If Video Sites Are The ‘New TV,’ What Are The New Commercials?
Posted by meredith on 08-24-2009
This morning I caught an interview in The San Francisco Chronicle with Hunter Walk, director of product management of YouTube about the video site nearing profitability three years after the Google acquisition by adding more and new types of ads and striking more partnerships with mass media content companies like Disney and Time Warner.
I see this give and take — more full-length content in exchange for more in-your-face advertising — eliciting soft groans, but louder cheers from young time-shifting DVR-less TV fans like myself. After all, online video viewing, legal and illegal alike, has always required some compromise on the part of the viewer. Whether that be in the form of buffering time, foreign subtitles or traditional online advertising, i.e. big banner ads; pop up movie trailers or ads that run before, while or after videos. For the most part these intrusions are not welcome (I’d say movie trailers are the exception), but as conditioned television viewers (vs. movie watching immersion) some form of interrupted viewing is expected and, as such, tolerated.
When it comes to watching a show that’s currently on-air, the value of online TV viewing is rooted in availability on the viewers’ terms, an alternative (read: not a replacement) to catching a show at a certain time in a certain place. In other words, an on-demand rerun. The mild irritation these partnerships between media brands and media platforms may bring in the form of pre-roll or pop ups, they make up for in the satisfaction of reliable, high quality full length episodes. For college students and twentysomethings who can’t afford DVRs and may even opt out of owning TV sets, as long as the costs aren’t literal, it’s worth it.
But can advertisers say the same? The question of how effective this type of intrusive advertising will be given how desensitized we ALL are to online advertising is a considerable one. Especially when we take into account the reality that many viewers are multi-tasking both online (multiple tabs, windows, IM boxes etc.) and/or offline (homework, texting, etc.) even while the shows are playing. These side activities most likely spike when those 30-second ads go on and volumes can be muted and screens minimized.
I wonder if this means we’ll be seeing more explicit product placement? Online coupons? Or sponsored content tie-ins along the lines of the Dove vignettes that aired on TV during “Gossip Girl”? Then again, if web publishers follow the recommendations of a recent MTV study where a 5-second pre-roll and a partial screen overlay won out for effectiveness and likability, we’ll be seeing less content versus more.
In any case, if we do continue to see more divisions online and network-branded channels like the one HBO set up on YouTube early last year to promote “True Blood,” “Hung” and “Entourage,” it will be easier for advertisers to target specific niches online, regardless of format. For now, we’ll just have to stay tuned.
For more coverage of youth marketing, go to the Ypulse Youth Marketing Channel sponsored by Youth Marketing Connection.
Categorized under: TV, Youth Marketing
August 25th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Sure, we are desensitized to online advertising. But I would argue that anyone under the age of 60 is desensitized even more to traditional TV spot advertising — in fact, not just desensitized, but in most cases so intensely irritated by the interruptions these ad breaks constitute that in most cases (except when the advertising is both relevant and brilliantly executed) the end-effect is to create an antipathy towards the brand being advertised. A generation weaned on ful-length DVD’s and full-length illegal torrent downloads is simply allergic to the atomization of content by traditional TV ad breaks, so I really see no alternative to ad-supported online TV programming if the media companies are to have a commercially viable mass market distribution strategy at all.