What We Do

Long Tail Media Group develops compelling new media properties at the convergence of the three primary drivers of today's online media marketplace - professional entertainment, social media and user-generated content. The intersection of these trends provides an ideal starting point for a new media business model driven by sponsor revenue and branded entertainment - essentially, the creation and delivery of cost-effective online video for sponsors looking to reach a targeted audience.

Engagement vs. Advertising

In addition to the advertising opportunities associated with display media, our embedded production capabilities provide a variety of possibilities for a direct exchange with our audience, thereby delivering high-impact branded entertainment and enabling market research. This approach stresses high-quality, ongoing engagement with an identifiable audience and is based on specific activities –

• providing entertaining and informative content
• engaging community members via sponsored contests, blogs, and other new media applications
• creating new products and services via consumer research and product testing

Opportunity

Last year, online advertising was a $20+ billion dollar business. Moreover, the Internet remains a growth business and continues to capture ad spend at the expense of traditional media, which has seen a decline in its aggregate spending. Yet, Internet spending continues to lag far behind traditional media in its relative proportion of spending – simply increasing the aggregate Internet ad spend to its relative proportion of media consumption would result in an additional $50 billion in online advertising. Given this huge global opportunity, it is no wonder that a variety of businesses (both large and small) are trying to capitalize on what many perceive to be a coming “golden age” for the Internet.

However, advertising on the Internet is not likely to reach parity with its current “bag of tricks” - banners, pops and clicks neither engage consumers nor command the attention of advertisers. In recognition of both this reality and the unique attribites of video for advertisers, the online video sector has experimented with a variety of new business models – its reward, 40%+ growth in ad spend. Despite these improvements, Internet impressions remain “cheap” (on average, less than $5 per thousand) and only the largest ad-supported sites achieve a scale that generates revenue sufficient to support the business. TV, on the other hand, remains the clear favorite for advertisers, so much so that the average impression is worth almost 10x what it is on the Internet. Simply, television allows advertisers to more effectively communicate with a target audience by providing a level of engagement and storytelling that is rarely seen on today’s Internet.

By delivering TV-style branding and engagement for the cost of Internet techniques, we can capture a portion of this multi-billion migration of ad spend.

Business Model

Our Properties are located directly at the intersection of the three trends defining today’s online media landscape – professional entertainment, social media and user-generated content. By capitalizing on the evolving trend of distributed co-creation, we can monetize these trends and deliver a powerful new media platform relevant to its target audiences. Quite simply, our production capability lies at the heart of our ability to generate revenue. Production - creating our own professional programming - presents us with all of the revenue opportunities available to traditional media companies while preserving some of the unique attributes of the Internet marketplace.

Sponsorship and Advertising – Right now, a number of media sites are attracting huge audiences and generating the advertising revenue that those audiences attract. Focused largely on video, each of these sites has a different approach, but share one common element – reliable, quality programming. With our production capabilities, we can both monetize the audience with advertising and deliver sponsored entertainment at a fraction of the cost of television commercials (with similar performance metrics).

In addition, our production capabilities allow for customizable marketing opportunities -- engaging community members via sponsored contests, blogs, and other social media applications, creating live events and developing new products and services via consumer research and product testing.

Subscription Fees – The “Freemium” model is used across the Internet to great success when coupled with services not available for free elsewhere, particularly for children’s activities. For a small segment of our audience, the collaborative process and site engagement (that goes beyond viewing and social media) will provide the foundation and rationale for subscription fees.

Other - Once our content and audience are developed, we will be able to both monetize the content and extend the brand to other media outlets. Like any production studio, each aspect of our business creates valuable intellectual property that can be monetized in myriad ways – licensing characters, selling individual shows or segments, or distributing our programming via other media outlets or channels.