Commentary
The Evolution Will Not Be Televised
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, April 7, 2013
HitBliss' Sharon Peyer expanded on and modified her view of the ad-supported model of over-the-top television. For one thing, she says it will take awhile for functional business
models to emerge.
“This is an evolution. It’s not a revolution,” she said, adding however, “I think the consumer is driving it all.”
She acknowledged that the ad-supported content model is the “dustiest” one that’s out there, but she asserted that “advertisers don’t pay content
owners enough to cover the price of their content.” Put aside the fact that advertising may not necessarily need to do that, given the other ways that content owners can monetize their
content,” she makes a good point that the implied value exchange among consumers, advertisers and content owners may be broken -- because technology is enabling consumers to bypass what they
don’t want to see.
“The consumer never wanted to be interrupted when they are watching premium content,” she said, citing pre-roll in movie theaters,
etc. That said, premium is in the eye in the eye of the beholder, right? It’s premium if I pay for it, but is it premium if I agree to look at ads and earn points to pay for it vis a vis
Peyer’s HitBliss Earn model? I think it’s semantics, frankly. It all comes down to user, advertiser and content owner expectations.
That said, Peyer believes
the new over-the-top TV advertising exposure model will work better than the old one -- conventional TV ads -- because of the ability of online ads to track and target individuals.
Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
