With content options exploding online, Yahoo!'s entertainment category development officer suggests use of dayparts to zero in on target audiences.

Finding an online stock quote or sports score only takes seconds. It's what happens next that takes some time. Type a search, click a link and read the numbers. But why just read the score when you can watch highlights from the game, read a play-by-play account, listen to interviews and check the team's blog for news on your favorite player. And don't stop at the quote when you can run a real-time stock ticker along the bottom of the screen and watch video from the last quarter's earnings announcement while listening to an analyst podcast.

Ten minutes later you know what brand of detergent your favorite team uses in the locker room and that January looks like a bad month for pork belly futures and you haven't even come close to scratching the mind-boggling amount of content available online. Any information in every format is available with the click of a mouse. Consumers have more choices than ever before and the options are growing exponentially.

The awesome expansion of instantaneously available media presents great new challenges for online publishers. How do we effectively introduce new, high-quality content to consumers when they are already inundated with a bursting stream of options? For the best solutions, we need to not only look forward to new tools and technologies, but look back at traditional media methods.

Dayparts are a sum of the whole

Boob tube. Idiot box. Television has always had problems with its own image. For as much time the public spends watching television, it's often surprising that the conduit gets as much criticism as the content it transmits.

The interactive community seems to have shared society's suspicion of the elder media platform. While one might assume that the online industry would turn to television for historical perspective and to learn from its many practical strategies, that hasn't always been the case. As an upstart platform, the web's inherent interactivity made its practitioners often cast a wary eye at television's unidirectional nature. This meant occasionally overlooking the lessons to be learned from a medium that can seem passive but at its best is based on the execution of very successful programming strategies.

In a year when original content has blossomed online, and much of that content has been created in conjunction with television, this is a great time to cast aside some of the TV cynicism and look to the maligned platform for inspiration.

TV programming strategies (naturally buoyed by ratings measurement, market research, et cetera) have long dictated what's on TV at what time. One of the most simple but effective programming tools is breaking up the schedule using dayparts. Determine the size and demographic make-up of your available audience during a particular time and then offer appropriate new content.

One of the great benefits of the Internet is that we can serve people with what they want when they want it. But the continued growth of what's available online means that consumers may not know what they're missing and therefore won't try to locate it. The recent proliferation of content means it is more important than ever to create a greater dialogue with users. Daypart programming online lets us close that gap and anticipate audience interests and needs based on what we know about some very obvious habits.

Consumption of content is organic and time is an integral component. For example, financial news and information is in high demand during work hours. People play more online games in the evening because they have more time. Searches for theater info and movie times become more frequent leading up to and during weekends.  Much like TV's rating system, these habits are measurable and responding to them accordingly heightens the ability to serve our users.

The concept is so overwhelmingly simple it risks being lost: match the available user base with appropriate new content when they are most likely to become engaged with it. If user satisfaction can be achieved through consistency, web programmers can begin to establish a loyal audience.  Sound familiar?

Recommendations

It's clear that dayparts are a worthwhile general strategy.  Combining them with new tools and techniques provides a well-rounded set of tactics for publishers. Some of the most exciting developments can be found in recommendation engines. By letting users provide their input directly, we're given unprecedented abilities to serve granular audiences with content tailored precisely to their unique interests.

Several models of the recommendation engine are already in widespread use, operating on slightly different levels of user interactivity. Amazon's recommendations, for example, are automatically generated based on observed user behaviors. TiVo employs a similar model, first requesting that users opt-in but then compiling recommendations based on viewing habits. 

Yahoo! Entertainment recently unveiled its own user recommendation engine in its My Movies area. Based on their ratings of theatrical releases and DVDs, users are provided recommendations based on the similarity of their self-declared movie preferences. Whether the system is automated in the case of Amazon or user-initiated like Yahoo!, the recommendations generated allow the publisher to serve users with suggested content that is far more targeted and specific than would otherwise be possible.

With the recommendations enabled, publishers are relieved of some of the burden for delivering the content. Instead, the cycle becomes self-fulfilling as the more content is consumed the better the recommendations become. This is not only beneficial for deploying new original content and trusting that it will end up on the screens of the desired individuals, but a very important step toward enabling older content to generate new revenue.

Vince Messina serves as entertainment category development officer for Yahoo!, where he was recently promoted from entertainment sales director. As entertainment category development officer, Messina will develop and lead the go-to-market strategy for media sales in the Theatrical, Home Video, TV and Game industries. Additional oversight includes Product Marketing, Research, Market Insights and Client Development.