This is part of the behind-the-scenes section of Mixergy, which I call etc.

Why I’m doing this

I bet every time you hear me say that I want to improve my ads’ performance, you think to yourself that my ads must really stink. But that’s not it all. I just want to keep looking for ways to improve. Just because my sponsors (Wufoo, Grasshopper and Shopify) are happy, doesn’t mean I need to be satisfied.

I’m posting this email that I got from a viewer to give you a sense of what others are thinking and encourage you to build on these ideas or email me any suggestion you have.

The email from Nethy Canning

This email is not edited because it’s part of a casual email exchange between me and Nethy.

How can I improve my ads?
Unfortunately Andrew, I don’t think there is a great way to do this.

I admit that I skip through the ads myself when I listen. On TV or radio, they don’t bother me that much. On youtube or podcast, I work to avoid them. I might even fish the ipod out of my pocket while jogging fiddle with it to skip 20 seconds of ads. It’s not logical but I do it. I have no good theory explaining why.

I don’t think its about quid quo pro either. I don’t think you can make the “pay for this by watching the ads” exchange any more explicit than TV and still have it work. Derek Sivers’ Israeli school story comes to mind as the kind of thing I might look for to explain why.

Also, I think it affects the tone of the program somewhat.

Maybe you should take this as an opportunity to explore this area more in depth, search for creative solutions. It is one of the obvious, important and largely unsolved problems of the internet entrepreneurship ecosystem: how to make a popular and valuable website/podcast/video into a business. Don’t be constrained by the existing “advertising” paradigms.

(a bad) example:
Imagine running an “ecommerce month.” During that month, make sure you interview 3-4 ecommerce entrepreneurs per week. Giant players, niche players, people starting out, people that have cashed out, venture funded, bootstrapped, etc. etc. Make sure some of your programs are instructional. This show is usually focused on the motivational/strategic level, but maybe you could find room for some instructional supplements. Entrepreneurs balance the strategic and the day to day. Both are relevant. If you have interviewee talk about how much data driven email campaigns made a difference, run some tutorial about using data in a real shop. Use a shopping cart sponsor (shopify) and an analytics tool sponsor and a email marketing tool sponsor or whatever else (consultants could work to), to illustrate the example. It is still useful to users of other shopping carts. Have Shopify sponsor the month. Have sponsorship be an active commitment, not just a logo plastering. have them answer questions and invite people to webinars.

From one perspective I would say that what you would be doing is breaking down a paradigm created by the sales needs of ad companies. A lot of advertising has been shaped by the sales needs of the biz. An executive can be sold to by an ad company. They can make his “vision” to “come to life.” It’s easy and pleasant for the buyer. They get to be creative without any of the grungy work.

It needs to be hands off for the buyer/advertiser. It needs to be something the ad company can make brilliant without regardless of the advertiser. The advertiser must never have to work hard. That is why “brand marketing” is such an appealing (to ad companies) idea. They can have a “high level” chat to the CEO & marketing people, discover their (extremely abstract and probably meaningless) “brand identity” and put that in an ad. No need for any hard input.

The problem is that that is constraining. You cannot have decisions that are hard (it is possible to get it wrong), important (getting it wrong does damage) and in the hands of the client/advertsier. There is a lot you cannot do inside that framework. Outside that framework it’s too hard to sell. I suspect there is a market or opportunity outside this framework.

I’m not saying drop your sponsor messages. I’m suggesting maybe you should treat this as an entrepreneurial opportunity and search for a better way to monetize your business. Maybe you should even do it in the open. Go find guests that have/had this problem. Bring in advertising industry people and make the discussions into programs. Maybe they would even sponsor it.

Your other option is to stick with what the world has provided you with. That’s not all that good at the moment. You might just decide that your focus is creating content, you’re not out to fixe advertising. If accounting was broke you wouldn’t be fixing that, would you?

Nethy

envelope