Halogen

Hmm … perhaps Wired’s Chris Anderson was onto something when he declared “The Web is dead.” Now the CEO of Forrester Research says the same thing. George Colony told attendees at the DeSilva + Phillips Media Summit that the Web was “dead” and that tablets and e-readers represented the new “nexus of media.”

As Folio notes, the comments didn’t sit well with the event attendees, who were mostly a mix of “print-based media company executives and their financial sponsors.”

Wired’s techie audience may have been ready for straight talk about radical changes in content consumption and monetization, but not stodgy old media execs, right? Well, at Halogen, we’re inclined to agree with both Chris Anderson and George Colony – but with some of our own qualifications.

We think the old-school model of publishers thriving just because they have brand recognition and a high volume of traffic – let’s call them blue-chip sites – is dead. We think publishers that infuse their content with passion, that excel at curating engaged audiences – and most importantly – can package that engagement up for advertisers across devices, will be the ones that thrive.

We call it the authentic web, or authentic media. And we think it’s the way that readers, publishers, and advertisers will be thinking about digital media for the months and years to come.

So wait. Is this “authentic web” just a new buzzword?

Good question. The authentic web describes content that is engaging, distributed and influential. That might sound “buzz-worthy,” but we think it’s just the natural evolution of the internet, considering how much focus there is on social media and engagement.

Authentic media is valuable to readers, because the creators are passionate about the content. They’re writing and curating stories, photos and videos because they’ve chosen to – not because an editor assigned it to them or a business model dictated it.

Authentic media is also valuable to advertisers, because these sites cultivate participants, not just passive readers. Instead of broadcasting messages to people who may or may not be listening, brands can tap into the authentic web with everything from standard banner ads, to sponsored content, to contests and YouTube videos – and the sites’ engaged readers then spread the messages to their own networks.

Authentic means engaged

Engaged audiences are not just passive eyeballs. They’re reading, commenting, liking posts on Facebook and sharing with their friends. That’s because the passion from the writers palpable. It’s inspiring. The authentic web gets readers engaged.

Take a site like Globalpost.com – part of the Halogen family – which is an independent global news source. Globalpost covers issues ranging from politics, to finance, to culture and has amassed over 120,000 Facebook fans in the process. Compare that to Reuters (arguably, one of the world’s most well-known, respected and voluminous news sources) which has just under 25,000 Facebook fans.

If you keep searching, you’ll find examples like this all across the web. From sites like Fashionista.com that go head-to-head with brand behemoth’s like Vogue, to investment/analysis sites like Zerohedge that compete with The Economist (for eyeballs and ad dollars).

Authentic means distributed

Authentic media gets to users wherever they are, in the format that they choose. Whether it’s via mobile website, iPhone or Android app, a special tablet edition, or live-streamed events videos, it’s not tethered to any one site or medium. It’s content that is shared and delivered across multiple platforms.

Authentic means influence (and influence can be measured)

Let’s go back to the Globalpost example. It’s not enough to say that the site is more influential than Reuters. That influence needs to be quantified, and the new social currency of comments, “Likes” and retweets is helping to do it.

There are tools emerging that will help authentic publishers use these metrics to demonstrate how influential they are. Advertisers will then be able to use those same metrics to put a more accurate price tag on the engagement and influence that different publishers can deliver.

Stay tuned for announcements from us that dive a little deeper into the connection between authentic media, influence measurement and advertising. In the meantime, what do you think of our definition of authentic media? Do you think it’s the future of the web?