The media disconnect continues
It’s almost entertaining to watch, this disconnect between media companies and the Web. In fact, it would be entirely entertaining if so much wasn’t at stake.
Diane Mermigas writes of the problem media moguls are having with the inability to make money with online videos. Former Disney chairman Michael Eisner is frustrated, both as an investor and a participant, and Diane does her best to get her arms around it.
The online ad frontier is fraught with problems–from enraging members of a social network to easy misplacement of ads. (Eisner complained that a male enhancement drug ad was automatically targeted for and appeared with an episode of “Foreign Body.”) Other revenue sources must be created: from sponsorships and transaction-related fees to various forms of sharing revenue and costs.
The answers are found in shifting the online focus from the value of the content and the advertising to the value of connecting to and continuously transacting with the right consumer.
Um, huh? You see, folks, the problem is that the Web collapses every hierarchical attempt to control it, so while traditional media types search for the “formula” that will turn it into a money tree, the Web just sticks its tongue out at them. As a result, the whole media world — including the advertising industry — is unwilling or unable to participate in the very disruption that could save them.
It’s a disconnect, and there’s no other way to explain it.
For example, Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ penned a nice piece last week about signs of growth with RSS advertising. On balance, it’s an encouraging article, but RSS advertising is an uphill, almost vertical climb due to low adoption rates in the U.S. and its inability to serve the flashier types of ads.
…the U.S. ranks far down on the adoption list, with penetration of only 18.6 percent. That’s tiny compared to RSS-addicted nations like Russia (57 percent adoption), Brazil (55 percent) and China (54 percent). Additionally, of those who access feeds, only 25 percent of U.S. respondents said they do so daily. Another 35 percent said they access them weekly, while 16 percent said feed reading is a monthly endeavor.
The reason the U.S. lags in this arena — as it does with mobile technology — is that the quo wants to protect its status, so it is reluctant to move through even obvious doors. RSS isn’t huge in this country, because the media companies that could benefit most from it refuse to promote it or use it as anything other than a way to draw people back to the walled gardens they know so well. RSS 2.0 is a real communications marvel, but it will never reach its potential until media companies begin to use it and explore its possibilities.
Dave Winer is one of those web geniuses who mainstream people don’t like (or refuse) to hear, but he speaks the truth regarding the Web. One of his core teachings is this: “People come back to places that send them away.” That makes no sense whatsoever to traditional media people, but it is, in fact, what “works” on the Web. Google practices it every day, and so do Yahoo and other forms of quality aggregators. And yet media companies are reluctant to offer outbound links to help users with stories for fear of driving them away.
Like I said. It’s a disconnect.
June 12th, 2008 at 9:45 am
As regards video - is there not also a disconnect between Winer’s assertion about the value of sending people away and the mountain of evidence to show that embedded videos get 10x the views of videos that are not embedded?
June 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
True, Peter. The feelings of media companies are changing in this area, but it’s been a tough sell. One of the hardest lessons for traditional media executives to learn is to get out of their own way.