Hey Bud.TV, you’ve got to syndicate
May 30th, 2007 | Posted by Todd Boes
The WSJ ran a story today about the woes of Bud.TV and explained that instead of scrapping the project, Anheuser-Busch will instead give the web channel another try by making its content “edgier”.
The article reminds us of the good ole days with Bud hits such as Louie the Lizard and the “Whassup?” commercials. But Anheuser’s stumbles over Bud.TV speak to the difficulty that non-Web-based businesses have in driving traffic to their Web sites.
The more important reminder of the article comes from Joe Laszlo, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research who says…”You have to syndicate your videos across multiple sites; it’s key if you want to grow an audience over time.”
Anheuser says it will make a big push to get bloggers to talk about the programs the site offers - and I would if I could, I couldn’t get in to the site. I was asked to fill out a form and I’d get access in 2 days. Am I’m definitely older than 21.
Internet Advertising Hits a Record Close According to the IAB
May 23rd, 2007 | Posted by Todd Boes
The IAB issued a report today with some very interesting internet advertising revenue statistics. It’s definitely worth the read. A couple of things that are worth pointing out…
According to Randall Rothenberg, the President and CEO of the IAB…“Interactive advertising revenues continue to show solid growth as advertisers and agencies recognize that it is a medium that can uniquely affect consumer behavior from product awareness, to purchase intent, to actual purchase and then brand loyalty. We have every confidence that this growth trend will continue as marketers allocate more of their total marketing dollars to interactive and the industry delivers effective and innovative platforms for connecting with consumers.”
Scroll down the report to check out the initial year growth comparisons for internet advertising vs. broadcast and cable television, for their first 12 years.
I would agree with David Silverman, partner, Assurance with Pricewaterhouse Coopers who says in this report that…“The continuing strong growth of interactive advertising as evidenced by the full year 2006 survey results proves the importance of this medium to all types of marketers.”
Video Dead-Enders
May 14th, 2007 | Posted by Patrick O'Connor
James McQuivey’s latest Forrester report declares paid video download a “dead end” in favor of ad-supported models. It is pretty clear that ad-supported video predominates now and paid download has a significant number of hurdles to overcome including business as well as technical, but ultimately he overstates the long term prospects for paid video download.
The paid audio download business is not the success that the average iPod user believes given that Apple has sold just 20 iTunes songs for each iPod sold meaning that the majority of iPods hold music ripped from CDs or obtained from illegal file sharing sources. But at least the audio paid download business has the critical mass of hardware to be able to succeed. iTV and video download can not even get off the ground right now since ripping DVDs is substantially harder than ripping CDs (and no doubt the average number of DVDs per user being lower than CDs) and illegal video file sharing sources much less trafficked.
Eventually though, the desire to own video free from ads will take hold for online distribution. No one watches movies on free TV any longer opting instead for DVD rental, premium cable, and cable PPV. The means of distribution will not change the basic fact about how people want to watch.
Skipping ads watching on-demand, or not?
May 8th, 2007 | Posted by Todd Boes
ESPN and ABC have teamed up with Cox to deliver football games and select ABC series on-demand with mandatory commercial viewing. Isn’t one of the reasons viewers embrace on-demand is because they don’t have to watch the commercials?
Today’s Multichannel News article explained that Cox will disable the fast-forward option in what’s being called an “on-demand trial” for access to ESPN and ABC’s content and the test is expected to roll into additional markets.
While online…ABC.com’s broadband media player will be syndicated to Cox.net but the information about the ad platforms that will be used is not yet known. It’s sure to be a platform that requires viewing.
It seems that advertisers are growing more demanding about their ads being watched, even in this on-demand world.
Speaking of measuring viewership of ads…
May 4th, 2007 | Posted by Patrick O'Connor
Our friends at Lost Remote blogged this week about YouTube rolling out video ads saying…”jamming a 10-second ad into most user-video clips would be a big turn-off”. For YouTube’s content, I tend to agree. Further to that, how would YouTube know where to incorporate the ads, at what spot in the video? And what about which ads to associate with which clips?
YouTube is going to have to closely measure the viewership of their videos in order to satisfy both their viewers and their advertisers. A 10 second pre-roll in front of a 1 minute clip is not going to be watched. And they need to have a system in place that determines which ads goes with which video…it doesn’t seem as if a Clairol ad would fit well in the middle of the Pour Quoi video, does it?
