B2B media companies share best Web practices

Yesterday's annual online digital media event held by American Business Media was extremely worthwhile, as usual. Attended by some 150 B2B digital media executives--a show of hands revealed this was a first-time ABM event for about a third--the event, themed "Online revenue strategies" focused on the business, not technical, aspects of B2B digital media initiatives.

I won't summarize the highlights here, as the usual suspects at Media Business and Folio: will no doubt do a better job of that than me. But I do want to dash off some thoughts about what struck me, in no particular order.

1. Taxonomy, taxonomy, taxonomy. The more ways we organize and arrange our content based on how our users think, the easier it is for them to find what they're looking for, and the easier it is for us to serve relevant ads. This can only be done by tagging each article with a specific taxonomy.

My gut feel is that many if not most B2B Web site publishers have been tagging for years, but the ones who haven't (like us!) should take this crucial step. Drawback: Editors hate taggging articles. Tip I picked up from the event: Write a style guide for the editors for how to tag articles so it becomes more of a painless process. By the way, I think editors should write two headlines for each article...one for print, one for Web, designed to entice users to click. That should be covered in the style guide, too.

2. Unstructured or social or open taxonomies could potentially replace structured, top-down taxonomies. In response to a question about taxonomy maintenance, one of the panelists raised the intriguing possibility of social using unstructured social tagging, a la del.ici.ous or Flick'r, to let users tag the content based on how they actually think, rather than how editors are guessinghow users might think. In some markets where everyone (readers, suppliers, editors, etc.) generally agrees on what the taxonomy should be, this is not as important. But I suspect there are many markets--our own (packaging) is an excellent example--that seem to simply make it hard for any two people to agree on a similar taxonomy. Social tagging would be a great answer to this, if users took the time to tag such content. (Which, admittedly, they probably wouldn't do for news content.) But it's an interesting idea.

3. RSS has profound implications, but it's still way early--or is it? An internal straw poll (with only 16 responses yet...far from scientific) conducted on our own Web site, Packworld.com, revealed that NO respondents currently used RSS news aggregators to consume business information, though 40% claimed they'd be interested if we were to offer RSS feeds. The rest said they'd stick with e-mail regardless. Other research cited by eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey led to similar conclusions.

That said, Thomas Industrial Network's Paul Gerbino said his site, Produt News Network, is into RSS in a big way. With 51 RSS feeds offered (one for each product category), the site derives 10% of its pageviews from RSS traffic. The interesting part--most of that 10% is from news aggregator software. Meaning those "visitors" read the content in their news aggregator software, not on Gerbino's Web site. (Yes, there were text ads packaged into the feeds.) You'd expect 10% from an IT site. But Product News Network is pretty middle-of-the-road manufacturing subject matter--sludge pumps and flush'o'meters, to quote Gerbino.

4. Web casts are maturing as a lead-generation tool--if done right. Disclaimer: I've always hated the idea of Webcasts for three reasons: First, they are an artificial construct whose fixed schedule in time flies in the face of one of the greatest things about the Internet: time-shifting. The Internet was supposed to allow users to access content when they want to, not at a fixed time and date specified the publisher or broadcaster. Second, they require relentless promotion for what is essentially a one-time event. Such promotion could be more efficiently used to entice users to sign up to an ongoing opt-in relationship such as for an e-mail newsletter. Third, a big chunk of pre-registered attendees never actually show up because darn it, they've already got something going on Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m.

And yet, many B2B media companies have had a lot of success with Webcasts, which are at heart, lead generators. At the ABM event, Pennwell's Tom Cintorino gave some great rules-of-the-road advice on putting on a successful Webcast.

Then, the breakthrough--the notion of the on-demand, Tivo-style Webcast. Though not new, it was the first time I'd heard about it. Makes all the sense of the world. At yesterday's conference, Accela claimed credit as the first Webcast vendor to shift to an on-demand model vs. a live event. They cited stats showing users prefer on-demand vs. live 8 to 1. I believe it. One of Accela's customers is IDG's Network World, whose Andrea D'Amato presented at yesterday's event. She said that the on-demand nature of Accela's webcasts are easier to promote, and result in higher quality with lower risk. Registration isn't required until you've already seen a bit of the program, which results in 33% greater registration, she said. Since all programs are pre-produced, you can edit out the gaffes. And finally, Webcasts are typically on the shorter side--30 to 45 minutes--which makes sense, given users don't want to commit to a ton of time. (D'Amato said the average viewer spent about 19 min.)

You could run an on-demand Webcast for six months, creating an entirely new kind of ad package, vs. an artificial one-time event. That means a hook on the Web site that can continue to produce leads for a given advertiser month after month. Hmm. Network World even closes business on a guarantee of a minimum number of leads generated. Guaranteed leads? Demonstrable ROI? What advertiser can resist? Sounds a lot better than banner ads.

5. Behavioral targeting is heating up. Alec Dann, SVP, Internet Publishing, of PostNewsweek, showed how his two sites, GCN.com and WashingtonTechnology.com, uses Accipiter's behavioral targeting software to increase ad relevance. The idea is that if someone visits, say, the homeland security section of the GCN site x times in y weeks, they're cookied with a tag that identifies them as interested in that topic. Then they're served with homeland-security ads no matter which section of the site they visit. The ads follow them around, in effect. Dann confirms that clickthrough rates are indeed higher for behaviorally targeted ads, resulting in his ability to charge higher CPM's. Accipiter also presented at the event, and impressed me with what seemed to be robost ad management technology. You can even target ads based on registration data for registered users.

6. The best Web analytics software continues to be daunting. About a year ago, my company switched to WebSideStory's Hitbox, now HBX. I was told by the sales guy it would take about a week or so to set up. I spent the next 4 months of my life trying to get my developer to configure it properly, and to this day, it still doesn't do what I wanted. Don't get me wrong...it's excellent software. Too excellent. It requires you to basically hire a consultant to configure it properly. Plus every time I log in, they've advanced to the next version, and it seems like the menus change.

I thought I was just an idiot until I saw Maggie Dallatana's presentation. Her company, ALM, selected HBX after an extensive vendor selection process. She also had a similar experience to mine with HBX, though to be fair, she's still working through some bugs and discrepancies related to the initial roll-out of the software. Again, it's very powerful software, but unless it's set up properly, it can be a huge time sink, as I found out the hard way. Nevertheless, help is on the way. There are now consultants who specialize in helping you to set up such software, like Andrew Edwards' Technology Leaders. Edwards also co-founded the newly launched Web Analytics Association, which is attempting to bring some order to this chaotic corner of the Web.

7. People delete their cookies--really! Okay, remember a couple of weeks ago when a Jupiter Research study revealed that a startling 40% of Internet users delete their cookies once a month? A lot of people, myself included, were highly skeptical. Are most users are that adept at personal technology? Yesterday, a presenter asked the audience for a show of hands for those who deleted cookies at least once a month. Damned if about 40% of the audience didn't raise their hands. Freaked me out. Must have freaked out others since an indignant chorus of "Why?" went up from the other 60%. Yet no one answered. Still shows that cookies are much misunderstood. More alarmingly, the presenter (I can't remember who it was) also said that new spyware cleaning software--including software from Microsoft (not sure if it's the browser itself)--defaults to clearing out cookies regularly. This has profound repercussions for a B2B Web site's ability to recognize a registered user, among a host of other bad things.

8. Performance-based advertising is continuing to outpace traditional online display advertising. Paid search, a main form of performance advertising, continues to grow. A stat yesterday showed that paid search consists of 40% of online ad spending--and that number is rising. Since most B2B site publishers lack enough search inventory to effectively sell performance ads, I suspect 99% of paid search dollars are going to Google and its competitors. That's why as B2B site publishers, we need to embrace behavioral targeting and other techniques to make ads relevant wherever possible. Network World's performance-based guarantee for their Webcasts are another good example of where the market's headed. I remember Mitch Rouda once saying that Hanley-Wood's eBuild site also offers a similar guarantee.

There was much more at the event than what I've indicated above. These are just a few points that struck me. A huge thanks to 1) staff at American Business Media for putting on a first-rate event, 2) Ed Padin of Padin & Estabrook, who did a lot of the footwork to make sure the event came off without a hitch, 3) Tom Cintorino, VP/Digital Media, Pennwell, and Chair of ABM's Digital Media Council, who gracefully guided the event to its conclusion, and 4) fellow members of the DMC who did all the hard work to line up speakers and sponsors.