(2006-10-18) Udell Content Quality You Tube

Jon Udell writes about content quality in reaction to Ephraim Schwartz's complaint about the implications of Google's purchase of YouTube. He notes how Time Warner will start paying bloggers (in a response to Om Malik's exit) based on their traffic and a focus on quantity over quality. The excruciating irony is that we are now, for the first time, in a position to do what media have always aspired to do. We can create durable relationships with subscribers (remember them?); we can progressively find out about our readers, listeners, and viewers; we can describe them to advertisers in ways that will support better "content" and better advertising. But that would require innovation which, as Ephraim quite rightly points out, is drowning in the rising tide. (Business Models For Information, Advertising)

To focus on the Time example first, if they figure out how to get higher ad rates for some bloggers based on a variety of criteria, then they might be in a position to pass through that variability.