media landscaping

Aggregating in a Disaggregated World

I wrote in the past about Bud.TV and the problems it will have attracting sustainable audiences.  According to a new article in Ad Age:

Anheuser-Busch Cos. CEO August Busch IV today said the No. 1 brewer expects its pioneering online television network to "fade" during the second half of the year.

A-B spent $30-40 Million on a site that they will just let fade away.  Smart decision, because aggregating in a world of disaggregated content is just a bad idea.  It will always be an uphill battle to attract an audience.  With open distribution systems like YouTube, Joost etc. there is no need to hold content hostage on your own little "island".  There are millions of people gathered in existing video portals who would love to watch, recommend and share your videos...so why spent ad $ to draw them out of that environment?

Bud.TV is a great case study on how not to run a branded content strategy.  Hopefully, they will adjust their mindset and extend their content out on the web.   

Dave Beaupre has said for years,

Bring the content to the people, not the people to the content.

Wise words that could have saved A-B a lot of money...

CBS and Video Syndication

I have been critical of CBS's Innertube Project in the past, but they just took a huge leap ahead of the pack with the announcement that they will allow their content, with ads, to be syndicated out to at least 10 other websites.  I see this as the first step toward the complete democratization of media and is one of the biggest signs of the changing media landscape since ABC first offered full episodes on abc.com.

They will be offering full episodes and clips to sites like AOL and Comcast and through more specialized outlets like NetVibes and Joost.  I don't think it will be much longer before they will offer up completely unrestricted embedding of these files into blogposts.  If the ad travels with it and all of the proper protections they want are in place, why wouldn't they allow this?  Not sure why it has taken them so long.

What better way to get buzz about your programming than by allowing people to take selected clips of a show and discuss them in their blogs? 

Be on the look out for a similar announcement from ABC soon, as I am sure they have considered this.  NBC will be the last to act...I think they are still trying to pull down the "Chronicles of Narnia" clip from YouTube.

Via MediaBistro Daily News Feed

87% recall of Online Video ads?

I have been following ABC's online experiments pretty closely.  Most of you know, but they took many of their top shows and put them online the day following the broadcast (link).   I remember reading (but didn't save it) that it expanded the overall viewership of the shows and the online viewing did not take away from the TV viewing. 

Now, AdAge reports that the online ads, which were non-skippable and ran several times through out the show, experienced a recall of 87%.  That is huge, considering they report an average TV recall of 24%.

Lets review.  Increased viewership that doesn't affect the TV ratings.  87% recall of the ads.

I predict we will see much more of this in the fall...from all of the networks.

TV is changing...

Steve Hall writes about a panel at Ad-Tech that provided some very interesting insights into TV and how consumers use of it is changing.  It is pretty technical, but worth a read if you are a media geek like me.

The highlight for me is this part near the end:

He also told the audience to, when in a Starbucks, dial 510-653-6473 and hold the phone up to the music. It's the Grace Notes services that provides song information. He says there's no reason this or similar technology couldn't be harnessed to provide a channel to offer people more information on ads of any kind.

I am definitely going to try this and will report back soon.

Added Value is killing emerging media

It is a fairly common practice for traditional media companies to give away advertising on emerging platforms in order to sell the traditional channel.  (I don't do it, but know those who do).  They think they are helping themselves by giving the advertiser a way to "test" and then hopefully buy it in the future.  Problem is, if they don't pay for it, advertisers tend to not take it very seriously and failure is almost guaranteed.

Case in point, I went into my TiVo "Showcases" area for the first time last night.  As I understand it, this is the marketplace where consumers will hopefully seek out exclusive content and relevant advertising.  Consumers will stop by here once and if they see good content, they will return to explore again.  Problem is, they will never return if the experience is poor.  If they feel like they are being sold to with the same or similar ads that interrupt their regular tv experience, why would they ever come back? 

My first visit gave me only 2 choices.  Best Buy Home Theater and the "Lady in the Water" extended movie trailer.  The trailer was great because I have been trying to decide whether or not to see this film and this trailer was the extended version, providing extra scenes that don't make the commercials.  I will go back for that type of content. 

The Best Buy ad really just felt like a long ad.  It gave much more detail than a traditional :30 could provide, but didn't offer any real value beyond that.  I don't think that consumers will frequent an environment like the TiVo showcase or ComCast Spotlight if this is all they find.  I won't.

I am not bashing Best Buy at all here;  I credit them for trying out this new medium.  If they did get it for added-value, then they didn't lose anything and hopefully they learned something about the strategy.  TiVo is the loser here...jeopardizing the future of this strategy by giving it away.