3 ms·

In other words "content farm". But since it will be done by "leading" blogs it will be considered an ok thing to do. Makes perfect sense, huffpo and TC was neve

by pavs 16y ago

In other words "content farm". But since it will be done by "leading" blogs it will be considered an ok thing to do. Makes perfect sense, huffpo and TC was never too far from being a content farm. These sites are rarely about quality but quantity. They often rewrite news they find in their rss feed.

patio11 16y ago
I said it before and I'll say it again: take TechCrunch as it currently exists, bolt-on a section for high-end electronics reviews, and you'd goose their revenues without any actual human who reads TechCrunch noticing. (The reviews rank based on on-page optimization plus the earned trust of TechCrunch, and the eCPM would be out of this world relative to any article TechCrunch publishes.) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020 Traditional publishers are cottoning to this tactic, too. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_and_money_cards/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects... Think like that, but 100x more aggressive. Will it degrade the NYT brand a little bit? Meh, it is the NYT: they'll still be the world's preeminent newspaper, they'll still make money from advertisements, and they'll still be able to credibly threaten Google with PRmageddon if Big Daddy G gets uppity about it.
- mrkurt 16y ago
  Two things here! 1) Tech Crunch doesn't really operate in an eCPM world, they operate in a "real" CPM world with advertisers that are largely paying for branding rather than conversions. 2) The CPMs on electronics reviews (high end or otherwise) are significantly lower than the CPMs on "content a CTO would want to read". SEO for a publisher really only serves the purpose of getting organic traffic to more premium ad campaigns, much like paid traffic (where a publisher buys CPC ads). The catch with this is that inbound search engine traffic needs to roughly match the demographics you've sold ads for or you end up shooting yourself in the foot. You can do short term traffic buys to inflate ad views with otherwise shitty traffic, but only rarely and it's still dangerous.

by pavs 16y ago

patio11 16y ago

I said it before and I'll say it again: take TechCrunch as it currently exists, bolt-on a section for high-end electronics reviews, and you'd goose their revenues without any actual human who reads TechCrunch noticing. (The reviews rank based on on-page optimization plus the earned trust of TechCrunch, and the eCPM would be out of this world relative to any article TechCrunch publishes.) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734020 Traditional publishers are cottoning to this tactic, too. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_and_money_cards/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects... Think like that, but 100x more aggressive. Will it degrade the NYT brand a little bit? Meh, it is the NYT: they'll still be the world's preeminent newspaper, they'll still make money from advertisements, and they'll still be able to credibly threaten Google with PRmageddon if Big Daddy G gets uppity about it.

mrkurt 16y ago
Two things here! 1) Tech Crunch doesn't really operate in an eCPM world, they operate in a "real" CPM world with advertisers that are largely paying for branding rather than conversions. 2) The CPMs on electronics reviews (high end or otherwise) are significantly lower than the CPMs on "content a CTO would want to read". SEO for a publisher really only serves the purpose of getting organic traffic to more premium ad campaigns, much like paid traffic (where a publisher buys CPC ads). The catch with this is that inbound search engine traffic needs to roughly match the demographics you've sold ads for or you end up shooting yourself in the foot. You can do short term traffic buys to inflate ad views with otherwise shitty traffic, but only rarely and it's still dangerous.