I’ve long held that the barrier to T/V (Television/Video) advertisers getting ads seen is not consumer ad avoidance, but rather interruption avoidance.
HitBliss, a new service in
private beta trial right now, has addressed this problem by giving the media consumer a way to avoid interruption but not advertising (a la iTunes) or watching ads of their choice in a time of their
choosing.
Co-founder Sharon Peyer spoke at MediaPost’s recent Video Insider Summi, and I asked her about HitBliss' challenges, successes and lessons in the first two months. Here’s
what I learned:
Why is HitBliss necessary?
Current digital models don’t address the reality that
1) Viewers don’t want intrusive, interruptive ads
2) Publishers aren’t making enough on the ads that run
HitBliss proves that consumer content has value by inviting the viewer to share in the cost through verified attention to ads or
by paying cash. It produces a quid-pro-quo exchange for content.
In earning money that can be used to purchase content by viewing ads, viewers must click on “prompts” as they play to insure they are really watching. Advertising waste is eliminated, and
consumers no longer need to be bombarded with ads that will never be seen and subsequently trained to avoid ad interruptions at all costs.
Biggest challenge?
This concept
doesn’t fit into current channels of ad buying. There is an educational effort needed for buyers to understand the benefits of unbundling content from advertising and asking the consumer to
willingly participate in paying for content with their attention or money. HitBliss’ buying console allows advertisers/agencies to place auction-based, audience-targeted buys -- much like
search, but unusual for T/V.
What will HitBliss be down the road?
A payment platform that does not just deliver ads, but gathers real money to pay for a variety of content in
two ways:
1) Advertisers paying to reach defined audiences with little/no waste
2) Viewers paying cash if they don’t want advertising
While premium T/V and movies
are the “beachhead” content for now, in the future HitBliss can be used by any company that wants to monetize content: gaming sites, text-based articles behind pay-walls, music sites,
subscription media platforms and even VOD for cable and satellite systems.
What has HitBliss learned so far?
Consumers respond favorably to the idea that they have control
over their ad experience and their privacy settings. Third-party research for one campaign showed 85% of surveyed viewers found the experience a positive one. Attentiveness measures are 4x
non-HitBliss models. Comments from users included a statement that this model wasn’t advertising, because it helped make the browser experience more productive. (I guess advertising is seen by
that respondent as nonproductive). Ad completion rates are far higher than pre-roll.
Closing thoughts
I really like this approach. It does two things that fix the
current paradigm of ad-supported T/V which I see as a broken cat-and-mouse game where disengaged eyeballs are chased by way-too-many interruptive messages.
1) It separates
content from ad support. Who says that ad viewing needs to be adjacent to content? That was necessary when program demographics were a surrogate for ad viewing targets. Now with behavioral and
addressable targeting technology available, why not let self-identified viewers earn their uninterrupted T/V viewing by choice when and where it is most convenient for them?
2) It provides never-before-seen levels of transparency for all parties. Consumers have control over which ads they see when and where, and what information can
be used for advertiser targeting. This is presented in an easy-to-manage way (unlike Facebook, where privacy confusion is a pathway to “retention”). Advertisers know which ads are
requested and completed, paying only for tracked and reported engagement (the ads pause when volume is too low, when prompts aren’t responded to and when other documents are opened over the
HitBliss page).
Fresh new thinking like HitBliss is inspiring, and provides hope that better ad-supported T/V models will arrive in the not-too-distant future.