We need to learn about information overload

Our readers and Web site visitors are busier than ever. Few would disagree that demands on their personal and professional time are at an all-time high. That means that every single interaction a reader has with a computer--whether catching the latest sports scores on ESPN.com or reading an e-mail from a colleague--is hard-won time we're competing for as B2B publishers on the Web. Digitally speaking, we don't compete against one another. We compete against every single thing someone can do on an Internet-connected computer. Yikes.

Also at an all-time high is the barrage of information published on the Web. With every new e-newsletter or Webcast alert that is sent out, the value of all e-newsletters and Webcasts are cheapened. An oversupply compared to demand, if you will. So what happens is that participation rates--however you want to measure it, whether opt ins, conversions, or open rates--are declining.

That puts publishers squarly in the game of direct response marketers. We send out an ever increasing volume of e-mail to try to get our audiences to participate in some way. And when we all do that, the cacaphony becomes deafening to our readers. Unfortunately, a common response is to send out even more emails, which may boost response in the short term, but it worsens the problem in the long term.

It is obvious, of course, that those publications whose editorial is consistently on target with readers' needs are the very ones that readers will make time for in this information overloaded environment. Still, even top publications are affected by the trends above.

And the number of new publications, new Web sites, new e-mail newsletters, new e-zines, will only rise. The problem is going to get worse, and probably won't get better.

We are living in a different world, as publishers, one that I'm not sure we understand all that well. We need to the fallout of information overload with our audiences. We need a much sharper understanding of how it's affecting our readers. We need a new science of information consumption in the online world.

Usability experts like Jakob Nielsen have touched on this area by calling attention to important digital media concepts like information foraging, scanning vs. reading, micro-content, and information pollution. But we need to learn more. We need to get under the skins of our readers, observe their behavior, live with them day to day to get an intuitive understanding of how they consume information. Consumer packaged goods companies have long done this. If you're selling a product in a grocery store, you're competing with tens of thousands of products, and shoppers give you a fraction of a second of their attention before they make a decision whether to buy your product. Do the dynamics sound familiar?

In a subsequent post, I will sketch out some ideas of how publishers can take a page from consumer packaged goods companies to start developing this new science of information consumption.

Advertisers need to perform too

With the measurability that online publishing brings, advertisers are more on the hook than ever when it comes to performance. But I like this recent post from directory publishing guru Russell Perkins, who says:

Just as the search engines have to perform in order to get paid, advertisers, too, need to perform in order to generate sales. Unfortunately, this is anything but commonly accepted wisdom right now.

So true. This reminds me of an incident a few weeks ago where an advertiser asked if there's any proof that our online advertising can result in sales. Our answer was that geez, you have to do something yourself. We can't sell a machine for you. We can't even generate a lead for you. What we can do is produce a steady flow of qualified prospects. It's up to you to market to them to turn them into a lead, and then into a sale.

No question that advertisers want to know whether their hard-won marketing dollars are justified wherever they're spent. But it's not accurate to hold any single medium to such a direct level of accountability.

Say a prospect buys your product. Which marketing was responsible for that sale? Was it the 3 years of print branding that did it? The online banners? The white paper lead-gen ad? The conversation with the marketing manager at the last trade show in your booth? The phone calls placed by your sales rep? Or maybe the conversation he had with a peer at a recent conference? It all works together.

That said, we still encounter some advertisers who are obsessively focused on traffic to their Web sites. Says Perkins:

Traffic to a B2B Web site, whether organic or purchased, is no different than the advertising impressions generated by a print magazine. Frankly, patting oneself on the back for generating lots of Web site traffic is about the same as patting oneself on the back for running a magazine ad. Great, you did something. But it's what one does after one attracts attention that really matters, because that's what determines how many of these fleeting eyeballs will start the path down the long pipeline to becoming sales. It's as true online as it always was in print.

The emphasis shouldn't be on traffic, it should be on converting that traffic into prospects and then leads. And the ultimate responsibility for this lies with the advertiser.