Where are the ad dollars that are bleeding out of television going? This amazing marketing ploy for Heineken took a lot of planning and work, but you can see at the end how they are building the business case for it. Although only about a thousand people were part of the actually event, thousands more watched the videos or read about it on blogs.
Is this the way that brands will promote themselves in the future? With big events that give people a real life experience?
Was this an entertainment experience? Should we as creators be thinking about how to create real life experiences that brands can be part of or is this just the realm of advertising?
Over at in shot, there's a post on why TV must change its revenue model -- and fast.
Broadcast television is about to be turned on its head. While many media proprietors (including free-to-air, pay-tv, cable and satellite operators) are still breathing a sigh of relief from the costs to switch to digital, the real battle for supremacy has only just begun.
At stake, is control of the entire television advertising business model, worth globally in hundreds of billions of dollars. With it, is control of the global television syndication and distribution business as we know it.
The problem lies in the ad spot.
The problem with television is that it has not changed its engine in more than fifty years. What started out as shows brought to you by, resulted in the highly successful, albeit conventional 30-second spot commercial.
The spot is stale and completely out of date in an on-demand world. If television continues with it, it risks alienating audiences even further, who have all but grown accustom to personalising their viewing habits and time shifting their favourite television programs, all thanks to a device called TiVo. Moreover, if television fails to ignore the fundamental audience shift away from advertising interruption to one of invitation, then it will surely risk the very livelihood of its own industry at its own peril.
Brand integration is no solution. Consider if you will, the typical hour of tv. How many ads are there? At least 10. Do you want to write 10 products into your episode? What kind of a nightmare would that be?
So what are the solutions? The in shot piece, suggests a few that can overlay onto the story-viewing experience without interrupting it. Widgets and technology will allow viewers to click on parts of the screen and "pull" in information about products and services. This is the "click on the character's dress and a new browser tab opens with the shopping information" idea.
Also coming is more Social TV; television events that we can share. Socializing TV isn't new. It's throwing an Oscar party or joining live a Twitter conversation while watching the Olympics. Advertisers and marketers will be looking for ways to share their messages with the communities that form around social tv events.
While these are solutions that will help to monetize television content, they can be done without the networks. Nor do internet ready TVs which can get content direct from the web without any network involvement at all. Some of the TV makers seem to be moving into the content creation business.
In fact, Ridley Scott Associates' new series Parallel Lines is produced by Philip's Cinema TV. Neat premise: five directors make films in five different genres using the same dialogue. Here's a trailer:
I often call Hailey Hacks my experiment in revenue models. I have used the project to explore different ways of monetizing online projects and will continue try different things with it.
When I uploaded the current crop of episodes to blip.tv, I decided to try turning on the ads. I haven't turned on pre-roll yet. That's clearly where the most money is, but a pre-roll, as the name indicates, runs before the video and I feel it's too intrusive. I think it dillutes the user experience. I know that I hate when there's an ad before the video I'm trying to watch, so I decided not to inflict that on my viewers.
I did turn on overlays and post-roll. Post-roll runs after the video and I'm pretty sure no one sticks around for it, even though if you did, I might make fractions of a penny and if you really loved me you would. Overlays are the ads that sit at the bottom of the screen over top of the video. They have a button on them so you can make them disappear if they interfer with your viewing pleasure.
The revenue from these ads is dependent on a number of factors including how many people watch, how long they watch and where they are. Is it lucrative? No. I haven't made enough money to go to Starbucks yet.
And for not-the-price-of-a-cup-of-coffee, who's advertising on Hailey Hacks?
And here's a live one, who knows what ad will come up next:
A number of prominent film festivals are running "make-an-ad-for-a global-brand" competitions. The project is an initiative of MOFILM who describe themselves as follows:
MOFILM is a privately funded company with offices in Manchester, London and San Francisco. Started as an artistic project in early 2007 with the Sundance Institute and GSM Association, MOFILM has grown into a global community of filmmakers working with world-leading brands and distributing content to much of the globe. MOFILM has pioneered 'made-for-mobile' content working with leading filmmakers such as Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, Isabella Rossellini and Spike Lee to highlight and champion talented MOFILMers from around the world. MOFILM also run the world's largest mobile film festival in Barcelona, Spain once a year in conjunction with the GSM Association, as well as working with leading film festivals, including Shanghai, Cannes, Sundance, Locarno and London.
MOFILM's mission is to allow creative people from anywhere in the world and with any background to 'Get Creative - Get Noticed and Get Famous!' using the MOFILM platform as a base to run 'Make and Ad' and film competitions to showcase talent. Currently MOFILM works with mobile operators in over 50 countries around the world to distribute content to mobile from within the MOFILM community, sharing any revenue 50/50 with filmmakers.
The Barcelona and Tribeca Film Festivals have upcoming competitions. London had one in 2009 and you can see the winners work on the site -- they definitely feel like ads, but they are pretty good. There's also a Pepsi Short Film Competition (download the brief if you're interested) and an American Idol/Warmart video competition (among the prizes, a $5000 Walmart gift card and the chance to "Attend Walmart Saturday morning meeting").
What do you think? Are you grabbing your camera and shooting for fame and fortune? Or do you need a contract before you start work?
Def watch Socialnomics ROI which I embedded in the post before this one. Once you've done that, we may as well look at the other video from the same source.
You may have seen the Social Media Revolution. It has nearly a million hits on YouTube. I'm posting the shorter, less seen version here:
She starts by talking about some the problems with the ad-supported model that many of us hope will work as well with digital as it has with television. Shapiro points out that the digital space is unlike any other media channel:
[The internet] disrupted the basic laws of supply and demand. Before the web, content was a tightly controlled and distributed commodity -- a limited amount of content was distributed through highly controlled and limited channels. This was the ultimate "push" model.
The internet was the game changer because it is one big "pull" engine -- users pulling what they wanted, when they wanted it: services, connectivity and, yes, content. The tight control the media industry had on content was gone forever. Users could access content from a wider variety of sources and anyone could create content and distribute it at will.
This massive change has hit a lot of industries hard, particularly music and print. Now it's catching up with the film and tv industry. To survive we're going to have to figure out how to monetize and that, according to Shapiro requires a shift in thinking. Push is over, pull is the new black.
She believes that content creates community and community is what you can monetize.
This is the magic moment when content can begin to drive revenue because once you have the audience -- thanks to your content -- you have the mechanism to create compelling community experiences. The benefit of a community is that this shifts users' loyalty from just your content, available in lots of online places, to your site because of the community. The revenue possibilities expand as your community creates the all-important "sticky" user experience.
Successful communities utilize all the new social-networking tools and technology to create vibrant user interactions. They introduce technology that lets members engage in real time with each other, they permit many forms of self-broadcasting and publishing, and they provide a platform for members to connect around a shared passion or issue.
Ignite passion in your community and the content monetization engine begins to stir.
Once you have a community, you can offer services and products and maybe see some increased ad revenues. Sounds a little like kids tv, doesn't it? Essentially you give away the series in order to sell the toys and lunch boxes. Shapiro's examples are TechCrunch, Huffington Post and Mashable.
From Ad Age's Viral Video Chart, the top "viral" ad videos for the week come from Evian, Volkswagen, DC Shoes and Shake Weight. The Evian spot is part of the Live Young campaign and has 1346480 hits this week:
We've all seen Volkswagen's Fun Theory campaign with the piano staircase as evidenced by its 1319546 views for the week.
DC Shoes' Ken Block's Gymkhana Two Project isn't as well known with only 557,610 views. It's really long at seven and a half minutes.
Also on this week's list are two vids from Shake Weight, one coming in with 468,168 views and the other with 423,168 views. These two hardly fit our expectations from what we think of as viral video. They're classic late-night-style infomercials. I can only assume that there are a lot of people out there watching them for the shirtless men and the camp factor. ("Scientific studies at a prestigious California university..."!)
Yesterday at NextMEDIA, Richard Kanee of CTV Digital moderated a Producers Workshop with Patrick Crowe of Xenophile, Jason Chaney of Corus and Greg Goodfried of LonelyGirl15 fame. a lot of practical how-to came out of the session.
Goodfried said that their pattern is to put out content on a daily basis -- although not video content every day. He has a weekly "call to action"; an invitation to his audience to participate. His stories include puzzles to be solved collaborately by the community that has formed around the drama.
His audience wants to help the characters and share and interact with each other. He sees little difference between game play and story telling. Another technique he uses for keeping his audience engaged is by sending them prizes or having a character give a "shout out" to user who solved a puzzle.
Patrick Crowe talked about the need for content of different levels and complexity. You'll have rabid fans who'll solve your most difficult puzzles in 20 minutes -- but the same puzzle will frustrate more casual users. And then there's the 90% of users who are lurkers and won't participate at all. You want to keep all of them engaged so you should provide a variety of ways for them to interact.
Crowe has developed a number of web properties for TV series including Regenesis. One strategy he's used is to create a story that runs in parallel to the television story -- something loosely related. He admits that isn't always satisfying for the TV fans who come to the web in search of the familiar characters.
Goodfried talked about interfictive -- interacting with the story. But he warned that it isn't always a good idea to let the audience drive the plot. He recalls spending hours reading user forums and then basing plot lines on the ideas and theories generated there. Pretty soon, users were commenting on the new direction of the drama saying it sucked and wondering what had happened to their storytelling.
Goodfried advised content producers that you have to be an ad agency too. You need a sales force working for you. He isn't certain that product integration is a sustainable model and hopes that the web equivalent of the 30 second ad is coming.
He tells producers to keep their costs as low as possible and get some content up on the web, building an audience. How long will it take to build that audience? He thinks a good 6 months of daily content should get you where you want to go.
Scribemedia has a video of Jordan Hoffner, Director of Content Partnerships at YouTube, discussing some of the challenges of online video advertising at Streaming Media West 2008. According to Hoffner, video viewing online has come of age, but advertising spending isn't proportional to the traffic. Why? He has a theory:
monetization = standardization + innovation
A very interesting talk and excellent preparation for Hoffner's session at NextMedia. (He speaks Tuesday, Nov 18 at 11:20.) Ironically, the video isn't embeddable... or on YouTube. You'll have to go to Scribemedia to watch it.
Online advertising is a big business. The evidence:
AdTech is a massive conference -- the New York version last week was at the Hilton on Avenue of Americas. The exhibition hall took up thousands of square feet on three floors and it was packed full of people. Inside there, you would never have imagined that there was an economic melt down outside.
AdTech New York is only one of many AdTech conferences taking place during the year. They are also held monthly March to November rotating through an impressive list of cities: San Francisco, Sydney, Paris, Miami, Singapore, Tokyo and London. Not only is this big business, it's international.
Despite the fact that Google Ads seem to dominate the market, there are 350 ad networks. That's a big marketplace -- sustaining giants like Google ads and hundreds of others.
$25 billion was spend on digital ads this year.
The speakers at AdTech -- in fact everyone I've spoken to in the ad and marketing world -- is expecting spending on print and conventional media to shrink. But they all expect the digital spend to continue to grow.
Unilever spends 2% of $2.2 billion ad budget on digital.
The big brands are doing very cool things in the digital space.
Japanese clothing company Qlo has the very strange and cool Uniqlock.
Companies like Unilever, Kraft, Saturn, IKEA and MacDonalds are running digital campaigns with such things as web series, casual games, utilities and ARGs.
Representatives from the brands and their agencies say they are looking for the innovative and new.
Digital marketing is proving successful:
The Uniqlock has had 180 million viewers in 240 countries.
The diamond Shreddies campaign claims 800000 views for their videos on YouTube.
Many feel Obama's use of the digital space had a huge impact on his campaign. In fact, he is AdAge's marketer of the year. His Yes We Can video shows 13 million views on YouTube alone. He has a 125,000 followers on Twitter and a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Digg and LinkedIn and many more.
Great venue -- Bar Italia. A good collection of people. And fantastic content.
If you were at #mdm07 in Toronto, you know the big disappointment (besides the fact there was no heat) was the fact that the ad world was missing. All the talk was about branding, yet virtually no one representing that side of things was there.
Besides drinks and raw veggies, last night's event featured a Q&A with three reps from strategic media agencyPHd. They talked a lot about how they bring brand messages to the digital space and what's important to them.
If you're asking the monetizing questions, this was a great discussion to be part of.
In a nutshell, Caroline Moul and her co-workers are very interested in bringing their clients into the digital space. In fact, if they had their way, it would be part of every campaign. In the current economy, they expect spending to drop off in every other area. But digital? They expect that to grow.
They think it's the best way to reach an 18 to 34 demographic.
They love video, mobile, product integration and leveraging local talent.
They say they're always looking for new ideas and that they'd like to be involved as early as possible.
It was a nuts and bolts discussion and the PHd folk were open, frank and offered incredible insight into how they work and think.
New TeeVee has a must-read article on the forecast for online video revenues. Yes, ad spend is expected to grow sharply over the next four years, but not as sharply as previously expected:
...while video will probably continue to be a bright spot of growth in a dull economy, that’s mostly because it’s just getting started. The reality is revenues will be close to nothing for a long time, and the growing number of tech entrepreneurs and creative types in the space should probably be worried that industry watchers are now cutting their expectations for growth in online video revenues based on factors other than the shaky U.S. economy.
eMarketer … back in August chopped its estimate for 2008 U.S. video ad revenue by more than half, to $505 million from $1.3 billion. That’s a pretty significant downgrade more than halfway into the year, though eMarketer warned it was “more a change of methodology than of perspective.” But even with the methodology revision, eMarketer is forecasting growth to start declining after 2012.
Peak Freans is sponsoring a web drama series to promote one of their lines of cookies to adults. The first episode of As the Cookie Crumbles was posted Thursday at 3 p.m. with a new episode being posted ever Thursday at 3 until November 6th.
So far it's not very intriguing or particularly funny. And the attempt at sexiness (a waiter who keeps removing his shirt) is lame -- for this I have to give my birthdate to prove I'm an adult?!
It's supposed to be a take-off on a soap opera, but they've taken everything hackneyed and cliche about soap -- and down nothing with it: no twists, no humour, no energy. Even the blurb under "about the show" is boring.
Here we find a mixture of cliché characters ranging from our hero, the 30-something professional woman, to the local philanthropist, to the gossipy waitress. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, and Peek Freans Lifestyle Selections gripped tightly between the thumb and index finger, each episode will follow the typical soap opera structure as the characters reveal their secrets and lies in a web of intrigue, deceit, romance, heartbreak and snacking.
"30-something professional woman"? Now there's an exciting character description for the hero. "Follow the typical soap opera structure"? Ooo, doesn't that sound appealing?
Not only are the cookies mentioned, shown and eaten frequently during the episode, but you're also forced to sit through a pre-roll ad for them. Isn't it enough that the site is branded and the product (clumsily) integrated?
The first episode attempts to introduce 10 characters -- too big a cast for a web series, if you ask me and certainly for too many to service in a web-length episode. There's no room left to develop any plot... plot being the thing that makes you want to come back to watch another episode.
There are no writing or production credits anywhere on the site, making it clear that this is just about selling cookies and not at all about entertaining audiences. Brandweek has the backstory.
Oddly, there's no option to embed the video, not that I really want to share it with you that badly, but embeddable video is just one of those standards every web series needs to succeed. And why wouldn't they want this ad content to spread?
Possibly the worst thing about the first episode is that despite being a blatant ad, it does nothing to make the cookie appealing. There are no beauty shots of them. No one funny, sexy or dramatic contexts to their consumption. The actors don't even seem to be enjoying them.
Here are people with Kraft's money behind them and the resources of several ad agencies behind them and this is the best they can come up with?
Ad agencies and marketers are fond of talking about how the internet changes everything; how brands have to establish new relationships with their client; how corporations have to get into the social networking spaces. Another thing brands should do if they want to meet up with their clients on the web? Get some artists with something to say carry their messages for them. This web serial is about as exciting as a cardboard box -- when the cookies are already gone.
1 Tim Street has an important article on Seth Macfarlane's Burger King deal and how it changes the face of the marketplace for web serials. You should go read the whole article, but here's an excerpt:
Because in the past if you were going to launch a new show you had to build an audience before you could find an advertiser who would be willing to spend money sponsoring your show but now the rules have changed.
Now I can find a sponsor who like the idea of my new show (that hasn't launched yet) and I can guarantee them ad impressions with my new show.
How can you do that?
If they sponsor a co-branded widget or co-branded Google Gadget Ad with my video content in it and I buy placement across the Google Ad Universe I can guarantee them the amount of impressions I buy from Google because I know Google will deliver those 300x250 interactive banners to any relevant site that I buy space on.
I'm excited to do some experimenting with the Gigya widget in question. Until then, here's the promo for Macfarlane's Burger King sponsored Cavalcade series:
