Time's POTY: What "You" Means for You

Hey, congratulations. Time Magazine just made you Person of the Year. That’s “you” the video blogger, “you” the open source programmer, and yes, “you” the digital marketer.

Some have derided Time’s treatment as condescending. Many media and tech bloggers seemed to take a certain arch pleasure in it. For seasoned interactive marketers it just reaffirms what’s been patently obvious since 2002 or thereabouts: that amateur, enthusiast and community driven media badly need to be figured out.

The answer so far has essentially been to sell all CGM as remnant inventory, through ad networks, with a few premium placements on the side for “featured” and filtered amateur content. That’s not good enough. Marketers and site owners should take this mainstream moment for citizen’s media as a mandate to redouble their efforts to make the ad experience around CGM work well, for content creators, their audiences and advertisers alike.