Let’s hope not
A new report (yes, one of those) from Magna Global USA — the media services (advertising) firm specializing in television (especially product placement) — and reported in today’s Online Media Daily links the so-called “digital divide” to the failure of the web to achieve status sufficient for mass marketing.
“Despite falling prices for PCs, the potential for the Internet to become a true ‘mass’ medium remains limited by the lack of ubiquitous access,” stated the report. “As a result, endemic advertisers, marketers with e-commerce activities, companies offering deep information to consumers, and those seeking niche audiences will continue to be the primary users of Internet advertising, rather than advertisers focused on mass marketing.”
“Marketers will actually find traditional media to become increasingly important because of the relative scarcity of ways to reach masses of consumers.”
Secondly, this report conveniently offers up hope to traditional marketers by presenting the have-not’s lack of web access as a potential opportunity to achieving mass status on the web. Here we have an appeal to the government to interject itself into business, and that’s a loaded gun. Besides, while equal access for all may be a big help socially, it won’t change people. Do these marketing types honestly believe that low-income web users will be any less resistant to pop-ups, blinking and whirling, or uninvited video than the current crop of users online? I think not.
Mass marketing will always be around, and television will always provide the best bang for the mass marketing buck. But increasingly, there is really only a perception of mass, because people are scattered and rarely get together in one place and one time (like the Superbowl). We’ve entered a new era of advertising that demands something other than tired efforts at manipulation of masses, and reports like these that offer the obvious as something new do nothing to inspire new thinking.
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Blogger skepticism understandable but in this case wrong
There’s an interesting discussion in the comments to a Jeff Jarvis post about WKRN-TVs announcement last week that it will begin paying video bloggers for material they submit that’s used on-the-air or on the station’s website.
Seth Finklestein Finkelstein (see comments) raised the issue of whether the station isn’t just doing this as a budgeting ploy to get cheap content. I’ve encountered this before, so I asked him what a mainstream company has to do to prove that it wishes to work WITH the local blogosphere rather than exploit it. His response was to defend his cynicism.
Seth is one of the smartest guys out there, so it’s important to pay attention to what he says. This kind of jaded thinking is sadly the norm, and I’ve always pointed out to clients that trying to play with local bloggers can be a minefield. The benefits of doing it right, however, can pay off big time and in many ways. It is upon this, after all, that my theories and axioms are based.
We shall see.
BONUS: Here’s a link to the 3rd segment of yesterday’s Reliable Sources on CNN. The discussion is about online video and its disruptive potential. (Thanks, Harry)
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More moronic observations from the “experts”
This one takes the cake, especially in light of my previous post and the one about ABC wanting to block fast-forwarding during commercials on DVRs. Two professors have done a study — as reported in today’s Online Media Daily — with the remarkable conclusion that:
Consumers might have more power over when and where they experience media than ever before, but they appear to enjoy content more–and pay closer attention to it–when they relinquish some of that control……”More attention is elicited by things that are not expected,” said (Kevin) Wise, who was a doctoral student at Stanford when he conducted the research.
One implication for online media is that users might be more interested in content when it appears without warning, such as in the form of sudden bursts of motion and sound, or the much-disliked pop-ups, Wise said.
To paraphrase Rishad Tobaccowala of Starcom’s Denuo group, “We’re in an “empowered era” in which “humans are God,” because technology allows them to be godlike. How will you approach god?”
It won’t be with “sudden bursts of motion and sound.”
Geez.
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In-stream video ads, yes. In-page video ads, no.
I’m usually a big fan of MediaPost and its various publications, but a guest commentary in today’s Online Media Daily has me a little perturbed. The column, written by EyeWonder CEO and co-founder John Vincent, makes the case that “in-page” video ads offer nothing but opportunities for advertisers. I have two problems with this piece: one, Vincent’s EyeWonder is a leading provider of in-page video ads, and, two, I think in-page video ads that play automatically are the greatest insult to users since pop-ups.
In-stream video ads are another animal altogether, and I appreciate what he writes about advertisers and ad agencies not being fully up to speed on their effectiveness. He quotes a DoubleClick study that indicates online video ads “roughly triple the increase for all key brand metrics [brand awareness, ad awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent] compared to GIF/JPG display ads.”
MediaPost needs to take a hard look at its policies relating to guest commentaries. Self-serving pitches ought not to be allowed, and if you are going to allow them, at least give your readers the courtesy of a disclaimer. John Vincent is merely identified as a co-founder of EyeWonder. There’s no mention of EyeWonder’s specialty.
Of course, I could be wrong…
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Mommy bloggers are the bomb!
One of the things I learned at Bloggercon this year was the growing strength of a niche group of bloggers known as “mommy bloggers.” I don’t know the source of that title, but there are apparently quite a few of them writing about their adventures with their children.
This is a significant niche for several of reasons. One, Madison Avenue has always paid attention to moms. They are among the most attractive “targets” for advertising, because certain products have a strong appeal to moms and not necessarily everybody else. Moreover, moms tend to influence the family to a greater extent than dads, and that clout has value to advertisers (money). Two, people who read the stuff written by moms are — by proxy — also a “target” for certain advertisers, like, for example, Proctor & Gamble. Three, there is a kinship among mothers that is reserved strictly for them — a club, if you will — that has deep social significance.
The annual BlogHer conference of women bloggers gets underway at the end of this month in San Jose, and the mommy bloggers will be there in force. Last year, they rose to take the floor when someone suggested women bloggers could change the world if they’d only stop blogging about themselves. This offended the mommy bloggers, and one, Alice Bradley (aka finslippy) later wrote:
We readers and authors of parenting blogs are looking for a representation of authentic experience that we’re not getting elsewhere. We sure as hell aren’t getting it from the parenting magazines. If you want to find out how to make nutritious muffins that look like kitty cats, you can read those. But a parenting magazine will never help you feel less alone, less stupid, less ridiculous. This is the service I think parenting blogs provide-we share our lopsided, slightly hysterical, often exaggerated but more or less authentic experiences. If one blogger writes about, say, her bad behavior at the doctor’s office, then maybe at some point, some freaked-out new mother is going to read that and feel a little better-less stupid, less ridiculous-about her own breakdown at the pediatrician’s.
In the news today is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s purchase of a local parenting site, MilwaukeeMoms.com. This could be pretty significant, it seems to me, but according to PaidContent’s Rafat Ali, the paper plans to begin carrying content from its parenting magazine, Metroparent. That smacks of another tired attempt to build up the old instead of boosting the new. What about the mommy bloggers in Milwaukee? Why not support them by building a smart aggregator of the energy that’s already there? Let me repeat that smart aggregators are where local media companies should be looking for tomorrow, and this one makes so much sense that I’m surprised they aren’t already a local internet staple.
Are you listening, big media?
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Nashville TV station to put video bloggers on the air
In an unprecedented industry move, Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN-TV announced tonight that it would begin paying local bloggers for approved video stories they submit and running those stories on its Website and in its newscasts. WKRN president and general manager Mike Sechrist told a “meet-up” of local bloggers that he could envision the day when a daily program would be made up entirely of material submitted by the community.
While there are many issues to work out, the reaction in the room was extremely positive. Nashville already boasts several quality video bloggers (vloggers) who are expected to begin offering their material immediately. Sechrist said the station would provide technical and journalism support where necessary or requested and that all stories would be vetted through the station’s existing editorial process and systems.
Sechrist told the group of bloggers that they had already had a significant influence on the news programs the station produces, simply by doing what they do. The station has pursued stories first raised in the blogging community and has used local bloggers as a sounding board at various times.
This bold move reminds me of South Korea’s OhmyNews! and its “every citizen is a reporter” slogan. By paying bloggers to conceive and produce stories that they feel are interesting, the station is following the “networked journalism” model noted by Jeff Jarvis earlier this week and the citizen journalism thinking of people such as Dan Gillmor.
I’m sure that we’ll hear plenty of bitching about this from the trenches of the TV news business, but the truth is this was inevitable. Stations have always employed “stringers” or “freelancers,” but most of their work was raw video that station reporters used to tell stories. This takes the concept a step further and taps into the knowledge, passion, brainpower and, yes, skill of people in the community. This a fruit of the personal media revolution, and it will be interesting to watch.
The social gathering tonight was well-attended, and I was taken by the number of new faces present. The blogosphere in Nashville is unique in its real world social networking, and it’s always good to see in the same room people driven by the ability to self-publish. These are bright people, and most of them are funnier than all get out, too.
DISCLOSURE: WKRN-TV is a client of mine.
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Pay attention to what’s happening down under
If you’ve not heard by now, the Australian version of the show “Big Brother” has caused a hornet’s nest of controversy over sexual conduct between two of the male characters and a woman contestant. Both of the male contestants were removed from the show for violation of rules. The incident didn’t occur on-the-air; it was seen via the live internet version (at 4:30am Saturday).
What’s important here is that this didn’t occur over regulated airwaves, but Australian lawmakers now want to extend broadcast supervision to the internet in the name of protecting families “from exposure to offensive material.” One can speculate about the chances of this happening, but that’s not the point. The more legislative bodies attempt to apply top-down (modernist) mechanics to regulating online content, they more they run into a structure that was designed to avoid command-and-control functionality. Where do you draw the line without stepping all over personal — and guaranteed — freedoms? How do you actually implement such controls on those outside your area of jurisdiction?
This is a new world into which we’ve entered, and old laws and methods of enforcement — like everything else — must conform to that which is new. People will simply not stand for governmental interference here, and the more they attempt to interfere, the more visible becomes the political motivation for so doing. As I’ve said before, the internet is taking us to a place where the more we holler at the moon, the louder comes a voice saying, “What do you want?” I view this as a good thing, because it forces the realities of our connectedness and the need to face our problems in a way that’s completely new. If we truly want a government of the people, then we must be prepared to accept the consequences of our actions. As long as we can shift the burden of those consequences to others (the government), then there’s little need for us to carry the load ourselves, and yet that’s exactly what is required of an informed citizenry.
Jeff Jarvis notes this morning that:
The FCC has asked a federal court to delay action by three network affiliates appealing a recent indecency order so it can hear the affiliates’ arguments and reconsider the case. The ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates concurred; Fox’s stations did not…The FCC has studiously avoided court tests of its indecency rulings and I wonder whether this is another effort to sidestep the Constitutional challenge that is inevitable.
The FCC was created to regulate spectrum, for crying out loud, not to make viewing choices for us.
Does something need to be done to “protect” us from the excesses of human nature? Nothing new there, but what is new is the increasing and healthy shift of that burden to ourselves. Technology is our friend here, not another straw man to exploit for political gain.
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ABC’s Shaw needs to get real
In one of the most preposterous and asinine statements I’ve read since covering the whole new media space, ABC President of Advertising Sales Mike Shaw told MediaDailyNews that skipping commercials ISN’T a driving factor in the purchase of a DVR. In the words of the immortal Frank Barone, “Holy crap!”
The Shaw statement came as a justification for the network discussing with cable operators the notion of adding technology to set-top DVRs that would disable fast forwarding during commercials, so they could “run as intended.”
“I’m not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance,” Shaw said. “It really is a matter of convenience–so you don’t miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we’re just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I’m not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don’t fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can’t skip commercials.”
What Mr. Shaw doesn’t want to accept is that time is the new currency and that his industry has done this to themselves. One-third of prime-time viewing is now devoted to marketing, and this revolt against that is driven by a very real need for people to manage a decreasing amount of leisure time.
The 30-second ad model is broken, folks, and we need creative thinking to find ways to overcome it — not crap like this from network executives. The horse has left the barn, and it ain’t comin’ back. Why can’t we bring ourselves to accept that?
There’s a lot of experimentation with program sponsorships, and I like that model. Whether it will provide the kind of revenues broadcasters need is questionable, but at least the concept begins with accepting certain realities about life. New options yet to be created certainly won’t be created, if this kind of reasoning is the best the networks can offer. Bring on the right-brainers!
Puh-leeze!
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Is Amanda leaving…
…or are we being gamed? One never knows with the Rocketboom crew, but the story is out that Amanda Congden and Andrew Michael Baron are splitting and that she’s no longer a part of the ‘boom. Hard to believe, but if true, Amanda is going to make some online (or offline) property very happy.
UPDATE: Mathew Ingram talks with Baron. She wanted to be in L.A. He didn’t want to move that fast. Sounds like typical anchor/management stuff to me.
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Networked journalism
Jeff Jarvis notes a significant shift in his thinking about “citizens journalism.” He now favors “networked journalism:”
“Networked journalism” takes into account the collaborative nature of journalism now: professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, linking to each other across brands and old boundaries to share facts, questions, answers, ideas, perspectives. It recognizes the complex relationships that will make news. And it focuses on the process more than the product……this isn’t about citizens or amateurs vs. professionals. We’re all in this together. Journalism is a collaborative venture. Journalism is a network.
I teased Jeff about starting a meme, to which he responded “I wasn’t trying to claim provenance.” Nevertheless, it’ll be interesting to follow the Google link to see how quickly it grows.
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Networking blogs
When Gawker media mogul Nick Denton announced he was selling two of his domains, speculation about the profitability of blogging hit the streets immediately. Friends jumped to his defense by saying he was doing necessary pruning of unprofitable wings of his multi-blog empire (Gawker, Wonkette, Fleshbot, etc.). Lost Remote asked “Is the blog bubble about to burst?” to which commenters responded in the affirmative.
Let me make something perfectly clear: Blog groups — such as those of Nick Denton or Jason Calacanis — were originated to carve out pieces of the mass media pie, and while they use the technology of blogging, the business play is textbook reach/frequency. Are they then blogs? Well, I believe that if you call yourself a blog, you are one, but I think the argument is irrelevant. The point is these networks are media companies, and they are competing with every mainstream outlet online. Nothing wrong with that.
But blogging — as in the personal media revolution — is much, much more than this, and it’s here where I part company with some of my colleagues and friends. Heather Green of Business Week gets it right when she writes that blogging isn’t about making money.
Sorry if I am repeating myself, but I remain convinced that the destabilizing nature of blogs (and personal media writ large) won’t be the creation of a group of huge new media companies (a la Gawker) that displace the traditional ones. The real power is how personal media fragments the mass market audience by turning readers, watchers, listeners, into writers and video and audio creators. Most of these folks won’t make money and it won’t matter.
Bubbles, booms, busts, bears: these are financial terms that are confusing to me when misapplied to blogging and the adaptation of personal media. Blogging (except to a small universe of individuals who see everything in financial terms) is more a social or cultural phenomenon than a business and financial one. I certainly think personal media will have a tremendous financial impact and transform certain aspects of the way business is conducted, but even finding a “pure play” in the blog-arena is going to be a challenge for the lay investor (not the professional one), so how can there be a bubble in the classic sense?
Networking local blogs is a win-win for everybody, because it creates clout that advertisers recognize and provides the money for bloggers to pay for their hosting, etc. But this type of network rises from the bottom instead of being organized from the top, and this is the source of its strength.
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