iMedia Connection: Jaffe Juice: Finally, a Smart Biz Model

Joseph Jaffe chats with the principles behind the Ultramercial, the company that recently gave Salon its day pass subscription access for advertising format. Worth reading in full, but here's introduction to the thinking behind their model:

Jaffe: Perhaps take a couple of minutes to share your beliefs about this approach.

Ultamercial: Media has always been paid for or supported by advertising. In print, the subscription fee doesn’t even pay the postage; it’s the advertising that pays for everything. Our feeling is that it ought to be that way with the Internet as well. And the way to do that is to make the relationship between the advertising and the viewer explicit – it’s always been implicit until now. And in an odd way, it’s almost as if the advertising community hasn’t been getting its money’s worth. You run your commercial on TV in a pod of six commercials, running the risk of getting lost in the clutter; and with TiVo it may never be seen at all.

With Ultramerical, the viewer elects to watch the ad because there’s a value proposition, which is in there with TV or print in that “I want the content, and in exchange I’m willing to see some ads.” We make that relationship explicit.