I, like many other media-folk, nodded quietly to myself while reading the book The Long Tail. Just to recap: the basic premise of the book is that in the pre-Internet world there was only so much shelf space, so many media outlets, and only so many genres. With the Internet making “store size” limitless, so are the products. Therefore, you can find that obscure record you always wanted on eBay, but never in Walmart.
In terms of media, the Web was also supposed to put the barriers of entry so low that any kind of publication or media outlet could be conceived, thus creating an unlimited capacity for niches. Beyond the surface level I don’t think this is true. There is only one real niche on the Web. I suppose what I really mean, is that there is only one profitable niche: Nerds.
With only a few exceptions, the only demographic that can generate substantial traffic on the Web is nerd. Gadget loving, Web 2.0 nerds. Let’s look at the head of The Long Tail.
As of July 10th, the first 50 of the Technorati Top 100 currently looks like this:
| Type |
Amount |
Percent |
| Tech |
28
|
56%
|
| Politics |
9
|
18%
|
| Business |
4
|
8%
|
| Media |
2
|
2%
|
| Celebrities |
2
|
2%
|
| Other / Personal |
5
|
10%
|
*Numbers may be wacky because I was a journalism major.
The top blogs at Bloglines and Google Reader (older, but still indicative) have a similar outlook. I would venture a guess that all of these blogs are profitable or could be profitable (blogs like Post Secret have no ads on purpose).
When one shifts away from the written word and to video the results are the same. How many IPTV networks can you name? I can only name Revision 3, which caters to the “Internet, on-demand generation.” The most successful audio podcast network after NPR is most likely the TWIT network which features an all tech-related lineup.
The top podcasts in iTunes are nearly all mainstream media outlets. The iTunes store has no way of looking past the first 100, but it shows how hard it is for the everyman to have a widely dispersed podcast (Also, I believe the top 100 podcasts section only measures a few weeks of activity and not overall subscription levels - so this is a hard barometer to believe).
Now, this theory has a very obvious bias: I fall into said nerd demographic. But I associate myself with, you know, non-techie people. I don’t know many people that are watching non-man-gets-hit-in-the-nuts quality YouTube videos or downloading independent podcasts. My mom doesn’t subscribe to RSS feeds, and less than a small handful of my friends use Web 2.0 services like Twitter.
This makes it particularly hard for nich online-only media. Just by cracking open my Writer’s Market I see trade publications like The Fruit Growers News, The Cruise Industry News, and Reunions Magazine (covering reunions of all types!). Are farmers subscribing to RSS feeds? Is a cruise ship captain perusing blogs? I’d guess no, yet they all have there own trade publications with highly targeted advertising.
In the blog world most people automate their advertising via AdSense, text links, and other ad services. While these services offering contextual ads, the premium is not comparable to “old media”. Take the fruit growers publication for instance. With a circulation of 16,000 they charge over $2000 for a 1/3 page four color ad (media kit). If I started a blog on fruit growing do you think I’m making 2k a month with AdSense? I’m well aware with that expenses for a print publication are higher, but do you think I would have the same profit margin?
Despite what we would like to think, the online medium is not nearly as ubiquitous as we would all like it to be. This, of course, puts newspapers in a precarious state. They can’t maintain serving the shrinking non-wired generation with high production costs forever. Nor can they devote gobs of money to an online market that is still catching up in advertising.
The point is that while the barriers to create content are lower, the perceptions of advertisers and the general public is lagging behind. Until this gap is closed, those residing in the long tail of ad-supported content driven sites will be only scraping by. Or worse, they won’t have sufficient money to remain open very long.
I posit this theroy not because I want it to be true, I share this because I want someone to prove me wrong. Please do.
