Standing Out In The Chaos

Digital media is one cluttered, frenzied, assaulting market.  Sometimes it feels like thousands of general contractors are all working independently on building the same skyscraper.   Some great ideas, approaches and products, but overall ... total pandemonium.

One media property that stands out in it's ability to leverage all the tools and technologies, and create an engaging environment for visitors and advertisers alike is The Bleacher Report.  (Their purchase by Turner also represents one of the smarter new media company acquisitions by a traditional media company in recent years - millions of new visitors come from ever present links on the CNN.com home page.)

Seamlessly bringing together professional sports reporting, user generated commentary via social media apps, online video feeds and contextually relevant and perfectly targeted advertising, Bleacher makes it all easy on the eyes.  They also quite effectively lead visitors to become subscribers through a variety of frequency-capped sign up tools.

Here's my experience this morning as I was taken to a Bleacher story from CNN:

 

Perfect tie-in for Dewars and their "For The Man Who Deserves More Than a gift"campaign.  (I was actually sipping a Scotch last night during the game.)

Multiple video clips through out the story with pre-roll ads from Dewars

Tweets from fans, ESPN reporters and NBA players also embedded in the story to add more color.

Frequency capped pop-ups to convert visitors to subscribers.

The only lost opportunity as I see it, was the addition of a highly shareable piece of branded video content for Dewars supporting their Father's Day campaign and deepening the brand integration experience.

Online Video Television Time

The average American watches 170 hours of TV each month, resulting in a $70 billion per year advertising business.  Depending on which research source you reference, this viewership, on the biggest screen in the house, is either shrinking slightly, growing slightly, or staying the same.  And no matter how vehemently and often we portend the death of traditional TV based on our kid's emerging viewing habits and other anecdotal evidence, the more indestructible the "single most profitable big business in America" appears to be. (Another record-breaking upfront is in the works.)

I am in a sector of the media business that is growing faster than any other, online video, yet is surprisingly (based on all the hype) insignificant compared to TV.  Viewership is 7 hours per month and annualized ad revenue in the $3 billion range - 4% of television for both metrics.

This dose of reality was the topic of a recent Beet.TV clip titled "Online Video Slow To Take On TV." The exec featured in the clip, from Gannet, makes a great point -  one of the reasons that television continues to boom over online video is that television’s place has been primarily in the home while online video’s place has been primarily at work.  "We need to get into the home before we can see massive growth," he says.

We recently launched a new online video venture that is growing quickly, albeit in online video terms.  It features amazing content from one of the top producers of this type of content in the world.  I asked my kids to take a look and give me feedback.  Before we could gather around the iMac in our den, my 12 year old had it loaded on our connected TV in the living room where we watched MaxAnimal clips for a good hour or so.

Television time!

YouTube's Amazon Strategy

More often than not, I will see this "Skip Ad" icon  pop up when I am browsing YouTube, if I even see an ad at all.  Quite different from the 120-second commerical breaks on many of the network TV video sites.  Seriously ...  I tried watching a much-hyped recent episode of the Jimmy Kimmel show on ABC's online video portal.  Within minutes of being told that the show would be presented "with limited commercial interruption", a commerical break of four consecutive 30-second commercials interrupted the action; an eternity when viewing in lean-forward mode on a small screen.

Seems You Tube is going the route of Amazon, forgoing profits and easy money in exchange for customer growth and loyalty.  They are running lots of ads, but the sheer volume of content and traffic on YouTube dilutes the impact, resulting in a very pleasant, and addictive viewing experience.  No company has been as successful as Amazon with this approach.  As reported in the Times last week,  "Amazon has had plenty of opportunities to raise its margins in the past, but instead routinely has chosen to reward its customers."

Certainly Google doesn't have the unique "profits will come later" flexibilty Amazon enjoys with the markets, so we will see.  They also haven't been chained to enormous content production budgets like the networks, but that is also changing quickly.

Is Cable Television Really Dying?

Great piece last month in the NY Times Magazine on cable television's extraordinary business model.  A must read for anyone who wonders why so much junk, along with a handful or truly great programming jewels, can continue to generate such enormous revenue year after year, despite the endless prediction of a collapse.

After describing "cable's ascendance in to arguably America's single most-profitable big business" and why demographic and technological factors are already very slowly killing it, the author paints his picture of the future:

Perhaps we’ll get a truly free digital marketplace, one in which each program competes on its own without any outsize monopoly profits for whoever owns the wires and the channels. In many ways, that would be a much better system. Cable providers behave like OPEC, a cartel that keeps prices high and limits innovation. With little or no barrier to entry, better ideas and programs would win, while old, monopolistic conglomerates would crumble. If entertainment becomes anything like more competitive markets — cellphones, say — there should more variety and lower cost. 

Ironically, as the author notes, there may be much less gambling on big budget shows like Game of Thrones,  Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
 

Are We Losing More Than We Are Gaining?

The amount of time I spend looking at my smartphone since upgrading (and that is an understatement) from a Blackberry to an iPhone 5 has increased by at least an hour a day.  What can't it do?  I COULD use an app that alerts me to oncoming traffic when I am crossing a busy Manhattan street with my head down.

Seems even futurists and science fiction writers are having trouble imagining the future as hyper- accelerated technological change and innovation plows down everything in its path.  Taking a breath one morning before plugging in to one of my devises, I stumbled across this quote in the paper, and thought deeply about my children and the world they will be part of as adults.

While we have gained some skill sets (multitasking, technological savvy), other skills have suffered: the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, the art of being present. Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention, all qualities more esteemed in earlier decades. Inwardness and narcissism now hold sway.

But this is an extreme perspective.  We have gained many more skill sets - My 10 year-old's blog has enhanced her writing skills and self confidence, and my 12 year-old's YouTube channel has unearthed a passion for performing arts.  And it's not only leading us to inward driven conduct. My daughter's FB feed alerted us to opportunities to help some neighbors after the Hurricane.

Are we losing more than we are gaining? Hard to say.

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