While the current economic crisis is unveiling a wealth of troubles for many businesses and industries, it’s also masking some fundamental issues. Advertisers, publishers and media companies will presume that, once the economy picks up again, and marketers assign larger budgets, that they, ad-supported media, will come roaring back with the economy.
But even Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledges that changes in consumer behavior are due to more than the economy. Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, told The New York Times that it's not correct to call the slowdown in cellphone sales "a cyclical problem."
Companies that seize market share and are able to do well over the next six months or year may, indeed, shoot out of the gates toward the end of ’09, or beginning of ’10 (advertising tends to be a trailing economic indicator, unlike the stock market, which leads). Traditional media that hasn’t done a good enough job of addressing the market shifts may do better then, but over time will be in jeopardy -- a possibility picked up noted by NY Convergence (which I've helped build as a consultant), contrasting the forward-looking mood at the AlwaysOn On Media conference with the somber orientation of media execs at the Crain conference across town in New York.
At the On Media conference you could almost feel a shift in the air. Everyone was questioning everything: What valuations are, whether the venture capital model really works, whether VCs ask too much for their money, whether ad targeting and re-targeting will fall prey to privacy concerns; even the demise of ad networks that bought lots of inventory who are now sunk by using arbitraging schemes of buying ad space in bulk from the likes of Yahoo, and are now unable to sell it at a profit. At the same time, a bunch of widget-makers like RockYou and Meebo, and ad networks, and early stage investors talked about great growth and huge opportunities. There’s some real disruption here, and it’s fundamental. Social media expert Larry Weber likened big media's practices of demanding control to mafiosi, and hinted that unpaid media would bust the system apart.
The shifts, I'd say, are more fundamental, even than the old saw about horse and buggy or train companies not understanding they were in the transportation industry. The new media industry may not be like the old media industry. Sure there is still advertising and aggregating audiences. Great stuff -- content, we now say -- gets watched and read and listened to. You can talk about audiences, and demographics, and screens and technologies. Fred Seibert, ex of MTV and other traditional media, now of Next New Networks, kept driving the point home in the most recent episode of Naked Media (soon to be live at NakedMedia.org) how much he could draw on lessons of the past to inform his practices today. Yes, but. And it’s a big but, because today’s media require not only a different set of technical skills, but also a different mindset, one where literally everyone with any networked device has the tools to do something they can call media. A world where media consumers want to talk back not by yelling at the TV or writing a Letter an Editor may not publish, but by getting a response from the media creators and purveyors. Where fans will take and make something their own, and a media company can be created from a search algorithm.
The mindset and skills of today require a type of openness to innovation and audience participation (and I even recoil a bit at that phrase, because it’s almost as if there is no longer an audience that’s separate from the producers) that’s quite alien to many folks who’ve made media for decades. When the economy gets better, that will help us see how fundamental the shift has been.
Showing posts with label Fred Seibert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fred Seibert. Show all posts
The Future (and Threat To) TV, and TiVO
On Wednesday’s “Naked Media” live show (soon to be available on demand at NakedMedia.org), Web TV entrepreneur (and long-time TV animation executive) Fred Seibert talked about how TiVo brought a lot of viewers to the programs on his Next New Networks, home of everything from car enthusiast shows to Obama Girl on “Barely Political” to shows for people crazy for comic books. He said that TiVo, hungry for content to distribute to TiVo subscribers, had struck deals with Web content providers like his company. Fred gets distribution to a new audience (and more views for ads). TiVo gets more content to subscribers paying their monthly fees.
TiVo, thus, becomes a box that not only allows time-shifting of traditional TV and ad-skipping, but also viewing of quality Web content on the TV as well. That’s something a lot of consumers don’t realize.
Later, at the Future of TV conference in midtown Manhattan, TiVO’s VP and GM, Audience Research and Measurement Todd Juenger said he didn’t like the traditional ways of classifying audience for advertising measurement purposes, that demographic groupings, such as women ages 18-49, were a far-from-perfect proxy for what advertisers really want. Procter & Gamble, where he once worked, is interested in women who want to use a particular product in a particular way: women interested buying a detergent with a particular smell, for example. That’s much more important than their age or any other group measurement. Beer companies would love to know if a household tends to buy Budweiser or Miller -- something, Juenger said, TiVo can tell when it maps the household to data from a grocery story shopping card such as that provided by the company Experion.
TiVo, thus becomes not just a measurement box, but the means by which an advertiser can serve ads more perfectly targeted to a household.
But TiVo, while a triple threat, also faces a threat. I asked Juenger whether the Internet was threatening his company just as his company threatens ad revenues for broadcast and cable TV. He said he felt there was room for it all, that TV screens are the better experience and that TiVo was bringing programming to people over those screens.
Well, yes. But. What about the increasing improvement in screens of all types, the desire for people to watch what they want wherever, however? Later at the conference, both a Fox executive and ABC's Rick Mandler pointed out that while the audience was still miniscule, the viewership of their programs on computer screens was growing (and they could build players for computers that didn't allow ad skipping). Seibert said he would provide his programming on any screen where people were demanding it. There’s not yet enough viewership on mobile screens like iPhones, he said, but as soon as there is, he’ll be signing distribution deals. And, when there is, where will TiVo be? If TiVo’s main value proposition is showing stuff on a TV hooked up to its machine, and that becomes irrelevant because Hulu or ABC.com or the Roku box hooked up to Netflix, or Apple TV provides the programming on-demand -- what would that do to TiVo’s business?
TiVo, thus, becomes a box that not only allows time-shifting of traditional TV and ad-skipping, but also viewing of quality Web content on the TV as well. That’s something a lot of consumers don’t realize.
Later, at the Future of TV conference in midtown Manhattan, TiVO’s VP and GM, Audience Research and Measurement Todd Juenger said he didn’t like the traditional ways of classifying audience for advertising measurement purposes, that demographic groupings, such as women ages 18-49, were a far-from-perfect proxy for what advertisers really want. Procter & Gamble, where he once worked, is interested in women who want to use a particular product in a particular way: women interested buying a detergent with a particular smell, for example. That’s much more important than their age or any other group measurement. Beer companies would love to know if a household tends to buy Budweiser or Miller -- something, Juenger said, TiVo can tell when it maps the household to data from a grocery story shopping card such as that provided by the company Experion.
TiVo, thus becomes not just a measurement box, but the means by which an advertiser can serve ads more perfectly targeted to a household.
But TiVo, while a triple threat, also faces a threat. I asked Juenger whether the Internet was threatening his company just as his company threatens ad revenues for broadcast and cable TV. He said he felt there was room for it all, that TV screens are the better experience and that TiVo was bringing programming to people over those screens.
Well, yes. But. What about the increasing improvement in screens of all types, the desire for people to watch what they want wherever, however? Later at the conference, both a Fox executive and ABC's Rick Mandler pointed out that while the audience was still miniscule, the viewership of their programs on computer screens was growing (and they could build players for computers that didn't allow ad skipping). Seibert said he would provide his programming on any screen where people were demanding it. There’s not yet enough viewership on mobile screens like iPhones, he said, but as soon as there is, he’ll be signing distribution deals. And, when there is, where will TiVo be? If TiVo’s main value proposition is showing stuff on a TV hooked up to its machine, and that becomes irrelevant because Hulu or ABC.com or the Roku box hooked up to Netflix, or Apple TV provides the programming on-demand -- what would that do to TiVo’s business?
Watch Fred Seibert on Naked Media, Noon ET!
Can Anyone Make it as a (Web Video) Entrepreneur?
Fred Siebert, founder of Next New Networks, will stop by the Scribe Studio on January 21 to talk about making the transition from network television heavy-weight to scrappy new media entrepreneur.
Join us for this live video webcast.
Fred Seibert is not only an award-winning cartoon producer who lead the remake of Nickelodeon into a leading cable network and was the original creative director for MTV. He also is the co-founder of Next New Networks, the Web-based home of Barely Political (hosted by Obama Girl) and ultra-niche networks for auto racing fanatics, comic-book enthusiasts. NNN has raised more than $23 million in funding from high profile venture firms like Spark Capital and Goldman Sachs, and recently brought on former MTV and Nickelodeon exec Lance Podell as CEO.
Seibert is plain-spoken and refreshingly candid about everything from how he’s raised money, to whether Web-based video like his can turn a profit, how he goes about finding talented people and turning their ideas into a businesses like the new blogging tool Tumblr and more — all while admitting huge failures, including one just a decade ago that cost him nearly every dollar he had.
Naked Media host (and MediaFlect author) Dorian Benkoil and Seibert will talk about the plans for Next New Networks, being an entrepreneur, and what anyone can learn from his triumphs and mistakes. Expect a wide-ranging, fun and frank discussion instructive for anyone in the media business today.
Fred Siebert, founder of Next New Networks, will stop by the Scribe Studio on January 21 to talk about making the transition from network television heavy-weight to scrappy new media entrepreneur.
Join us for this live video webcast.
Fred Seibert is not only an award-winning cartoon producer who lead the remake of Nickelodeon into a leading cable network and was the original creative director for MTV. He also is the co-founder of Next New Networks, the Web-based home of Barely Political (hosted by Obama Girl) and ultra-niche networks for auto racing fanatics, comic-book enthusiasts. NNN has raised more than $23 million in funding from high profile venture firms like Spark Capital and Goldman Sachs, and recently brought on former MTV and Nickelodeon exec Lance Podell as CEO.
Seibert is plain-spoken and refreshingly candid about everything from how he’s raised money, to whether Web-based video like his can turn a profit, how he goes about finding talented people and turning their ideas into a businesses like the new blogging tool Tumblr and more — all while admitting huge failures, including one just a decade ago that cost him nearly every dollar he had.
Naked Media host (and MediaFlect author) Dorian Benkoil and Seibert will talk about the plans for Next New Networks, being an entrepreneur, and what anyone can learn from his triumphs and mistakes. Expect a wide-ranging, fun and frank discussion instructive for anyone in the media business today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)