Commentary
Two Weeks Later, Content Still Matters
- by Josh Chasin , Op-Ed Contributor, April 30, 2009
I got more responses to that column -- both in the comments section and directly via email -- than I have for anything I've written here in MediaPost. Clearly the topic hits a nerve. Check out the comments (link above) -- 23 of 'em, some agreeing, some disagreeing, all lively.
Here's some of what I've heard.
My friend Steven Armour from Café Mom reminded me of some work the Online Publishers Association has done on the topic. John Dietz of Adometry pointed me to the latest findings of the OPA's work, which are here.
Kevin Smith of Edmunds.com shared this anecdote with me: "I've always remembered an interesting reader survey result shortly after we launched Automobile Magazine in 1986. We were striving for a more graphically compelling and literate environment compared to the typical car magazine of the time, and I was struck when many early readers noted how much better the ads were in our book. They were, of course, the exact same ads running in Car and Driver and Road & Track, but something about the context made them seem better."
Several people mentioned the recent work that Scott McDonald of Conde Nast and Rebecca McPheeters of McPheeters & Company presented at the ARF's re:think conference in April. This research ("Opportunities to Influence: Increasing Ad Impact in a Multi-Platform World") deals more with cross-media comparisons of ad recall, and shows that individual ad recall online lags behind that for TV and magazines. However, the implication of these findings for online advertising is that increasing allocated screen real estate should increase ad recall -- for example, page takeovers and commercials in full-screen online video. I believe that ultimately these types of creative executions will reinforce the value of quality content sites, because the benefits of vehicle engagement will invariably lend themselves to ad engagement (and you'll have to work directly with the publisher to take over the home page.)
Kathleen Ramirez from Fahlgren noted (and I'm editing her post to the comments section, you should read the whole thing): "It is important to recognize that today's really good advertising is built on trust building content... Advertising has real power to start a discussion, but it's the opinions, friendships, tweets and connections of people that will ultimately help complete a marketing journey." Nicely put.
There is also a flavor of a generational divide. Younger, new-media types -- people who have grown up professionally in the digital age -- are more likely to express the opinion that, and I'm paraphrasing here, the media content business is much like the music business; consumers expect to get it on demand and for free, and to believe otherwise is 20th century thinking. To which my response is, content has been free for almost 100 years, since the advent of radio. It is the sale of advertising that enables free content, and thus meets the expectations of today's digital consumer. No question advertising has to adapt -- shout less, please more, deliver relevance -- but if content wants to be free, advertising wants to make it so. The disintermediation of the provider of differentiated content in the buying and selling of advertising ends up providing the consumer with less content, less free content, less quality content.
This has been a great conversation. I'm sure I'll come back to this topic again. In the meantime, what's on your mind?
At NAB last week in Vegas, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a breakout session with Deloitte's Ed Moran, Discovery's Doug Craig (Sr VP, Programming, Digital Media), Sun's Darrell Jordan-Smith (VP, Global Communications and Media Practice), CBS's John Nogawaki (President, TV Distribution) and 20th Century Fox TV's Mark Pearson (Sr VP, Brand Management & Strategy).
The discussion centered on the transformation of the entertainment business due to digitization, and the implications of Deloitte's recent study of media consumption habits and preferences. Some of the basics and link to the study are here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=87371834480&ref=mf
Or directly: www.deloitte.com/us/realitycheck
Some key insights:
> The sky's not falling; TV (the leading content creation and ad revenue making force, aka, "The Mother Ship") is and has been working hard to protect and build its existing revenue streams (via distribution and ad revenues), and is working to build new streams online. Its metrics are established and accepted. And people are watching a ton of TV these days, thanks to the recession.
> Millenials, Xers, Boomers and Matures all have different habits and preferences as far as content and consumption. And: Millenials have been given too much focus; Millenials may be 'the future', but as it relates to content + advertising now, Baby Boomers (largely) have more money and are proving to be very adaptable for wider content digestion. (See also recent NYTimes article, April, saying in effect: the 18-34 age group overfocus is now bullshit).
> The digital space is still an infant, still building and needs new business models, and while Blizzard.com and Hulu.com show promise for successfully monetizing content distribution, ad, and subscription fees, these are small relative to "The Mother Ship", and far less proven over time.
> The future play is to move all CONTENT management (including MyPreferences for fees, etc -- view/ rent/ purchase/ free with ads/no ads...) to ONE screen -- the larger screen, TV -- for digestion and management, with the computer and phone as adjunct delivery/watch tools. The number of these vehicles is expected to grow (ie, Kindle, etc...) Flash chips and direct broadband pipe links are already standard issue on many new flatscreens -- the merger of TV with computer WILL more fully happen, just slower due to the recession (2011-2012 was the prediction).
> Social media tools by comparison are like the wild west -- mostly unmonetized and largely unproven, but as they relate to "The Mother Ship", are used by the content producers themselves to support "recommendation" and "discovery" (When asked how people make decisions on content, sites and choices, 65% of the 9000 people polled globally said, "My friends and family, often through social media.").
> the Deloitte poll asked a lot of well-phrased questions, and "confirmed" that the majority of Americans prefer, want and interact with "professionally-produced" content. Despite the swamping deluge of self-designated producers and publishers (now known as "Uppers" -- user-publishers of content -- and only about 6% of those polled actually now make any minor money creating and publishing their own content.)
I wish you could've been there, Josh. I actually spoke with John Marino, the VP of Science and Tecnology for NAB and mentioned that MediaPost and you would have been important invites to this party -- jmarion@nab.org
Paul
paulvanwinkle6@yahoo.com
A great follow-up piece Josh, and while I'm at it, thanks for the insights from NAB Paul. In both cases I couldn't agree more.
One thing that you mentioned Josh that slightly jarred on me was the comment that larger on-line display ads, maybe even screen take-overs, should increase ad recall.
Now based on a sample of one (i.e. me - which no good statistician should ever do, but hey we all have thoughts and opinions), I suspect that this extrapolation of McDonald and McPheeters work may backfire.
In a magazine-reading situation, we (i) expect ads (ii) expect full-page ads (iii) expect maybe even 40% of the book to be as ... but importantly we can simply turn the page in a matter of tenths of a second. Even more importantly our mind and mood is VERY different. Magazines tend to be a relaxation or 'time-out' activity. There is no 'pressure' on our time from the ads - again, simply turn the page.
In a television-viewing situation, we (i) expect ads, (ii) always get full-screen ads, (iii) know that we will get around 25% ads - here in Australia it is capped at 12 minutes per hour ... but can't turn the page but we can flick the channel using the remote. Again, importantly, our mind and mood is in relaxation and 'time-out' mode - we've plonked ourselves in front of the TV for an hour to watch our favourite show.
The mindset on-line is very different. It is all about instant gratification. One only has to type say "Josh Chasin" in to Google to see that there are about 46,400 matches in 0.23 seconds. Google (and others) pride themselves on their speed. When I click on the top link (and Josh I notice an opportunity for a bit of SEO there ... hehehe) it takes 2-3 seconds for the Comscore page to render which compared to Google seemed an eternity. The key difference is that I wanted to know about my search "now", the online world is a world of instant demand and an expectation of instant gratification. Speed is part of the ethos. Who doesn't want 100Gb broadband to get that page rendered even faster.
Therefore, I expect that full-page takeovers for, say, even a short-form ad of 10 seconds duration would soon prove to be an 'interminable wait' keeping me from the search result that I am really after. While I agee that physiologically and psychologically brand awareness would in all probability increase, I'm also willing to bet that brand resentment would also increase. Brand awareness is not always a good thing - Hitler still has pretty good brand awareness but fortunately very few people are 'buying' fascisim and its genocide these days!
My home page here in Australia (Ninemsn) is regularly (maybe once a day a fortnight) taken over by ads that consumer probably 75% of the screen as they "roll over" the content that I have come to see - the news! I scramble quickly to find the "Close" button which is generally hidden in four-point somewhere obtuse on the screen. These are generally 'event ads' such as movie releases, but everyone I have spoken to simply hate the fact that their screen real estate has been hi-jacked! Some friends even said they would deliberately boycott the movie!
I wonder what others think? Is my sample of one off kilter? Does anyone else think that full-screen ads in the on-line world are contrary to the ethos of 'maximum fulfillment in the shortest time possible'?
John Grono, GAP Research, Sydney Australia
Thanks for the reference to OPA's research in this area. We're targeting late June to release the next wave of this study, as we track ad effectiveness over time on content sites, portals, ad networks and online in the aggregate through Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms. What's been most interesting in the early stage trending has been online ad effectiveness' decline over time on portals, networks and online overall -- but increasing on content sites. Only time will tell if and how long this trend continues.
Per Kathleen Ramirez's trust comment, I'd also note that in separate research we've done, our local online study, we find that the local sites most trusted by consumers for their local coverage also are most likely to have their advertisers trusted - so a media brand halo effect at work here.
Thanks again for a great, timely topic. Look forward to future discussions.