Category Archives: adserving

adserving, broadcasting, distributing, television, viewing

The Netflix Spark: Why the arrival of the SVOD platform heralds a more even distribution of the future for everyone

so yesterday as I was meandering along the freeway in Melbourne I heard the most startling comment on the radio. a contributor to the city’s 3AW station was talking through the highlights of the evenings TV schedule – and suggested that because TV was ‘out of ratings season’ there wouldn’t be much to watch that evening … she gave a special shout-out to Nine who “bless them, were treating us to a new episode of Person of Interest”.

that broadcast TV networks take their foot off the pedal whilst out of season in order to hold new content back for the weeks when ratings is once again tracked is one thing – but for it to be such a consumer-facing matter of fact took me by more than a little surprise. this after all isn’t an industry conversation or debate, but a public radio station – openly discussing the fact that a TV network was “treating” the audience by actually offering them something new to watch.

this rather startling starting point underlines the extent of the firestorm now fully smoldering in the Australian TV market – the spark for which came courtesy of Netflix. on November 19th, after months of rumours and speculation, Netflix finally announced (with timing naughtily designed to crash Nine’s AGM) that it would launch in Australia in March 2015. the response from local Aussie players had been in development for some time. in short:

  • Foxtel, who arguably have most immediate disruption to face, have revisited their pricing strategy across the board and in particular halved the price tag of Presto (their SVOD or Streaming Video On Demand service) to $9.99. in addition they’ve partnered with Seven West Media who will contribute programming to the service from next year.
  • Nine and Fairfax’s joint forces have combined to create the $100m SVOD service StreamCo – with the consumer-facing platform brand Stan. Stan has subsequently announced deals with CBS, BBC Worldwide, MGM and SBS (who will bring their world movies to the party).

all of which leaves us with a three horse race between Netflix, Presto and Stan right?

wrong.

in fact it’s barely the beginning.

there’s Quickflix, Fetch TV, the individual channel catch-up services, Ten have yet to pick a dance partner, the ABC’s iView and of course YouTube – which in July accounted for over 1.5m content streams, reaching almost 11.5m people (source).

taken together there’s increasing volumes of views being delivered to the 50% of Aussies who watch online content. the numbers are already big … according to Nielsen in July there were 2.7bn streams (and that was down on June), and time spent streaming is increasing – up to around 8hrs per person per month generating 6.5bn minutes of streamed content.

and Netflix is still three months away.

the impacts of all this will be significant; in the immediate term there is undoubtedly going to be a firestorm for views and scale – brace for plenty of press releases in the first quarter of 2015 about content deals, views and reach. in the medium term this will play out in a battle for content – with many shows already locked away in local deals, there will be fierce competition between the platforms as distribution rights cycle into play.

the long-term implications will be two-fold. firstly, with increasingly fragmented and diverse platforms and viewing services, advertisers and their agencies will increasingly rely on programmatic solutions to build reach quickly. in addition many advertisers and ad agencies will finally be forced to break out of the ‘advert’ model – using instead platform-neutral content strategies that can adapt to content and context more quickly – generating more relevance for brands’ comms. think native content in video form.

the second long-term implication will be the long-overdue radical shift in viewer expectations. more choice, more freedom to choose what we watch and where, how and when we watch it. this future has been a long-time coming, and has been with some for much longer than others  … as William Gibson so magnificently put it, the future is already here – its just not evenly distributed.

strap in people … because what’s coming is a radically more even distribution of the future – a future in which the idea of being “treated” to a new episode of Person Of Interest by a network, may by as incredulous as the very idea of tuning in to a broadcast network in the first place.

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adserving, debating, futuregazing, predicting, programmatic buying

Reunification isn’t going to happen so get over it: Why media is already planning for a future that’s here already. and why that’s awesome.

last week Adnews posted the above video from earlier this year in which the CEO of Cummins & Partners Sean Cummins lambasted the egos of agencies as the only thing stopping the grand reunification of media and advertising agencies under one roof. Cummins was rebuffed by both Henry Tajer “There is no going back, there is no return, there is nothing but forward” and Rob Morgan “With all the money media agencies need to spend on planning and buying, no ad agency has the cash or the clients to justify doing the same”.

the return to full-service debate is not only unfounded (there is no going back, silly) but misses the broader point that both Tajer and Morgan make (whilst still managing to disagree) … that, if anything, we’re set to see further diversification rather than consolidation of media agency offerings.

to get an idea of just how far media has moved on – take a look at this little puppy, and make a mental note of when you need to start really concentrating to track exactly what is going on.

OK so anyone with a bit of media know-how can stay on the tracks, but remember this is the Sesame Street version of what’s happening. this is programmatic buying for dummies, simplified so that even a strategist can understand it. just about. programmatic now exists at one extreme end of the spectrum across which media agencies operate – and I don’t think its what Cummins has in mind when he’s making his bid for reunification.

this spectrum across which agencies operate is reflected, I increasingly believe, in a bifurcation that now exists in how people consumer media. conventional wisdom is that media consumption is now a fragmented, disparate and diverse set of behaviours and attitudes that necessitates the need for a host of segmentation and profiling to understand the media footprint for a specific target group.

but I’m increasingly wondering if it isn’t a whole lot more simple … that people sit at one or other end of a spectrum of media consumption – and therefore planning. or, as the rather awesome William Gibson put it: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”. the future is here, and it’s distributed exclusively at the programmatic end of the media spectrum.

… the end of the spectrum at which people have now moved so post-broadcast that the very idea of appointment to view is something they associate with house rather than TV viewing. these are the platform-agnostics. the content-demanders. the subscription viewers, like the 325k who watched last nights GOT S4 finale (thanks for the heads up MCM). they are the digital natives who have only ever accessed the internet through apps (not browsers). they are the rampant social mediarites and twitterati, an army of instgrammers who get news from buzzfeed and buzz from newsfeeds.

it’s for these people that content, social and a host of other offerings including – yes – programmatic buying capabilities have been developed and deployed by media agencies. capabilities that will see further diversification not reunification into their ad agency houses of old. for these people the future is already here and they and their smart phones and TVs are reveling in it. do they expect more or brands? no. do brands need to radically adjust their comms strategies to market to them? yes … and that adjustment has barely started.

… we’ll get a glimpse of just how far we yet have to go in a little over three hours when PHD’s Mark Holden introduces Jason Silva to the Cannes stage. the session is designed as a complete paradigm reboot of the mind-set through which we see the (media) world. changes that, in Mark and Jason’s words, will open up boundless possibilities.

so let’s put aside our reunification talk. we’re well past that point of return. we all of us – media and ad agencies alike – are on the same trip to those endless possibilities … the perspectives are different but that’s only to be expected: after all, the future is here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.

you can watch Jason’s Cannes presentation live as it happens right here … enjoy the trip.

featured image – Jason Silva and his ‘come to future’ eyes, via flavorwire.com

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adserving, applicationing, innovating, listening, phdcast, planning, programmatic buying

PHDcast 31.05.13: Programmatic Buying, How Superman Shaves and Tumblr

PHDcast for Mediation 470lots of fun on the PHDcast last week as Stew and Nic and I were joined by some awesome people from PHD Australia’s team digital. Peter Hunter and Lauren Oldham joined us to talk everything from programmatic buying to Gillette’s YouTubey Man Of Steel activation.

first up, programmatic buying. B&T quotes eMarketer who suggest that: “more than a quarter of all display-ad spending in the U.S. will occur via real-time auctions by 2016. Spending is predicted to increase from US$1.9bn in 2012 to more than US$7bn to make up 28% of total display-ad buying by the end of that year.”

great debate from the team, the main upshot of which was that programmatic buying will soon be how we predominantly buy ‘traditional’ online, with content moving even further up the online food chain, becoming of fundamental importance as online real-estate for brands.

a key implication is that it allows the conversations we have with our media owner partners to move on and focus on what, arguably, is the core point of those relationships – ideas, collaboration and creative use of media.

the other main implication is for those big traditional (broadcast) media owners who, as they mediate the future of their own media platforms, will see PB encroach on how they trade with agencies. whilst some broadcasters are already experimenting with DSP technology, its something that is unlikely to happen overnight. inertia aside, I genuinely believe that as revenues fragment across different channels, making PB work will become a strategic imperative, rather than an interesting inconvenience to broadcasters.

also this week, Gillette are exploring how exactly Superman shaves? a great activation on the brands’ YouTube channel has geeky celebrities proposing how they think the Man Of Steel shaves. awesome activation – will be even more so if the team involved find a way to amplify the content into broadcast.

gillette how does he shave

also this week an awesome app from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that allows you to use their data to explore the opinions and attitudes of people in your (or any) suburb and town across the nation.

oh, and that US$1.1bn purchase by Yahoo! of Tumblr. The Hunter observes that, when looked at from a data perspective, Yahoo! have essentially paid $4 each for the records of 300,000,000 active users – which makes it quite the bargain. whether it’s enough for the somewhat ailing Yahoo! remains to be seen.

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adserving, advertising, broadcasting, targeting

Sex addicted, debt-ridden, body-obsessed, astigmatic, game-playing gadget-phile: but enough about me, what does advertising say about you?

What_ads_say_about_me some recent ads that define me.  or do they?

what does advertising say about me?  that's the question I'm increasingly asking myself as the broadcast model wanes and targeted advertising becomes the norm.  I'm imagining a future where my Glee is interrupted by messages from fat-burning miracle powders, or where my 30 mins with Modern Family is interspersed with messages for help with sex-addiction or an encouragement to buy some oil shares.

you see the ad-serving paradigm – with which anyone who has worked in online advertising will be more than familiar – will in the future spread beyond the computer screen.  to hand-held devices and then, as IPTV gains traction, to TV screens.

it's one thing to see niche targeted ads on my computer screen; it will be quite another to see them on my TV…  but as the ability to target on TV becomes widespread, niche advertisers will increasingly be able to ad-serve specific messages to targeted audiences at a fraction of the cost of even a small TV campaign today.

on one hand the future is potentially very bright…  we engage more with brands that we like and therefore, theoretically, as ads become more targeted and better tailored to our interests and passions, advertising will be more engaging and, theoretically, more engaged with.

at least that's the theory.

but there's a potential downside…  the lowering in the cost of entry will allow hundreds of advertisers who previously couldn't, to advertise on TV.  the result is inevitable, a lowering in the average quality of the ads that get produced.  this is inevitable.

to escape the race to the bottom, we're going to need choice…  the only solution to such a wave of ads will be to have choice over which ones we receive.  there's a double benefit – for advertisers there will be increased engagement (we do engage more with ads that we've chosen to watch), and for audiences there will be the algorithm…

because unlike broadcast, where we all have to endure the same ads as everyone else, an ad-served model offers the possibility of a world where only content that get engaged with (clicked on, liked etc) gets further propagated.  if Google served TV ads (beyond their current very limited scope) they'd use a quality score (based on relevance and preformance of the ads) to propagate ads that are reaching the right people and being engaged with, and suppress ones that aren't.  and that can only be a good thing?  can't it?

out of interest, what does advertising say about you?

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