Ciceron Blog Archives

The Shadow Market Lurks

On the one hand we've come to understand that we're inundated in media, viewing possibly 5,000 brand images per day. On the other, media research people are struggling to find anyone anywhere. We've become so fragmented that we don't cluster nicely or neatly into traditional media groupings helpful to advertisers.

Josh Dahmes, Online Advertising Manager at Ciceron, recently coined a term in a meeting the other day that has really stuck with me: the Shadow Market™. The Shadow Market is that vaste but niche space beyond the major online portals of MSN, CNN or Yahoo where people congregate and conduct their more refined business. In working through the nuances of the Shadow Market, we broke it into two categories: niche communities and emerging audience aggregators.

Niche Communities:

Consisting of the blogs, message boards, and online forums, online niche communities are coalescing folks around each and every topic known to humankind. Each day, within all types of consumer and professional markets, countless people are joining these groups both as publishers and subscribers. (Blogs, in particular, feel somewhat like the early days of electronic pianos. Back then, a perfect samba beat would emanate from the tiny dashboard speakers at the push of a button, and in no time, your basic hack was pumping out the "Girl From Ipanema" at cocktail parties to the awestruck amazement of attending partygoers. Just as everyone was a musician back then, now everyone's a pundit.)

What emerges from these communities is not chaos but a fascinating form of collective filtering where certain people become superstar niche pundits as supporters link to their blogs or online postings. Much like how Google ranks search results based upon "link relevancy," the good pundits emerge in the Shadow Market as they are endorsed through links by their respective communities. By that process, their popularity and relevancy is created organically. It's a truly unique and very Internet phenomenon.

As a marketer, capitalizing on these niche communities requires constant monitoring, earnest participation -- and advertising. Through programs such as Google AdSense, where advertisements are placed alongside contextually relevant content, you can turn these Shadow Markets into active and measurable marketing channels.

Emerging Audience Aggregators:

The Googles, Yahoos, and eBays of the world are all household names. They've managed to assemble online experiences that consolidate audiences. Yet, they too are spawning powerful offspring and second-tier brethren. Sites such as Shopping.com, PriceGrabber.com and others are quickly become first stops for online shoppers. These consumers are looking for an aggregation of products, reviews (from both experts and other users), price comparisons, and other content that assists in making a buying decision.

For the business user, several leaders in the business search engine category are emerging, from the newly upgraded ThomasB2B.com site to Business.Com who each offer a pay-per-click advertising option in addition to their listing services. Likewise, Internet Yellow Page services seem to be channeling the unlucky villagers in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" by exclaiming that they're "not dead yet." Not in the least. For our business to business clients, many B2B listing sites have consistently produced some of the highest click-through and online conversion rates.

The Shadow Market Is Becoming The Broader Market

As consumers, we are becomingly increasingly integrated in our use of media. Real buying decisions are often made or deeply influenced by the Shadow Markets. Being fully participatory and represented in the Shadow Market can mean the difference between success and failure for your brand, depending upon the market's influence on your buyers' behaviors.

Monitoring and participating in the Shadow Market can provide deep insights into your marketplace as conversation becomes personal in its vernacular versus the language of advertising and marketing. It's less controlled by spin and more by a collective feedback and the unspoken rules of engagements. In fact, spin dies in the Shadow Market - which is exactly why it's becoming so much a part of people's Internet usage. People use the Internet to seek the "real story" behind the advertising "message". Ask public relations professionals these days about "controlling message" and they'll tell you that the Internet is daunting. It's too vast and too immediate in its ability to control and respond to pure spin.

As marketers, we need to embrace the realities of the Shadow Market and realize that one cannot control it, only participate in it, measure it, and be well represented. Those who provide valuable content, insights and truthful discourse succeed. Those who treat it as the network evening news will be sorely disappointed.