Via Valleywag, trying to steal an iPhone on live TV is a bad idea:
Everybody loves MSNBC’s Mika for squashing the Paris story:
On the heels of yesterday’s viral ads post, is this advertising?
(Perhaps 20th Century Fox promoting the upcoming Simpsons movie.)
After much discussion about opt-in advertising and the value exchange between content owners and consumers at yesterday’s OMMA Video Conference, I decided to post this piece, written back in April but never published.
During the Passover holiday, conversation at dinner inevitably turned to everyone’s jobs. While the online video market is difficult to explain to an octogenarian, I had the help of two family friends that worked for Viacom. One works for TVLand, and the other was responsible for counting the number of YouTube’s violations of Viacom’s copyrights. In the spirit of the holiday, we compared online video advertising and the distribution of content to the story of Moses, and managed to provide a comfortable level of understanding of the technologies and challenges of the space.
The year was 1 BT. Before Tivo. And in this holy analogy, like in true biblical times, there was a covenant. And this covenant was as important to its time as the one in the bible. “Thou shall watch thy commercials, and content will rain down upon you like manna from Heaven.” Amen.
Also as in biblical times, there are heathens, detractors and blasphemers. Sixty years after the first commercial was aired on television, a new false idol appeared – a new golden calf - and its name was Tivo. Praise Tivo, who empowers us to live commercial free.
In today’s terms, ad-skipping breaks the covenant between the content producer and the content consumer. As “Tivo” morphed into a verb, the distinction between ad-skipping and time-shifting disappeared from the consumer’s vernacular. And with that loss, so went the covenant.
But like a biblical story, there are saviors. And today, online video advertising can be the savior of content and ad revenue. As an industry, though, we must be content missionaries, converting today’s heathens into believers, and show them the way. They have lost faith, but they can be saved. There is salvation for them, and we offer these sinners the control and convenience they seek. Dynamic Logic’s Nick Nyhan introduced a new trinity at OMMA: “Control+Shift+Option.” Consumers want control over their content. Where and when they watch it. And as an industry, that works out quite well for us.
The fact is that consumers’ perspectives are tainted from the Napster era, when they became accustomed to even the most desirable content being free. Online video is facing a similar dilemma, where consumers are asking for too much with little in return, leaving the value exchange out of balance.
Yet we can provide consumers with all of the convenience and control they want and return balance to the value exchange. We will deliver content to those who want it, but they must adhere to the new covenant. You can watch when you want, where you want, on whatever device or screen you want. But you may not have it all for free. Access to premium content still requires a balanced value exchange, be it a $1.99 for a commercial free download from iTunes or watching a few ads in the middle of an episode of Lost. Our responsibility is to evangelize that the Internet provides the most generous value proposition ever offered to them, and that watching a few ads is well worth the price of admission. More importantly, it is also our responsibility to keep that value exchange in balance.
Pre-roll has been demonized as of late, and in my opinion, quite unfairly. Pre-roll and mid-roll have been unfairly criticized as poor formats - a patently untrue label. As with floating and transitional ads, the pre-roll should be bastardized, not as a format, but for the overzealousness and abuse of marketers and publishers who use it when and where it shouldn’t be.
With the introduction of most new ad formats and marketing channels, there is always a rush for advertisers to be the first, to set the trends, to lead the zeitgeist. This often results in advertisers doing something because they could, and not because they should. Pre-roll is no different. Despite the first commandment of online video – Thou Shall Not Reuse Your Television Commercial Online – that was what marketers had available, and thus, what they used, even though we can all agree that a 30-second spot has no business in front of a one minute piece of content.
Fortunately for the pre-roll format, there is a content renaissance happening right now. Like the transition from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age, the Internet is quickly transforming into a medium for consuming vast amounts of video content. We shouldn’t be so hasty to condemn an ad format to eternal damnation before there is enough appropriate content to support it. The broadcast networks are already reaping the benefits of the format across all of their online shows. More publishers will have their day soon enough.
Watching a pre-roll or a few mid-roll ads is a very fair value exchange for a thirty minute sitcom, hour long drama or movie that you missed the first time. As more long-form content comes online, pre-roll and mid-roll advertising will find their proper homes – and they will be infinitely more palatable for users and advertisers alike. There will be more content, and it will be good. And for that, let us all say, “Amen.”
Just wrapped up a panel on getting ads to go viral, some highlights of successful campaigns:
Human Skateboard video - Initially shot as a TV spot, Sneaux Shoes decided to put it online. Crayon designed a strategy for distributing it across multiple video portals to their target demo, built on blog publicity and a UGC contest to promote it. Steve Coulson says the video achieved about six million views across all syndicated sites.
YouTube Underground contest - According to Christine Beardsell of Digitas, content comes first: if content is good people want to show it to their friends. “In the end it’s about what do they do after that video, what do they get from the video…your money is better spent to create something that is genuine and authentic and then having users engage…that lasts longer in their minds”
Ray-Ban Sunglasses - This was the model everyone was talking about. Brian McCarthy of Revver said one of the great things is that “you don’t know that this is an ad.” The only people can figure it out is by the “never hide” written in dirt on the windshield. But he also cautioned “I think you’re really playing with fire if you don’t call out if it is branded in some way…the audience is so intelligent they don’t want to be dictated to” and there can be real backlash. But it all comes down to the content, if they are entertained as in the Ray-Ban ad, they will be accepting.
Attendance last night at the UGTV conference in New York showed traditional media is taking user-generated content seriously.
Representatives from Disney/ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, and the BBC joined new media companies including Heavy Joost and blip.tv in a discussion over the disrupted industry that is television and where new media is taking us. Questions abound as to how UGC will be monetized — especially since it seems ad companies are most interested in servicing professional video.
Dynamic Logic/Millward Brown just presented some interesting results of research they recently completed:
As the graphic above shows - all video ads are not created equal. But if done correctly, online video can be monetized very successfully.
According to Dynamic logic, the most effective online ads require the following:
As a whole they broke it down to the acronym LEGS: Laugh out loud funny, Edgy Gripping and Sexy. Online video ads can push the envelope a little more than traditional marketing and are they are rewarded for ingenuity.
Millward Brown also discussed their CTV-1 study in which 3,030 people viewed a specific tv show in one of three specified viewing environmnets (live TV / VOD / Online) and then was surveyed to determine engagement afterward.
The Results:
Herb Scannell, CEO of Next New Networks just spoke here at the OMMA Video summit. Over the next ten years his company plans to launch 101 online video channels and of those launched so far, several have become familiar names. If you haven’t been to JetSet or Veracifier yet, check them out.
Scannell, a fan of the GigaOM network of sites, focused on what he calls the three new rules of NewTeeVee:
So far Next New has been responsible for some pretty cool content, the question remains how to monetize it.
Lots going on today in online media:
More coming shortly from OMMA.
The TED Conference continues to roll out new videos of their talks. Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ demo of the work Microsoft Live Labs is doing with PhotoSynth and SeaDragon has been circulating in the tech community. Check it out below.
Essentially they’re hyperlinking millions of images based on the information in them and using that massive database of visual info to create a rich 3D model. The next generation of Rich Internet Applications may look something like this.
Well, we certainly didn’t think it would be that fast, and obviously the deal was in the works before the additions to the management team, but as OWV predicted, Roo has announced a tremendous publisher deal today.
The announcement said that ROO will deploy their video players across all of Universal Music UK’s major sites, including Mercury Island, UCJ and Polydor Records, as well as artist sites that will all feature full-screen viewing capabilities.
“Video is central to our online strategy, as we have a wealth of video assets, including not only artist music videos but exclusive performances, acoustic sessions, interviews and collaborations. Finding a partner capable of supporting our expansive catalogue and audience was our first challenge,” noted PJ Dulay, director of Digital Operations at Universal Music UK. “ROO’s total video management package offers a reliable source of revenue, and its creativity, shared vision and knowledge of our market is outstanding.”
Guess we’ve got some good sources!
Ok, so it was from two days ago, but we’ve got real jobs, too. Prepping for the OMMA Video Conference. Looks like a solid day of programming.
Anyway, on Monday, Broadcasting & Cable reported that the broadcast upfronts have booked slightly more than $9 million worth of advertising so far, up a tad from last year.
Online advertising is on the rise, and video advertising is a huge driver. But those of you shorting the TV industry might be a bit premature.
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