Programmatic advertising has woven its way into every channel in marketing, including the most traditional: television. According to a new study from AOL, 76% of advertisers buy display via programmatic, while 56% buy mobile inventory this way; 48% use programmatic for video ads; 24% for social; 32% for search; and 13% for television. Just 8% say they aren’t using programmatic in any channel. From the agency perspective, 86% are buying display via programmatic, 60% for mobile and video, 34% for social, 24% for search, 7% for television and just 9% aren’t using it at all. In other words, over 90% of buyers are now using programmatic in some capacity. The data comes from new survey results from AOL Platforms. AOL Platforms surveyed senior executives at 25 major U.S. brands, 96 agencies and 56 publishers over a one-month period spanning May and June 2014. Although it is already prevalent in all digital media channels, agency and brand respondents said advertisers will increase the use of programmatic buying over the next six months. The expected growth is nothing to scoff at: Respondents said advertisers will increase the use of programmatic in display by 58% over the next six months -- by 53% in mobile, 54% in video, 18% in social, 12% in TV and 10% in search. AOL notes: “87% of brands and agencies plan to increase spend in Display and Video up to 50% in the next year.” “What started as a way to automate real-time bidding on remnant inventory has evolved into a force for innovation across numerous areas of the advertising landscape, including the trading of premium display and videos buys,” Allie Kline, chief marketing officer of AOL Platforms, told Real-Time Daily. “Programmatic is moving out of the minor leagues.” Ad technology is not without its faults, however, and brands, agencies and publishers all agree that inventory quality is a serious concern. It has been a known and documented issue for months now, and still progress has been slow, if not absent. “Inventory quality” is one of the top two challenges that brands, agencies and publishers all face with programmatic -- with agencies and publishers citing is as their biggest hurdle. For brands, the number one issue is transparency, followed by inventory quality and technology complexity. Transparency and technology complexity are the second and third biggest challenges for agencies. Publishers, on the other hand, don’t cite transparency as an issue -- instead noting that education and measurement are their second and third biggest challenges, respectively. While the “technology complexity” is a major problem, according to the survey, advertisers aren’t doing themselves many favors. AOL’s survey says that 73% of buyers are working with up to 20 different vendors. “This shows that while consolidation may be happening at a corporate level, the effects of it have not yet trickled down to the transactional level, requiring numerous partners throughout the process,” AOL theorizes. The complexity can perhaps be blamed for another complaint buyers and sellers share: Nearly 60% of all respondents say digital media buying and selling is still too time consuming.
Apple Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft Cortana have some serious competition. The Viv Labs engineering team -- the creators of voice assistant Siri -- are at it again. This time the artificial intelligence technology driving the service will bridge contextual gaps in meaning, update and make programming decisions in real time. To reach their goal, they will need to process massive amounts of data to predict human needs. Viv will link third-party data sources to bridge the gap between complicated search queries and perform complex functions from natural language sentences. The advances in technology will make artificial intelligence feel more human, per Wired's Steven Levy. He explains that as Viv's knowledge grows, so will its understanding of real life events and requirements. Its creators designed it based on three principles called pillars. The world will teach the technology, it will know more than it is taught, and it will learn something every day. Similar to other AI products from Apple, Google and Microsoft, teaching involves using sophisticated algorithms to interpret the language and behavior of people using the system -- the more people use it, the smarter it becomes, per Levy. What he doesn't fully explain are the implications of natural language processing on search and other media advertising. Levy touches on advances by acknowledging that Viv will have an ability to sift through the trove of data and find new ways to connect and manipulate the information, but doesn't go into detail on how it will change online advertising by tapping into a collective database of signals. Each company will have its database augmented by third-party data Viv aims to bridge gaps in sentence structure. Other AI platforms require two separate sentences to determine the number of people and location, but Viv aims to bridge the gap in queries like "What is the population of the city where Abraham Lincoln was born?" This type of technology will open the door to the next version of search advertising.
Newspaper publishers are jumping on the mobile shopping bandwagon, looking to team with mobile app developers who can help advertisers connect with shoppers near the point of sale via their mobile devices. In the latest such partnership, McClatchy Co. -- which publishes the Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee, among other newspapers -- announced Tuesday that it is investing in Engage3, which specializes in retail intelligence and mobile shopping platforms. The amount of the investment was not disclosed. The deal will give McClatchy’s advertising clients access to Engage3’s ShoppingScout mobile app and help accelerate market adoption of the app, which helps consumers find information on brands and retailers and delivers promotional offers via social, digital and print media. The app uses Engage3’s proprietary algorithms to analyze the user’s intent to buy, then provides that information to retailers, who may then respond with personalized offers. Engage3 will help McClatchy identify markets where its local media properties can introduce ShoppingScout to subscribers and other potential customers. McClatchy has been pursuing an eclectic strategy in the digital arena, with relatively small investments and acquisitions financed by big sales. Earlier this month, McClatchy sold its quarter stake in Cars.com to Gannett, as part of the latter’s strategic move to spin off its newspaper publishing division as a standalone business. Cars.com will be incorporated into Gannett’s new digital and broadcast TV company. At the time McClatchy said it would use some of the $640 million it received for its stake in Cars.com to finance other Internet ventures, as well as paying down some of its $1.5 billion debt, most assumed in its acquisition of Knight Ridder in 2006. Last year, McClatchy acquired Tru Measure, a media measurement and analytics outfit, which subsequently partnered with Simpli.fi, an ad tech firm, to gain access to its programmatic marketing and performance reporting tools.
Clients who complain about a lack of talent and creativity in Adland have nobody to blame but themselves because too frequently they are not willing to pay for it. That was the gist of a commentary that 4As President Nancy Hill wrote in The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today column Tuesday. She referenced a comment by Unilever’s Keith Weed at Cannes this year that he has “genuine concern because there’s never been such competition for creativity.” That was the starting point for Hill’s argument that Adland isn’t keeping pace with other industries in compensating top talent entering the workforce after college -- at least partly because clients aren’t willing to pay adequate fees. She noted that average student loan debt is nearly $30,000 while entry-level ad jobs pay between $25,000 and $28,000 in yearly salary. Meanwhile, tech companies like Google and Microsoft offer starting salaries in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, while consulting firms offer $70,000-$75,000. “If you were a recent grad with almost $30,000 in student loan debt, where would you go?” Hill asked. “I don’t mean to point a finger at Unilever or any other client. All clients demand the best talent on their business, but, generally speaking, aren’t willing to pay for it. Extended payment terms, unreasonable indemnification clauses, incentive plans that don’t incentivize, FTE negotiations on hours in a year all add up to a system that is broken. We’ve made it so complicated that, at best, it takes three extra staff members just to manage a contract.” Marketers often ignore guidance that the 4As and the Association of National Advertisers have offered on what constitutes fair agency compensation, Hill wrote. “All the guidance in the world won’t help if we don’t find a way to work together to create an economic environment in which we can pay reasonably well to attract, retain and provide ongoing learning for the very best and brightest that our clients and their brands deserve.”
Coming off the hugely popular World Cup this summer, NBC Sports is hoping to grow football-fever into a new national pastime for its Barclays Premier League soccer broadcasts beginning this weekend. “It’s a very short off-season,” Bill Bergofin, senior vice president of marketing at NBC Sports, tells Marketing Daily. “We promoted it into the World Cup and through it and right into [the new] season.” First, NBC Sports has brought its soccer-clueless character Coach Ted Lasso back for a second go-around in an online video. The character (played by SNL alum Jason Sudeikis) continues to be confused by the sport, but is now working as a commentator for the network. Lasso, who last year was recruited and fired as coach of the Tottenham Spurs, still doesn’t understand the game, confused about the offsides rules and the details behind “relegation,” which calls for the bottom three teams to be ousted from the league. (The video also features a cameo by U.S. World Cup goalie Tim Howard.) “Year two was purposefully [set up] to put him back on American soil,” Bergofin says. “We want to create a buzz around the [BPL] and educate the audience about it.” The video is only one component of the buzz-building campaign. NBC Sports is also targeting more dedicated fans with co-branded Topps trading card packs, which feature the channel’s on-air talent (Rebecca Lowe, Arlo White and Kyle Martino) as well as a Ted Lasso card. Meanwhile, the network has partnered with Uber in New York City, through which the car service will offer free rides (with a promo code, BPLonNBC) in specially decorated Mini Cooper Countryman cars. The Speak Football app will also be available to non-Uber users as a way to help determine which team they should be supporting by providing answers to questions. It will also offer fans a crash-course in football lingo (and also send “translated” tweets in British football lingo) and teach new fans team chants and songs. “Uber is a hot company and a lot of our goal is to create buzz,” Bergofin says. “[Speak Football]” is another tool coming out of this that pokes fun at the lexicon of the announcers.”
A number of TV station groups witnessed sharp declines in their stock prices in midday Tuesday trading -- partly due to projected softness in future advertising. One of the biggest, Sinclair Broadcast Group, had its stock down 4.7% to $30.77. Nexstar Broadcasting Group was off 4.4% to $46.57; Media General lost 5.9% to $16.63; Lin Media declined 3.9% to $22.89; E.W. Scripps gave up 2.2% to $18.47; Journal Communications was off 2% to $9.29; and Gannett Co. gave back 1.7% to $33.41. CBS was down 1.7% to $59.15. Although its revenue base is more diversified, CBS still derives a sizable portion of its business from advertising revenues. Other media companies headed south: TiVo was off 1.7% to $13.51; and Pandora Media sank 2.5% to $25.73. Analysts have been leery about possible softness in advertising revenues -- not just with national TV networks, but locally at TV stations and other platforms. There is also some volatility in the wake of possible mergers (AT&T-DirecTV and Comcast-Time Warner Cable), as well as the abandonment of mergers, with 21st Century Fox dropping its potential deal for Time Warner. Another important factor is that in the last 12 months, there have been a number of major TV station group deals/mergers.
Millennials are still buying into pay TV -- but not surprisingly, their numbers are lower than older TV consumers. Just 63% of millennials -- those 18-29 -- have pay TV subscriptions. Seventy-seven percent of 30- to-49-year-olds have pay TV, and 78% of those 50 and older have a pay TV service, per media research company nScreenMedia. Going forward, things might be tougher -- especially for those young TV consumers. The research says 98% of those young TV media consumers have no intention of getting pay TV, with just 2% saying they are “considering” subscribing in the next three months. Another 19% say they have “never subscribed.” When it comes to canceling pay TV services, millennials are pretty much in the average range, with 18% saying they have canceled a pay TV service -- the same percentage as those 30-49 (18%) and a bit more that those 50 and older (14%). Will millennials continue to take on pay TV? The report says they will, but it will be much more difficult than ever before. The study quotes a recent remark that Jeff Bewkes, chairman/CEO, said recently: “Once they take the mattress and and get it off the floor, that’s when they subscribe to TV.” The rise of digital media is one major reason that this job will be more challenging. Here are a few reasons: 71% say tweeting about an event “makes it more fun” and 70% "enjoy reading tweets while tracking a live event on TV.” The belief is that a passive television experience generates much lower interest among millennials. "Young couple watching TV" photo from Shutterstock.
Now, every Web site can be unique to the visitor. Dynamic Yield, an automated real-time content optimization engine, is launching a platform that gives online publishers the ability to give readers a personalized news experience. The process works by optimizing content in real-time to adapt to the specific needs of each visitor. Publishers, for instance, can test different factors that impact journalistic content -- such as headlines, photos, and location -- and automatically make adjustments in real time. Most personalization solutions, by contrast, are bound to a specific location on the page -- most often seen on publisher sites at the bottom of article pages and they operate as black boxes, taking the control away from the editors. This is why it’s extremely rare to see personalization solutions running on publishers' home pages. Dynamic Yield’s solution, on the other hand, leaves the control in the hands of the editors, yet fully automates the personalization process. It simply allows them to choose more options to show users. The sports editor, for instance, will choose 10 possible sports articles to show on the home page versus the four to five normally allocated for the sports section. Then, Dynamic Yield decides in real-time -- based on the historical preferences of the visitor -- how much ‘real-estate’ to allocate per topic for each specific visitor and what articles to show the visitor out of the article pool. It does this automatically, in real-time, resulting in a more relevant home page experience and higher article click-through-rates. "As the pressures on publishers increase every day -- delivering more relevant content and balancing it with monetization units -- the importance of extracting maximum value from each pixel of the screen overcomes the natural fear of change," says Liad Agmon, CEO of Dynamic Yield. Advertisers also benefit from Dynamic Yield's optimization engine. When running ad campaigns directly on third-party sites, for example, these advertisers can send a Dynamic Yield Smart Object rather than publisher's static images. This in turn allows them to personalize what the visitors would see as part of the campaign. Thus, if users previously visited the advertiser's site, they could be served with retargeted ads; at the same time, advertisers can tap into third-party data and target ads per gender, age group, location and even the weather at the ad viewer's location. There is a lot to optimize after the visitor clicks on an ad. Using Dynamic Yield's personalization engine, an advertiser can optimize in real-time where on their site the visitor will land, and what content to show that user in order to maximize the revenue yield. Generally, no opt-in is required for Dynamic Yield to work. Yet, several publishers have added a way for users to ‘reset’ the personalization settings. Still, Dynamic Yield says its major challenges thus far, as with any innovative technology, is to gain the ‘buy-in’ of the various stake holders in the organization, and to reduce the fear of losing control due to technology. Company executives decline to disclose current clients using its platform, preferring to say that they work with global retailers as well as B2B and B2C marketing companies, to optimize user conversion funnels, online merchandising and the sites’ experiences. The company was founded in 2012 and has raised $15M to date from the New York Times Company, ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLC and Innovation Endeavors.
A federal judge has authorized Path to appeal a pro-consumer ruling in a battle over an unsolicited invitation to join the service. “An immediate appeal may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation,” Judge Manish Shah in the Northern District of Illinois wrote in an order authorizing Path's appeal. The lawsuit dates to 2013, when Illinois resident Kevin Sterk alleged that he received a text message stating that another person -- Path user Elizabeth Howell -- wanted to show him photos on the service. The text also contained a link to a site where Sterk could register to join the mobile social networking service. Sterk, who is seeking class-action status, argued that Path violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending him the message. That law prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send SMS ads without the recipients' permission. Last year, Path asked U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan to throw out the case on the ground that its system doesn't use “automated dialers.” The company said its system only sends SMS messages to people whose phone numbers were provided by users. Path contended that “human intervention” -- users' uploading of their friends' numbers -- means its system isn't an automated dialer. Der-Yeghiayan ruled against Path, prompting the company to ask for permission to take an immediate appeal. Shah, who recently took over the case from Der-Yeghiayan, granted that motion on Friday. Shah said that an appellate ruling addressing the main contested question -- whether Path's system is an automated dialer -- could dispose of the lawsuit. “The course of the litigation depends on the interpretation of automatic telephone dialing system,” Shah wrote. Shah directed Path to apply for an appeal within 10 days to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. That court is then free to accept or reject the case. Path isn't the only company accused of trying to grow its network by spamming people. Lyft also was hit with a potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly running an “aggressive marketing campaign” that sends people unwanted SMS messages.That complaint, filed late last month by Washington state resident Kenneth Wright, centers on Lyft's “invite friends” program, which allows Lyft users to send SMS invitations to their contacts. Lyft and Wright have agreed to try and resolve their battle through mediation, according to papers filed late last week with U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman in the Western District of Washington.
Digital ad tech firm Centro this week will announce new and expanded partnerships with several of its publisher partners, including Disney/ABC Television Group, Emmis Communications, Lee Enterprises, Morris Publishing Group, The E.W. Scripps Company, The McClatchy Company, Tribune Company, Metro and others. Centro's new publisher clients include Disney/ABC Television Group and Metro. Existing clients are expanding their partnerships with Centro to use digital ad tech to grow local market business. Katie Risch, SVP of publisher development at Centro, told Real-Time Daily that Centro has offered publishers “extension” tools to help them manage their local businesses for three years on a managed service basis. Risch said the company is now letting publishers white-label a demand-side platform (DSP), which many are doing. Centro’s tech is being used in 160 local markets, according to Risch. One hundred of these markets are using it on a managed service basis and 60 markets are going the white-labeled DSP route. One of the publishers that is white-labeling the tech is ABC, but Centro would not disclose any others. (The DSP that is being white-labeled is SiteScout, which Centro acquired last year.) “Publishers are under-leveraging their greatest assets -- sales teams and in-market relationships,” said Risch. “The other under-leveraged piece is their first-party data. We see a lot of publishers not using their first-party data [to grow audiences].” It may seem backwards -- DSPs are for advertisers, so what are publishers doing with them? Essentially, the media holding companies are using Centro’s ad-buying platform to grow their audience in local markets. “Many of these partners are looking to bring programmatic capabilities in-house -- looking to build a publisher trading desk,” explained Risch. “They want to build digital extensions across exchanges to retarget their audiences or find new audiences.” Risch said she expect the white-labeled portion of the business to grow “at a rapid rate.” And while that growth does not necessarily have to come at the expense of the managed service side of its business, Risch acknowledged that Centro “could see some of [its] managed service partners get on the path to self-reliance.”
In its latest talent acquisition, Yahoo is buying mobile local search startup Zofari. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2012, the company makes the Zofari City Guides app for iOS, Android and the mobile Web, offering recommendations for local venues based on other places they like. Under the agreement, the start-up’s four-person team will join Yahoo Search. “Zofari and Yahoo share a common goal to make the world an easier place to explore for as many people as possible," read a Yahoo statement Tuesday. “Inspired by what Pandora has done for music and Netflix has done for movies, we built (what we think) is a beautiful and powerful recommendation app that allows users to discover new places based on the restaurants, bars and cafes they know and love,” explained a Zofari blog post announcing the Yahoo deal, reported earlier by TechCrunch. The Zofari iPhone app (all versions) had a 4.5-star rating in the App Store, but was based on only input from 14 reviewers, suggesting it hasn’t had a lot of traction to date. It has a 3.5-star rating in the Google Play store, based on 96 reviews. The company plans to maintain Zofari City Guides as a stand-alone app for now. The purchase continues Yahoo’s torrid pace of acquisitions under CEO Marissa Mayer, now approaching 40 since the start of last year. A good chunk have gone toward bolstering the Web giant’s mobile capabilities, including the purchase of app analytics and advertising firm Flurry last month. Bringing on the Zofari team could help Yahoo accelerate its expansion of mobile local search, which BIA/Kelsey has projected will be a $4.3 billion market this year, increasing to $10.9 billion in 2018. Yahoo earlier this year partnered with Yelp to increase market share of local queries on its search engine. The Zofari employees could also help Yahoo build a standalone local search and recommendations app that would compete with the likes of Yelp, Foursquare and YP as it expands its app portfolio. “We can't talk about what we're working on yet, but needless to say we are very, very excited,” stated the Zofari post.
The executive shuffle continues at kbs+. Industry veterans Dan Kelleher and Jonathan Mackler have been appointed co-Chief Creative Officers of kbs+ New York, effective August 13, 2014. In this new partnership, the two will work together closely to oversee all aspects of kbs’ creative work. Kelleher joins kbs+ following three years as Executive Creative Director at Grey Group, where he oversaw creative work for DirectTV and Ketel One Vodka. Mackler joins from Figliulo & Partners. Prior to that, he spent four years at TWBA\Chiat\Day, where as creative director he was responsible for global brands like Jameson and Skittles. Meanwhile kbs+ is promoting current President and co-CCO, Ed Brojerdi to CEO of kbs+ New York, effective September 1. In his new role, Brojerdi will oversee day-to-day operations for the agency’s New York office, reporting directly to Lori Senecal, chairman and global CEO of kbs+, who earlier this week took on the new holding company role of President, MDC Partner Network. Brojerdi will work to find new ways to continue kbs' record of inventive client work. Co-CCO Izzy Debellis will move on to a new opportunity outside of kbs+. These expanded leadership roles come amid momentum for the agency, including organic growth and several new account wins like TE Connectivity last month. Recently the shop bolstered its social media efforts with a new practice called Attention.
Many actors have found great success in both film and television, but few have accomplished more in both than Robin Williams. When most performers of his stature pass, one looks immediately to one’s favorite film or television critics and reporters to read their appreciations of the deceased. But the coverage of his shocking death by film and television journalists, many of whom had fond personal memories of their professional encounters with Williams, has straddled both media in a way that is at the very least uncommon. Does anyone not have strong, delightful memories of enjoying something that Williams did, on any number of different screens and stages (from intimate comedy clubs around the world to Broadway)? Think of the many nights at multiplexes we have all spent enjoying such now timeless filmed entertainment as “Popeye,” “The World According to Garp,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Dead Poets Society,” “The Birdcage,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Aladdin” and so many more, and the countless hours watching these movies over and over again as they cycled through VHS, DVD, pay cable, basic cable, broadcast syndication, streaming services, etc. Add to those the time spent watching his classic sitcom “Mork & Mindy” in first run and syndication, his many HBO specials (including the Comic Relief shows), his appearances on talk shows (especially the penultimate installment of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, when he joined Bette Midler in bidding Carson a heartfelt farewell) and most recently, his thoroughly engaging work on CBS’ under-appreciated “The Crazy Ones,” a uniquely entertaining sitcom that was cancelled too soon. I might have years added to my life if I were given back all the time I spent enjoying Williams’ work. But I don’t think I would make the trade. Isn’t the point of life to enjoy it as best you can? Williams’ contributions to all of our lives were outstanding in that capacity. I can’t imagine the last 40 years without him in them. I first became aware of Williams when he appeared in a bizarre guest role in 1978 as the alien Mork from Ork on “Happy Days,” then one of the highest-rated series on broadcast television. It had been the No. 1 show during much of the late ‘70s in that amazing period when ABC unexpectedly unseated longtime champion CBS as the most watched of the Big Three networks. ABC accomplished this with great popcorn-type shows including “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Three’s Company,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Eight is Enough,” “Starsky & Hutch” and “Donny & Marie.” I remember thinking at the time that it was idiotic to have an alien appear on an episode of “Happy Days,” which was supposed to be a nostalgic comedy grounded in something resembling real life. Even if it occasionally went off the rails (like when Fonzie infamously jumped over that shark on his motorcycle) it never really went too far. And it never veered into science-fiction or the supernatural. But Williams was so damn funny this apparent mishandling of the beloved “Happy Days” franchise was easily forgiven. Williams was so sensational on “Happy Days” that ABC immediately ordered up a spinoff, “Mork & Mindy,” which instantly propelled his career into the stratosphere. In what must now be considered a profound full-circle moment, his “Mork” co-star Pam Dawber appeared in a guest role earlier this year on Williams’ last television effort, “The Crazy Ones.” I have my own full circle story with Williams. I met him way back in the late ‘80s when I was working as a publicist for a home video company that released many of his HBO comedies on VHS (then still an exciting new medium). I remember him being very gracious even to underlings such as myself. (Billy Crystal, whose HBO comedies also were released on our label, was similarly pleasant.) Williams and I never again crossed paths until 8 months ago during a set visit to “The Crazy Ones” that was part of the Winter 2014 Television Critics Association tour. After the formal press conference with the cast, I approached executive producer David E. Kelley with a question about the show’s one-of-a-kind set design. (It featured a breathtaking recreation of the Chicago skyline.) Kelley answered the question; Williams, who was seated just a few feet away, leaned in with a predictably humorous comment or two of his own. So that’s not much, but it’s something. Still, my thoughts today are about all the time I spent enjoying his work as a fan and what it has meant to me throughout the timeline of my life. Millions of people around the world are currently doing the same. What an extraordinary legacy.
The 2007 introduction of the iPhone and other devices with miniature video screens set off one of those periodic mob frenzies that hasn’t quite abated yet. With the growing popularity of these devices, media companies found that if they wanted to keep reporters and financial analysts off their backs, they had to articulate some kind of “mobile strategy.” Given what had happened to other content providers – especially music and publishing – the creation of these strategies became a reassuring talking point for earnings calls and major company profiles. But once again, even with all this wheel-spinning on mobile strategies, TV has proven to be different from the other content businesses. Smartphones and other digital media may have brought the magazine business to its knees, forced the music business to change its business model and transformed book publishing, but it barely made a dent in TV viewing. In fact, in the years since the introduction of smartphones, the viewing of traditional TV has actually risen. For all the anxiety about mobile, here are the facts, according to Nielsen’s Cross-Platform Report: during the course of a week, the average adult watches 37 hours of TV, an hour and a half of Internet video and NINE MINUTES of video on a smartphone. This mobile number would undoubtedly be higher if video viewing on tablets were added in, but any way you look at it, traditional TV dwarfs mobile viewing. This should not be a surprise. TV is the ultimate “lean back” experience. You want to relax when you watch TV, but there’s nothing particularly relaxing about hunching over the smartphone you’re cradling in your lap. You need to be hyper-engaged to commit to mobile viewing: maybe it’s a sporting event you really care about, a favorite TV show you missed or a super-important news event. But to sit there night after night and watch “Jeopardy,” “Top Chef” or an “Everybody Loves Raymond” rerun? I don’t think so. Here’s the thing about the mobile revolution: It has significantly degraded the quality of every medium it’s touched. The ultimate goal of recorded music used to be the purest possible representation of the artists’ work; now most people listen to music through cheap ear buds or on tinny speakers. News used to be delivered through thoughtful, carefully reported stories; now it’s chopped into bits and bytes that can be quickly scrolled through on a tiny screen. Magazine reading used to be a languid, idea-absorbing experience; now it’s swipe, swipe, swipe, as little blocks of type fly by. The TV experience is similarly cheapened by watching it on a tiny screen. What’s the point of creating the immersive video experience that HBO provides with “Game of Thrones” or “True Detective” if you literally can’t see all the details on the screen? Fortunately for the media companies, people seem to prefer to watch TV the old-fashioned way, on a bigger TV monitor. Consequently it appears that mobile TV viewing is actually additive to traditional TV viewing: If a viewer wants to watch TVm he or she will probably choose the biggest screen possible, resorting to a smartphone only if there’s no other option. At least the TV industry better hope that’s the way it turns out, because if TV viewing does begin to migrate to the tiny screen, that will be really bad news for content producers. Two-thirds of spending on mobile advertising is claimed by Google and Facebook, with the rest of the Internet fighting over the scraps. Rates for a brand ad on a mobile TV show are a fraction of what they are on a prime-time show. And there have to be fewer of them, because mobile viewers won’t stand for a two-and-a-half-minute commercial pod; a 30-second ad that seems perfectly fine on TV is interminable on my Droid. Rates are lower because consumer engagement for those tiny little brand ads is lower too. In fact, although I can’t prove it yet by scientific research, it’s possible that a video ad on a mobile platform might end up causing a brand more harm than good. Based on a small sample of one (i.e., myself), I think that consumers resent mobile ads more than they do TV ads. Maybe it’s because mobile ads are so new, or maybe it’s because so many of them are just repurposed TV ads, but they seem more intrusive and annoying than the ads that appear on TV. Bottom line: I think we can probably relax about mobile video. The smartphone is turning out to be one of those technologies – like DVRs and the Internet – that was going to change the very nature of television; but it turns out that it’s actually a complement to the seven-decade-old habit of watching video on a stationary television screen. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.