Blog - Sunday June 14, 2009 - 17 Comments
A Serious Online Video Advertising Problem
As most of you know, I am the host of a daily, two-minute show called, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer. It is not a television show, although it can be seen on TV. It is not a radio show, although it is broadcast on dozens of news/talk radio stations. It is not a video blog, although you can subscribe to it via RSS. It is not a news feed, although several text versions are available online and via wireless networks. It is not social media content, although the key insights are shared with thousands of followers via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. MediaBytes is a true multi-media content engine that was designed to allow an audience of people who are interested in my thoughts about technology, media and entertainment to self-assemble. It is offered completely free of charge to anyone who wishes to subscribe on practically every widely used media platform.
The show is created in HD and is distributed on various websites (including shellypalmer.com, huffingtonpost.com, imediaconnection.com, YouTube, Blip.tv and dozens more), TiVoCast, Sony Bravia Internet Link, NY Nonstop (WNBC-TV Channel 4.2), iTunes (both video and audio podcasts), feedburner (video, audio and text RSS feeds), Terrestrial Radio, Broadcast Television, every form of flash, h.264, mpg, .mp3 and, of course, HDTV. We also provide daily production elements which are distributed to several thousand radio and television stations worldwide.
The show is produced every business day and requires a research staff, a writer (me), an editor, an encoding/distribution manager and an affiliate relations staff. The reason for the production overview is that, this particular two-minutes may look like a talking head combined with some graphics and clips, but the work flow for any given show takes approximately 6 hour and all of the people involved in the production are on salary here at Advanced Media Ventures Group. And, for the record, MediaBytes, and the associated production materials, takes up approximately 25% of my day.
I am not going to tell you what it costs me to produce each episode, but from reading the previous paragraphs you should be able to fully understand that it is far from free. You should also know that I have not missed a business day in two years and I take a complete road rig with me when I travel and produce MediaBytes from wherever I am. Over the past week I was at Ft. Meade, MD, then in Rome, Italy, then in Banff, Canada and back to NYC. I produced the show from every city and it was available by 9am EDT each business day.
I do not sell advertising space to third parties. As I said, the goal of MediaBytes is to facilitate the self-assembly of a community of interest around my content. For over two years, I have translated the value of this content into wealth by using what I love to call, “The Jerry Garcia Model.” I make everything available for free, but clients pay me to consult, as a speaker, they buy my books and other merchandise. The content’s job is to make my self-assembled audience aware of my capabilities and everything else takes care of itself. This has worked absolutely perfectly since the first episode of MediaBytes and, my suspicion is that, it will continue to work perfectly as long as we keep producing content that our audience wants to consume.
However, a funny thing happened this week and, to be honest, I need your help to sort it out.
About four weeks ago, I partnered with ZioPRO.com, a company that produces world-class training videos, to produce a series of Shelly Palmer branded digital skills courses. I won’t share the size of the MediaBytes subscription list with you, but it is big, by any measure, and highly targeted. On the list of “no-brainers,” selling Shelly Palmer branded merchandise to people who are consumers of MediaBytes is right at the top.
Or so I thought.
For the past six or seven episodes, I have put an integrated :11 second ZioPRO.com promo five seconds into the show. An average show is two minutes, so an :11 second promo represents an ad load of about 9%. (Just for reference, a network television hour has 22 minutes of commercials and promos which represents a 36.6% ad load). Again, MediaBytes opens with the show title, the date and then :11 seconds of promo copy followed by my thoughts and insights about the day’s top four or five stories. You can view today’s show at www.shellypalmer.com.
To my absolute astonishment, I have received dozens of emails, several txt messages and a couple of direct tweets telling me that the :11 seconds of commercial messaging “cheapens” MediaBytes. Several of my core viewers told me that putting a commercial for my own stuff in MediaBytes takes away from my credibility and makes me a huckster, etc. All of the writings were thoughtful and all were vicious in their certitude that MediaBytes should contain no advertising.
Now every bit of data I have ever seen on the subject says that a short, well-scripted pre-roll is the best form of message management for online content. My core audience obviously disagrees. So, I’ll put it to you. I want to sell my training courses to my audience as a way to offset/subsidize the cost of creating MediaBytes. I don’t want to charge a subscription fee, I don’t want to expose my audience to third party advertising that may be extremely irrelevant to them. I want to sell the online training, DVD’s, books, etc. that I create and produce.
You know how many different deliverables we create each day, the advertising has to work as video and audio, so it must be written like “radio with pictures.” What would you do? How would you offer these products? And, if you really don’t want to see any advertising in the body of MediaBytes, how do you suggest paying for the creation, production and distribution of the content?
This is the most serious question facing content producers today. Content costs money to produce. Third-party advertising/sponsor support is one model, promoting your own products is another, subscription is a third. At the end of the day, there are only three ways it works: I pay, you pay or someone else pays. Unfortunately, there is no business model called “no one pays.” In the case of MediaBytes, the model is “I pay.” It works for me as stated above. But, apparently, a fairly large number of people in my audience are uninterested in seeing even relevant product offerings. Is advertising over? If so, what’s next? 
Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com
Comments
17 Responses to “A Serious Online Video Advertising Problem”Jaye Albright June 14th, 2009 2:43 pm
Shelly, since you were kind enough to even do a gratis hour with
our country radio station clients two weeks ago which got more
downloads and streaming replays plus rave reviews for all of the
radio station management and air personalities than anything else
we have done so far this year, I feel like I need to vounteer to
watch a bunch of :11 second ads for you. I come from the commercial
radio side where we are still mainly analog but sticking a toe into
digital today and Arbitron’s PPM shows - in usage and behavioral
studies conducted over the past two years of metered radio ratings
- that in spite of more than a third of our listeners leaving on
average within the first commercial minute of every break, the
audience - since people are constantly coming in as well as leaving
- at the conclusion of the average commercial break is only 8%
smaller than it was at the start of the commercials. Forget about
the fickle folks who aren’t willing to pay their own way by waiting
:11 seconds of your excellent content. The ones who wait through
the ad are your biggest, most loyal (and smartest!) fans anyway.
We’re your tribe and I am betting that’s there are plenty of us,
who watch the ads and feel like the free content is well worth the
“price.” Perhaps you should offer an alternative paid subscription
model, sans any ads, and see how many of the complainers are
willing to pay to access that. Some will, of course, and some
won’t. The ones who will are worth a lot to you and I hope you
reward them with your best best info, first. The ones who don’t
value your info enough to watch a brief ad OR pay a small fee to
evade it, are free-loaders and society is and always has been full
of them. But, please don’t try to build a business around them.
They probably hang around the dumpsters behind nice restaurants too
and call the scraps they can grab for free a meal as well.
Larry June 14th, 2009 2:53 pm
I have been watching MediaBytes for the past couple of years now,
at shellypalmer.com, and was not turned off by the recent insertion
of the ZioPRO.com ads. The site itself already includes margin ads
for the product and, as you noted, you don’t include third party
advertising, so I don’t see why there would now be questions
regarding credibility. Incidentally, many news and information
sites are much more obtrusive about the placement of advertising.
Just think of those that make you click through an ad screen to get
to particular story. Others make you sit through a 30-second
pre-roll just to get to a one minute news story. If you feel you
must address the complaints, perhaps the ad could be placed
post-roll? Otherwise, the video advertising is okay as long as it
remains minimal. My guess is that the vast majority of your
audience doesn’t have a serious problem with it.
Kieran June 14th, 2009 4:21 pm
Bottom-line for me is that I respect your right to monetize the
content you create and distribute for free. However, since I have
been a fan for a couple years my opinion is biased. Taking into
account the length of your video content a pre-roll might be a
turn-off for newer viewers. I would suggest testing a less
intrusive advertising method to see the impact on clicks / response
/ opinions.
dvdj June 14th, 2009 9:47 pm
Not everyone ever is going to agree on anything in this life. Out
of a sub list that The Shelly Palmer Brand describes as “big, by
any measure,” fielding merely “dozens of complaints” hardly is
anything to lose sleep over. But it is a good excuse for a blog as
windy as Chicago just to let us all know how hard The Shelly Palmer
Brand works and that it has created wealth for The Shelly Palmer
Person. Congratulations are in order, to be sure. But enough about
me. Let’s hear more about The Shelly Palmer Brand. Narcissus is as
green with envy as The Shelly Palmer Brand is green with wealth.
Crystal Haidl June 15th, 2009 5:38 am
Perhaps your critics think MediaBytes’ high quality content makes
it a commercial free offshoot of NPR? (Wait til you start airing
your hit episodes during the upcoming pledge drive!) More likely,
it’s the free-lunch cultural syndrome that the Internet has birthed
and thrived on, most especially among twenty-somethings, who knew
no other way, but that we’ve all gotten use to. We don’t need to
wish for money to grow on trees —WIWWIWWIW “freedom” has become
synonymous with “we deserve it for free” and that includes no
bothersome ads to get in our way, either. It’s the parallel line of
logic that has mortally wounded the already self-inflicted,
negligence of print media. The solution? Fostering a new grown-up
culture of defining “value” and debating the “trust and
responsibilities” within consumer/provider relationships. But that
reciprocol give- and- take goes deep, to the very core of
capitalism/consumerism — what is worth, worth? how are we each
individually valued for our work/purchasing? and what are the
intricacies of our mutual dependence upon each other? Perhaps, in
fact, that the disgruntled comments from your ad, came from those
who trust your format, and just expected a forewarning of changes,
that they wanted to be involved in the inside story of why you’ll
be including ads. Maybe, it was a simple as that. This brave new
world—an adventurous journey, eh?
John Palacio June 15th, 2009 8:35 am
Beware of assuming a few angry emails represents your “core
audience.” When I was at “Good Morning America” we would receive
angry emails all the time from viewers upset when we changed the
format (graphics, set, newscrawl, etc). If we followed those raised
voices we would have never updated the show. Your :11 second early
mid-roll is the way to… Read More go and most viewers in your
targeted media audience understand that. You may lose a few
extremists in the process, but most will acclimate to the new order
and you will hopefully generate well deserved income in the
process. That said, the only way mid-level new media series are
making money nowadays is by ancillary benefits (i.e. your
consulting fees). We now produce the weekly travel series “Trip on
a Deal” (triponadeal.com) at a loss … however, we get income from
the viewers who see the series and hire our production company to
make videos for them (andnow.com). Incidently, we promote our
production company in a short early mid-roll on “Trip on a Deal”
… we’ve been doing it from the beginning and no one seems to
mind. John Palacio And Now Productions
Paula Lynn June 15th, 2009 8:36 am
When the entitlement elite will be entitled to be volunteered to
serve the least entitled, :11 will be a bargain. Looks like your
other fans agree.
Adam Kortepeter, Certified Usability Analyst June 15th, 2009 9:14 am
Your research is correct - a short pre-roll is your best option.
You certainly have the right to make a living and pay your staff
for their time. The difference between the ZioPro ad and what I
have seen on other ad-supported media sites is that your voice
overlays ALL content - even the ads. You may want to give it a more
third-party feel - Perhaps a female voice for the ad? In this case,
having the ad be “all you” serves to detract from its purpose.
Somehow you have to distance yourself from the ad content, or it
will look, feel, and sound like a shameless plug, and that is why I
believe your audience has responded negatively.
Matthew Snodgrass June 15th, 2009 9:18 am
Please don’t take those “dozens of e-mails” complaining about the
11-second ad as representative of the larger audience. I don’t have
a problem with it at all. I’ve come to rely on MediaBytes as a
daily resource in my continuing education in new media. If I have
to wind up paying for it, I probably will, because it has value.
Keep up the great work, and don’t despair.
pedrothebruin June 15th, 2009 11:07 am
I think the issue has less to do with advertising than with
branding. It’s hyping the video series that makes you look like a
huckster, not the fact that you accept advertising. You’ve implied
that MediaBytes is all the promotion the Shelly Palmer brand really
needs–so find yourself a sponsor instead. Few reasonable people
would begrudge you making a buck off of MediaBytes. If you must
promote the video series, use a different channel or stick with the
less obtrusive banners you have traditionally used.
bub June 16th, 2009 8:36 am
I wanted to say, put an ad at the end of the video, but I see you
have already done that in newer videos. Taking people’s valuable
time before you give them anything of value is bad business model
in my opinion. Give first than take. If video holds enough value to
viewer he will watch it to the end and an 11s ad at the and will be
shown before he will have time to find and click the stop button.
At least for the first time, but that’s not the problem since next
time it will be enough if he sees only a few seconds of the ad and
the message of the ad will play in his head. But to force someone
to see whole ad each time he watches video, quickly becomes
irritating.
Caraccioli June 16th, 2009 9:49 am
Why call them ads and put them into a legacy format–are these
products/services that you want to curate? If so, give me the
ability to hear a soundbyte from you and why this product/service
is important, innovative, groundbreaking and let me choose to click
on the “experience” to learn more. You have the ability to curate
products to a precise audience that wants to be and demands to be
early adopters/tech leaders, you are just empowering us to fulfill
that need.
Bob Kiger June 17th, 2009 11:16 am
Dear Shelly– I was born 68 hours into 1946 making me approximately
the 75,000th Baby Boomer. I suspect you were born around the same
time. On the day of my birth there were approximately 40,000 video
displays on Earth available for civilian use and there were less
than 2 billion people on the planet. Today the world population is
approaching 7 billion and the number of video displays now exceeds
8 billion. Multiply the number of displays by the CC factor
[available Channels of Content] and you’ve got a seriously large
number! Could some math wizard out there run the numbers? The
central problem that you present is not limited to “Video
Advertising”. At Videography Lab we contend that modern humans are
not neurologically prepared to process the onslaught of channels
that are bombarding them as we speak. All around the world, this is
playing out. Today folks are jamming the Iranian internet system in
a deliberate attempt to prolong the protests and get a
“re-election”. That’s evolution/revolution and it will cause both
massive global chaos/peace. As the Moody Blues wrote: It’s a
“Question of Balance”. You are doing a fine job of managing quality
control on “A Serious Online Video Advertising Problem”. We monitor
your daily progress. Be well and prosper, Bob Kiger - Videography
Lab - Oceanside, CA, USA seminal author of “videography” word. [OCT
72 AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER]
Kim Sherrell June 20th, 2009 2:03 am
Hi Shelly, Like we heard at #140conf, cloud computing and the
real-time web have created a new distribution structure where
“links” (and not websites) become the key component. Bottom line:
the consumer just wants to get their MediaBytes fix with the least
amount of annoyance and hassle. That said, you might consider
simplifying the workflow. Instead of using 36 different
formats/outlets, use just one link to the iTunes store URL (turn it
into a bit.ly so you can track it), and then drive traffic to the
store via articles, tweets, widgets, graphics, and links from
within the various other sites! This ‘single link’ solution works
well because it cuts out a bunch of unnecessary work. Your team
will save time: they output to just one format. Additional time
gets saved by uploading files only 1x instead of the current dozens
of servers. Finally, your customers get high-quality, well-produced
content without the unwanted advertising. The success of the Apple
iTunes and iPhone Apps store are proof: people will shell out small
increments of money for good content. Haha, they frequently overpay
for bad content. ;-) Hope this helps!
Kim Sherrell June 20th, 2009 2:10 am
Your program is amazing and people are hungry for good content from
trusted sources. My hunch says you can charge a few dollars. I
believe this makes more sense than advertising because persons in
your target demo (thinking people) are the type who will be
insulted by adverts. (Well, that’s my 2 cents!) =) If you’re
reticent about charging, you could always produce two cuts of the
show… a full one that the user purchases… plus an edited-down
version that is free. Honor your audience by giving them a choice.
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