Privacy is a concern when it’s unclear. I think it might be possible to increase targeting without being sleazy or abusive. It’s a matter of making things clear. I see a lot of potential for things like retargetted ads or clever profiling, for example.

But.. None of this will replace former models. We can’t just expect new revolutionary advertising models as a way of keeping everything else in the magazine (tv, radio, news..) the same. it doesn’t work like that. These will be innovations in advertising. These will probably spill over in to publishing somehow, but they are not for publishing. They are for advertising.

I do agree – what hasn’t been done is taking the demographic information + the technology and creating innovative relevant ads that really get through to people. An interesting opportunity for sure.

Thanks for replying. It’s great to hear from someone with so much experience.

I enjoyed FSB, but it is definitely not in the league of Wired, Inc. or Fast Company. Those are hands down my favorite magazines. If one of them shut down I’d really be upset

I did not know that all of those magazines were backed by individuals, or that they were losing that much money. That doesn’t make me any more optimistic!

Adam replied that getting better demographic data for targeting was challenging because of privacy concerns. I still think there’s plenty of room for success.

To speak from my own experience, BNET.com has more than 1 million registered users, all with detailed demo data including company size, address, and a double-confirmed email. This registered user base took years of effort to build, but it wasn’t that hard, really.

We simply build certain types of resources and content for which people were willing to undergo a one-time registration. The content was free, and lots of people are willing to register for free content of value. I suppose that’s not too different than magazines subsidizing a ridiculously low subscription price in order to get people onto their lists.

Also, FWIW, I don’t think targeting is the panacea for what ails online advertising. What online ads lack are impact, and the past several decades have shown that you can get impact in a ton of ways with zero targeting.

Thanks for the comment. BNET.com looks very cool…I had not heard of it previously. I’ll have to spend some more time looking around later.

You bring up good points about advertising. I think the technology is close to being able to serve very highly targeted ads, but the hard part is getting the information from the user to serve the ad without inciting privacy scares.

Maybe something where you can subsidize the cost of your subscription by providing information to the ad network? I’d do it, but I know a lot of people who are afraid of that stuff…even though it’s happening more and more whether they know about it or not.