Bringing together hundreds or even thousands of people with the click of a mouse, webinars have emerged as a mainstay on the publishing landscape. With their inherent ability to deliver strong content to a digital audience in a digestible and well-received format, webinars are proving their worth as a strong and steady revenue stream for many publishers. Originally begun as experiments for a few publications, webinars are now spreading through the business-to-business world like wildfire, and are fast becoming critical elements of publishing operations.
Web-based Seminars Provide New Revenue Streams
As they move further into the digital world, more magazine publishers are discovering that webinars offer excellent revenue opportunities through sponsorships and advertisements. While sponsorships are sometimes sold individually, they are more frequently sold as part of print/Web packages. As opposed to print display ads where advertisers often seek branding opportunities, webinar sponsors are attracted to qualified lead generation where demographic and contact information from registrants are typically passed on to the sponsor.
“The sponsor’s goal in a webinar is to be put in front of high-qualified individuals, and the true value to
Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing for Bulldog Solutions, an Austin, Texas-based lead-generation management and optimization company that provides lead-generation webinars. She says that, in recent years, advertising money and interest has started shifting toward a lead-generation model. Branding in print is still a priority, but Bills says that online advertising is growing rapidly as a result of its measurability.
Marketing departments are now being held to the same set of standards as finance and purchasing departments, says Bills. “When you’re doing something on a Web site or through an e-mail or a webinar, it is more measurable. That is way more important now because [chief marketing officers] are facing a lot more pressure to show what they got for their spend,” she says.
Rist says that many publications tie their webinars to their editorial calendars in order to create advertising packages to draw potential advertisers. That, in turn, helps bring more attention back to the print format and bolsters advertising revenue and readership across all of the publication’s formats.
Michael Nelson, director of North American sales for ON24, a San Francisco-based webinar and rich media provider that has helped produce around 7,000 webinars for customers, says that a well-known b-to-b publisher producing a one-hour webinar can expect to fetch anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000 for a full sponsorship depending on length, format, content and audience.
Webinars are typically based on one of two models, one of which follows the traditional separation of editorial and advertising, featuring content produced exclusively by the editorial team along with display ads and/or introductions by the sponsor. The other model, commonly known as a “custom” webinar, involves full editorial involvement of the sponsor. Rist says that publishers typically implement webinars that follow their magazine practices and that they need to decide early on what model they will follow.
“It depends on what kind of walls they have between advertising and editorial. The webinar model should be consistent with how they run the editorial [in the print format],” says Rist.
Jared Bazzy, vice president of Horizon House Publications Inc., says that webinars have become a key part of his company’s online growth strategy. The company publishes Microwave Journal and Telecommunications, and hosts up to one webinar per week. Most of its webinars last one hour, have anywhere from 200 to 1,400 attendees, and are produced in partnership with other research firms or training organizations. Bazzy says that Horizon House’s online product mix has grown to be the company’s single-largest revenue generator, approaching 40 percent of revenues. Telecommunications has scaled back its print frequency to bimonthly because of a deteriorating print client base, and Bazzy credits much of the online growth to webinars.
“It has been a great phenomenon from our point of view, in terms of ability to bring some real substance to the Web site and some interactive tools. Our companywide revenue mix has a much healthier trajectory from the online products,” says Bazzy.
Compelling Content and Proper Format Critical to Success
Just as with print, advertisers and audiences are drawn to webinars for their content. Often used as a supplement to print or other Web products, webinars are typically educational in nature and provide valuable information or instruction that attendees can’t find elsewhere. While webinars are often driven by profit-seeking motives, Rist says that nothing should come at the sacrifice of content.
“The most important thing is content. You have to have the content that is going to drive the audience and establish credibility. In many cases, [the content] has to satisfy both the publishers and the sponsors,” says Rist.
Bills warns that even for custom webinars, publications should be careful not to let sponsors produce hour-long product demonstrations. If a webinar becomes too commercial, and doesn’t deliver valuable and balanced information to the attendee, it could set a precedent for future webinars and hurt the publication’s credibility.
“We use the phrase ‘teach, don’t sell,’ ” says Bills.
Norm Kamikow, president and editor-in-chief of MediaTec Publishing, says a webinar has to be editorially compelling to be successful. He agrees that a sponsor is usually looking to position itself as a thought-leader, deliver its message and show how its products are being used by other companies. In a recent webinar (“Extended Learning Outside Your Borders” for Chief Learning Officer), the sponsor, Plateau, shared how it is using software to provide learning to a worldwide audience of employees, partners and end-user customers.
While sponsors will often use webinars to carefully promote their products or services, Kamikow says, “the most important thing we [as publishers] do in any of our media is maintain our editorial integrity. That’s the backbone of everything we do …,” he stresses. “I think that 99 percent of the sponsors that we deal with understand this, and they know that they have to soft-sell themselves during webinars. … The second a sponsor gets up and gives a sales presentation, it’s probably the worst possible thing that they can do, and we will see an immediate drop-off in attendance.”
Industrywide, Rist estimates that approximately 80 percent of webinars are audio-only. While many also utilize slide shows or software demonstrations, video is only used when guest speakers or human subjects are as important or more important than the content. Generally, most publishers have found that shorter audio webinars followed by short question-and-answer sessions work best, says Rist.
Nelson agrees that content is key to a webinar’s success. “A successful program is all in execution, the right content, the right time frame and reminding the audience. It’s a set of rules that really works. In the end, people will show up and attend if it is a good show,” he says.
Looking Toward the Future
As more business moves to the Web and technology creates new opportunities, webinars are likely to evolve even further. Just as many publications have made the shift to the digital world through Web sites and e-newsletters over the past decade, Bills says that more advertisers and sponsors will expect placement in effective and well-run webinars as part of a package.
“Sponsors are going to start demanding more complexity in reporting and getting more information out of their webinars. Smart print publishers will get ahead of that and start offering what their sponsors are going to demand,” says Bills. “Publishers who want to improve their offerings should ensure that the measurement and reporting are up to par, and that they are really delivering to their sponsors not just a big bucket of leads in a spreadsheet, but also information that helps the sponsors understand those leads and use the data to improve their next initiative.”
Kamikow says that because webinars are cost-effective, they appeal to smaller publishers who can turn them into big revenue generators. MediaTec Publishing produces 40 to 50 webinars per year, and Kamikow says that they are far more effective than pricey in-person seminars, which are costly for both publishers and attendees. They are so effective, he says, that other types of companies—companies that publishers may not traditionally view as competitors—are now utilizing webinars as a revenue source and are likely competing for the same advertisers and sponsors.
“In our space, there are a lot of companies, like consulting organizations, that are doing webinars, conference companies that are doing webinars, not just traditional print publishers. There are companies doing webinars that you may or may not have on your radar screen who are expanding their businesses using e-media, with webinars being a big part of that approach,” says Kamikow.
Many publishers have also found tremendous value in archiving webinars. Rist says that publishers will see a significantly increased viewing rate if they offer archived webinars that are streamlined down to 20- or 30-minute segments. At Horizon House, Bazzy says that on-demand, archived webinars provide a significant boost in traffic to his publications’ Web sites.
Nelson believes that webinars will eventually spawn community chat pages and social networks. Virtual trade shows are already starting to pop up, putting the best elements of trade shows online, allowing vendors and attendees to congregate on the Web, often through a publisher’s Web site.
“I don’t think there is a b-to-b publisher that we’ve talked to that isn’t thinking about doing webinars—because they work, they’ve been tested and can produce a nice revenue stream,” says Nelson. PE
By Craig Guillot
Craig Guillot is a New Orleans-based writer who has written for such publications as The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Stores Magazine and NationalGeographic.com.