Content, content everywhere but who is getting the traffic

Content, content, content. Everywhere we look there is content. Back in August I posted that the next phase of online travel will involve consumers being bombarded with "too much information". Having mastered the art of booking travel online, consumers now found themselves overwhelmed with choice and information - looking for help. Recently I co-blog-erated with Alex Bainbridge on some rules for success for start-up content companies. With this background I was looking through my inbox at all of the different types of content companies that were writing to me. I found a spectrum of approaches to capturing long tail traffic with review and content sites.



Kango is targeting the tail through meta-search for review content. As per my Interview with founder Yen Lee here Kango have built a review meta-search business. Modifying business models of the meta-search booking sites like the combined Kayak/Sidestep, Kango has built an aggregation engine for reviews from a multitude of sites. It takes time to put together (hence the beta is only on two destinations - California and Hawaii) but Yen has been able to raise a lot of money and is working on balance between building search architecture and attracting content. UPDATE - Kango now called UpTake.


While Kango is looking to index content on a grand scale, I am constantly coming across or being approached by deeply targeted local content players. 71 miles covers weekend trips in a small part of Northern California. Volcanoetna.com covers - as the name implies - tours and travels around Sicily's famous Volcano Etna. While covering completely different parts of the world and travel experiences, Adam Rugel's 71 miles and Enrico Forte's Volcanoetna are at the longest point of the long tail - focused on detailed and informed content in a very specific location. The pluses for them is that the long tail loves targeted and specific. Nothing brings long tail traffic better than detailed, focused and informed content. The problem is scale - a highly targeted site can become the number one place for a specific piece of long tail traffic but you still need a minimum of traffic to generate advertiser interest. Rugel of 71miles admitted to me that traffic was not a problem but monetisation was proving difficult. Local advertisers who should have been interested didn't get it (online that is) and are spending their money in the local newspaper instead (my theory). Better to be part of a network - Rugel said.

So targeted brings the traffic but not the money. Want proof? Four years and GBP7.4 million pounds later and VisitScotland has shut its doors. Hotelmarketing.com has the story - but the short version is not enough traffic to justify and not able to monetise.



This is where Gawker Media's Gridskipper has an advantage of the hyper long tail sites. It has been around long enough and writes on enough material that it generates the long tail traffic. At the same time it has the network effect of the Gawker family (including Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Consumerist and the NSFW Fleshbot). UPDATE - Gridskipper no longer owned by Gawker.


Video is also playing a role in this race for content. Geobeats are trying to build a business around user gen travel videos. Players are racing into this space as well - driven by the phenomenon of youtube. Pixsy is in this space too (including a relationship with Lastminute). Both are following Travelistic (who I first covered here) who (as far as I know, tried to do it first). The advantage of video in this race is that video generates a greater engagement than a text site. They may generate less page views than text but good video sites keep people on the site longer and interested longer - all elements that advertisers love. As GigOM said "Page Views are dead, Engagement named as Heir".

The final style of player is the now ubiquitous social media, social networking and user generated player. There are a lot to chose from here in this post:

• Where Are You Now (WAYN) - the well funded (but not owned by AOL) travel social network. Millions of travellers talking to each other - telling people where they are, what they are doing and what they want to do. An advertisers paradise;
• Guidespot - targeting DIY local guides. Contributors generate traffic and "kudos" (maybe one day revenue sharing) from producing and publishing their own destination guides;
• Localguides.com (profiled here);
  
• The Sidestep (now Kayak) owned Travelpost - specialists in hotel review infrastructure and traffic. Sidestep bought it and Kayak doent seem to want it but the traffic is flowing; and
  
• Travelpod - started travel specific blogging and had the hottest Facebook widget (Traveller IQ test) for some time. Again - plenty of traffic off the back of a flood of interactive and interested consumers. Now part of the ever expanding TripAdvisor family.

New players are rushing into this space:

• Vailoma - still in beta- trying to build a community around content and guides UPDATE - Vailoma now called TripSay;
• SimpatiGo - leading with the "classic" map mashup around activity. Trying to drive search and "engagement" through map and neighbourhood based information and search.
  

As I said in one of my early posts - the difference between a online content company vs a retailer is that it is significantly easier to launch a content company (no need to build extensive supplier relationships) but it is harder to achieve and maintain scale. This means that content companies have to innovate sooner, faster and more often to keep the traffic flowing. So after an analysis of a dozen companies I feel even more certain that my four rules of success apply.

1. Content - lots of it
2. Index - a fantastic Google friendly index and expertise in search optimisation
3. Access methods - varying ways and means for consumers to access the content
4. Patience - time (and money) to wait for the traffic to build.

What do you think? Who have I missed?

Travelpod CEO interview

Had and took the chance to follow up my post on TripAdvisor's recent acquisitions to have an interview with Luc Levesque the co-founder and CEO of the now TripAdvisor owned Travelpod.

Travelpod are a travel blogging platform and social network. The site - though it looks like a start-up- has been around since 1997. Luc and the 6 other members of his team have been building the site virally and with a little bit of banner and search advertising, mostly in their spare time. He admits to only going full time in the last six months.

The site has reached scale, according to Luc. He was keeping his performance metrics (traffic, revenue, member numbers) very secret but did share that they have "well over a million posted photos". The sites growth in the early days was slow and we had an interesting discussion about what were the external factors that created a growth environment. Luc pointed to three things that set up the growth for Travelpod:

1. The proliferation of Internet cafes - giving travellers easy access to Internet connections while on the road;
2. The dramatic drop in digital camera prices - while the site is a blog site, more photographs means more bloggers; and
3. The most important driver was when Google bought Blogger. Not because this deal involved Travelpod but because it was the sign that blogging had gone mainstream. No longer did have to Travelpod need to explain to potential members what "a travel blog" was.

The business model (as you would expect) is all about advertising. Similarly the business drivers are more members, more posts and increased distribution.

On the world post the TripAdvisor acquisition Luc was firm that it was all about business as usual with advertising sales, infrastructure and marketing support. No plans to change the brand or feed the Travelpod content into TripAdvisor or Expedia (so far anyway). This is the right approach. I support TripAdvisor's plans to buy more niche and targeted content sites and not change the brands. They should focus on the opportunity to cut costs and increase monetisation opportunities but leave the traffic generation to the in-house product and content teams.

The final area we discussed was my loyalty theory on Travel 2.0 companies. As you will recall from here and here - my view is that content/network companies need to innovate more than retailers to maintain loyalty to avoid the nightclub phenomenon where online users jump from one content/network site to another and then another (ie like Friendster to Myspace to Facebook to Bebo). Luc is confident that Travelpod readers are so passionate, loyal and emotionally connected that he hoes not have the same fear of customer shifting. They still need to innovate and launch new products and features and they have put in place customer retention programs to bring back members that stopped blogging or using the service.

Congrats to Luc and team on the acquisition.