TV Matters, Or Does It
Youtube’s most recent upfront reignited the debate around the relevance of TV and the much-maligned 30-second spot. Ritson counterbalanced the hyperbole with:
“I think most marketers these days agree that the reports of the death of linear TV have been wildly exaggerated. But nonetheless, we have to accept that a lot of people are watching a lot less linear TV than perhaps they once did,” said Ritson.
“That’s a major problem, especially for big brands who have for decades depended on linear TV to build their brands at the top of the funnel through its enormous reach. And that’s exactly where YouTube plays a wonderful role. As a supplement to linear TV, especially on connected televisions, YouTube provides a brilliant way to restore that reach, particularly among the younger demographics that have proven so difficult in recent years to reach out to.”
While Ritson is right, there are two problems with this.
First, the idea of a “top of the funnel” is antiquated. We are in need of the continuous creation of mental, physical and digital availability for our brands across all stages of the funnel. All buyers buy infrequently. The funnel is a broken metaphor. More to come on that.
Digital mediums – Youtube – plays a critical role in generating that availability. The issue is efficiency, effectiveness and reach. That is where the debate starts. So even if we are watching TV less – much less in my case – does that smaller viewing audience more efficiently and effectively create availability? I can’t recall a single ad or brand I’ve seen on Youtube but can recall brands I’ve seen on TV. Samples of one make for terrible evidence.
Second, drawing two mediums into a compare and delete debate is futile. The reality is all marketers of any quality will be working the media mix for outcomes. It’s not either, or – but rather where to allocate the spend across a mix. As more of us consume formats that move – TV, video, social the real losers will be static media. Not just in terms of the reach and efficiency of that media but also the complexity and cost in making that media work.
What is true is that we must adjust all marketing to reflect the attention span of audiences – short formats for intercepting the “feed” and much longer formats for engagement.
“Six second bumpers and 15-second spots. A smart mix can build a great story … languishing behind is the 30 and its cousin, the 45-second spot, which generate the lowest ROI across all screens … 30-seconds is too complex to automate, too simple to convince. It’s too short if I’ve chosen to engage with it, and it’s far too long if I’m forced to watch it. Consumers tend to skip the platform if they’re faced with the forced 30-second spot. Hence skippable format and the burst of the six second bumper. It’s long enough to grab my attention and over before I have the chance to object.”
The best performing ads, created by only 15 per cent of advertisers, were longer than three minutes, per Hunt.
So, go long, go short – but don’t get trapped in the middle.
how craigslist is killing newspapers
They might be killing them from a revenue standpoint, and I’ll agree that no revenue in any commercial enterprise equals certain death, but isn’t their lack of alignment with what “consumers” actually want killing them more.
"In the world of online classified advertising, Craigslist is by far the most used Web site in the United States," Pew said in the report. "In March 2009, classified sites averaged 53.8 million unique visitors, up 7 percent from February. Craigslist had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March."
I want news delivered by people I trust. I only want the news I’m interested in. It would be great if the medium could figure that out in advance. And I want the content to be as multidimensional as possible. Preferably it woulb’t lay in my drive for me to drive over, but come to me where ever I am.
To survive, the medium must change to suit the business model. Physical newspapers will be a rare few. Those in the cloud will continue to proliferate like rabbits.
the changing newsroom
Great piece on the changing newsroom.
The newsroom staff producing the paper is also smaller, younger, more tech-savvy, and more oriented to serving the demands of both print and the web. The staff also is under greater pressure, has less institutional memory, less knowledge of the community, of how to gather news and the history of individual beats. There are fewer editors to catch mistakes.
hacks’s flacks take a whack
- When Fox News Is the Story: “Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to. And if all that stuff doesn’t slow me down and I actually end up writing something, there might be a large hangover: Phone calls full of rebuke for a dependent clause in the third to the last paragraph, a ritual spanking in the blogs with anonymous quotes that sound very familiar, and — if I really hit the jackpot — the specter of my ungainly headshot appearing on one of Fox News’s shows along with some stern copy about what an idiot I am.”
- PRWeek blogs…
- “Well done, Mr. Carr, well done. Expect a horse’s head in your bed,” says FishbowlNY co-editor Noah Davis.
- Broadcasting & Cable’s Mike Malone says Carr did “a helluva job” with the column.
- Huffington Post media editor Rachel Sklar says Fox’s PR strategy scares off positive mentions.
- Radar’s Choire Sicha comments that dealing with CNN can be “difficult and uptight,” but working with Fox “can actually be frightening.”
In other opinions about the Fox-New York Times controversy:
chaos theory
Jeff has an interesting post on chaos theory and the media…
As the media become more dependent on advertising, so advertising becomes less dependent on the media. With the recent death of the New York Times’ pay service, TimesSelect, and the rumoured razing of the Wall Street Journal’s pay wall, any final hopes of readers paying for content are fading. We prophets of free content are being proven right – whether we like it or not. Advertising is all we’ll have to support content and media.
