be their. if you don’t think a lot of content is infringed and uploaded on youtube than you may not see my point.
yea i got the wrong “their” when i typed what should have been “there” and “a that” should be “a site that”
eventhough im sure it wasn’t hard to understand ne way
This is an interesting point, but I wish you’d never told YouTube – I like getting that infor for free :)