Screw Viral Video – It’s Bad For Us All!
Online video creators, advertisers and producers have an unhealthy fascination with viral videos, and that obsession is dragging down the entire industry. Why? Because viral videos are, at their core, no better than a fluffernutter white-bread sandwich, delivering little or no value to anyone.
Online video hasn’t been a hotbed of success so far, and while I used to blame discovery, being relegated to the podcast ghetto and the immaturity of some of our biggest practitioners, those are just symptoms. It’s the incessant focus on viral success, I now believe, that’s really keeping us down.
Let’s start with producers and show creators. Media is all about building habits. Successful producers bind an audience to their creation, building an insatiable hunger for the next installment, next episode, next post. But when you focus on viral success, you throw that focus on repeatability out the window. By its nature, viral videos are designed to surprise, titillate and entertain. They are, by nature, unique; the 27th keyboard cat or the 12th dancing baby is just plain boring. But once video producers taste the heady success of a viral hit, they keep trying to re-create lightning in a bottle. But let’s face it — we all know "David Goes to the Proctologist" isn’t going to be nearly as successful as his trip to the dentist.
Viral videos are also terrible for video sites too. Sure, everyone loves to trumpet a single video with millions of views. But because viral videos are by their nature unpredictable, they can burn through an allocation of premium inventory rather rapidly. At most sites, there are only so many high-CPM advertisements ready to run at any given time. When they’re done, bottom-dwelling ad networks lurch into the void, spewing their cheapo ads for teeth whitening, belly flattening and nicotine-busting dreck. Ten predictable episodic shows that deliver a consistent 100,000 views an episode is far easier to plan for and monetize than a channel that has a one-in-100 chance of catching fire — and a 99-in-100 chance of bombing.
Viral videos may be bad for creators and publishers, but they are actually worse for advertisers. Your typical viral video gets passed around, yes, and drives a lot of views. And yes, those can translate into impressions for an advertiser. But as we’ve seen at Revision3, advertising associated with viral videos has only a small fraction of the impact of an ad that runs inside, or alongside, an episodic video program. We’ve seen tremendous results from putting brands next to our long-running episodic programs — those with real communities, high comment-to-view ratios and predictable views. We’ve seen terrible results by associating the same brands and services with the few viral-focused shows we’ve tried out over the last five years. And if you try creating those viral-focused videos yourself, you are in for a real surprise. It is overwhelmingly likely that you’ll end up with closer to a thousand views than a million.
There’s another thing to be wary of: fake views that make your viral campaign look like a success, when it’s actually a complete failure. There are many ways to juice views, exacerbated by the fact that YouTube and most other video sites tally up a view even if only a second of video plays. Your unscrupulous viral-video partner may be embedding an autoplay of your video below the fold on a variety of unrelated sites, and counting those views as success — when instead they are the worst sort of failure. Why failure? Because when your viewer realizes she’s been duped into viewing something unasked for, an angry STOP, and bad brand association, quickly follows.
But brands keep trying. And every time a new, apparently viral success emerges, even more dollars are wasted chasing chimerical views. Witness the Old Spice Guy phenomenon. Marketers worldwide are even now trying to replicate that success, without realizing viral was furthest from their minds. It started with a Super Bowl ad — hardly the norm for a viral-focused campaign, which hopes to get something for nothing. Each subsequent piece was part of a well thought out development of an engaging character, with the entire story arc and timing scripted in advance. They created a compelling, episodic video show, and spent millions up front to promote it.
Some of the best and most talented video producers focus their enormous talents on creating viral hits, instead of building repeatable episodic series that are built around an authentic host or an extended narrative. Yet in the end, those are the video properties that keep viewers coming back, provide predictable views that publishers covet and repeatable results that drive sales and profits.
There’s one area, though, where viral can be worthwhile: when you use one to build a sustainable audience for a well planned out video series. Dan Brown (aka Pogobat) did just that on YouTube. His videos went quickly viral when they were released three years ago, and have delivered nearly 27 million views so far. But instead of trying to replicate his viral success with an endless stream of Rubik-focused videos, he used that one to build a community around his daily thoughts, updates and experiences. He used viral to drive authenticity, and built up a community of nearly 300,000 friends — and recently he’s used that audience to drive branded success as well.
So what’s an advertiser to do? Stop chasing viral, and start looking closely at online video that delivers repeatable, measurable and sustainable views. When putting dollars behind video projects, make sure you understand exactly how the audience-development component works. You don’t want to pay for views that never actually get watched. And remember, just like with the Tortoise and the Hare, steady and consistent wins out over jackrabbit view spikes every time.
(Jim Louderback is CEO of video network Revision3, and would be happy to help you break the viral video habit – and this post was originally posted on AdAge – Thanks Guys!)
What’s Old is New: App Internet Looks a Lot Like Client-Server
Forrester CEO George Colony just posted up a warning for web-focused companies and strategy – the web is dead, and apps are where it’s at.
I agree with him, as I see an on-rushing shift from dumb cloud-based flat web pages to the exciting, interactive and powerful apps we’re now loading on our phones and tablets.
But this “new world” is, in fact, nothing new. It’s simply the middle tick of a pendulum that’s been madly swinging since the dawn of computing – oscillating between centralized computing and local control. Back in the early nineties we would have called this mid-point client-server computing – the beginning of a decentralized model of building programs that was derailed by HTML and WWW – which were themselves a throwback to mainframe-based timesharing from the dawn of computing.
A little history puts this supposed new trend in perspective, and can offer some guidelines to the power, and pitfalls of the latest pendulum swing.
Back when computing first emerged as ENIAC, the machines were just too expensive for any one person to dominate them. IBM’s mainframe group rose to prominence because they were able to time-share – many, many computing jobs were able to share the same huge machine, each getting a small slice of the system’s resources and processor.
These central systems were controlled by a web of dumb terminals – video screens no smarter than a TV, which sucked, remora-like, off of the tiny time-slices allocated to them. They displayed alphabetic characters, but couldn’t do graphics or indeed any sort of local processing.
Over time those terminals got a bit smarter, and front-end based software began to enable more interactive forms, using software that treated each screen as a panel. In 1974 one of the most popular, ISPF, offered some semblance of local control using locally programmable function keys – which is why we still have them on our PCs today. But all the processing power remained in the central mainframe, or server, or what we might call the cloud today.
Speaking of the personal computer, it exploded onto the scene in the late 70s and early 80s, and represented a complete swing of the pendulum from shared to local control. Early PCs were self-contained units, and used local programs – or applications, to process everything locally. The first age of intelligent local apps dawned, with Multimate, Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and Microsoft Office emerging as big winners. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that PC started routinely connecting to bigger computers and each other via phone-based and local area networking – and the pendulum started swinging backwards.
By the late 80s, networks of PCs were starting to talk to bigger computers, known as servers. A new model of computing developed, where smart front-end programs ran on local PCs, performing much of the processing – but offloading some processing and almost all of their data storage to SQL database servers located either down the hall or across the country.
The client-server model tried to intelligently balance the capabilities of intelligent local machines and the time-sharing model of centralized computing, storage and data manipulation. Ultimately, though, many systems failed due to an inability to scale – transaction queuing and synchronization complexity proved too daunting.
And suddenly the web was upon us. The browser – which was nothing more than early ISPF-style panels front-ending a centralized computer – took off, enabled by a centralized network and a protocol that allowed every computer – and every page (or panel) on the extended network to be linked to every other one.
Thus the last 15 years of computing has been dominated by a very mainframe-like model of relatively unintelligent front-ends (the browser) and smart back ends storing data and containing the complexity. But as the browser has become more complex developers started to take advantage of the power of the client (your Mac or PC), building more complex local apps - aka plug-ins – and the pendulum started swinging back again.
And now we’ve come full-circle. Local, intelligent apps, accessing powerful processes and data storage in the cloud, are the new black. The good news is that we’ve worked through a number of the back-end complexity issues as we built bigger and bigger web servers, and the local vs. cloud process isolation problems are better understood.
I’m a big fan of local applications, because they run faster, allow more creative solutions, and can lead to more intuitive apps. Connect them up to the wide variety of servers on the internet, and you’ve got an even better chance of building something amazing. But it’s nothing new. Screen-scraping, time sharing, client-server, cloud computing, desktop computing, browser-computing and now app-internet are all just ticks on the arc of the pendulum. And that pendulum is finally swinging back to the center.
Remember the other failings of Client-Server? Will the pendulum swing back to completely local control? Let me know what you think in the comments.
YouTube’s Biggest Stars Prepare for World Domination!
Sometimes seminal events that change the course of history are obvious when they happen: the Obama election, for example, or the BP oil spill. Others are only obvious in retrospect. When the Beatles performed on "Ed Sullivan" and in Shea Stadium, who knew music was irreparably changed? Similarly only after Altamont did we realize that Flower Power had wilted.
Last weekend, in the shadow of old-media powerhouse CAA’s L.A. headquarters, the entertainment industry changed forever. Yet few, if any of the old guard were there to mark it.
The baton was passed at a little-heralded event called Vidcon — the first annual gathering of the next generation internet stars born from YouTube, and their passionate fan base. You’ve probably never heard of the stars that met and vlogged, but almost all of them were there — from the pixyish Justine Ezarik (iJustine) to the beguiling Phil DeFranco (sxephil) to luscious Lisa Donovan (LisaNova) to the lovebirds of CTFxC to the oh-so-dreamy Shane Dawson to a baker’s dozen of amazingly talented musicians who are building audiences that rival some of the biggest acts in the country.
The three-day conference celebrated the community and connection between stars and fans, while doling out advice to the up-and-comers and the wannabees. Jump-cut master Ze Frank — the guy who started it all — gave an impassioned talk about the difference between authenticity and popularity. YouTube promised to donate $5 million to help fundinnovative new content, and The Station (YouTube’s version of CSNY, ASIA or The Travelling Willbury’s) wowed the audience with a crazy song-and-dance number that included a bikini-wrapped cross-dresser, guys dressed up as furries, gold-jumpsuited dancers and much more.
It was at once overwhelming and intimate. But the most amazing thing to me was that these new media stars, who collectively deliver more than 50 million views a week, came to the show almost completely alone — without retinue, entourage, sponsors or sycophants. The collective media power in that room surpassed all but a handful of top traditional media stars. Yet no one — apart from their fans, YouTube and a couple of bewildered dads chaperoning their kids — appeared to notice or care.
That will change. When someone like Shane Dawson can drive 3 million views talking about an evil lambchop, or an Annoying Orange regularly commands 5 million views for what appears to be an Adult Swim reject, sooner or later someone is bound to wake up.
But for all their energy and audience, this is still a media in its infancy. This was brought home to me when someone asked the three talented hosts of vlogvetica how they felt about being given a free computer. Their response, which was essentially, "why not take free stuff; it’s not going to compromise me," reveals a disturbing set of ethical standards that could eventually lead to FTC oversight.
But despite growing pains, make no mistake: This is a media that is coming into its own — and has little regard for the trappings or conventions of old media. Few in attendance were concerned about crossing over into traditional TV — and the most creative of the bunch were eagerly pushing the envelope of what’s possible in this new medium.
One of the more engaging announcements was from Dan Brown (Pogobat), who rolled outDan 3.0 — a yearlong experiment where he’ll put his life into the hands of his community (disclosure: Dan launched the show in partnership with my company Revision3). Standing in stark relief against Seth Green’s scripted URule Man — similarly conceived but with writers, directors and "talent" — Brown’s show is 100% authentic, unscripted, and community-powered. The two shows provide an interesting contrast between how Hollywood is trying to spread a patina of community atop its tired formula — complete with big-name actors, sponsors and production partners, while all Brown has is himself, a big idea and a raging community.
I did manage to drag over Mike Vorhaus — who I teasingly call the Father Confessor of the industry, but in reality manages a big part of consulting firm Frank Magid Associates. He was blown away, calling it one of the most important things he’s seen in a long time. As for me, I left the Century City Hyatt humming the top hit from one of the original supergroups, Buffalo Springfield. There’s definitely "something happening here" even if it’s not "exactly clear." Want to know more about Dan 3.0 or the world of Vidcon? Drop me a line: Jim@revision3.com.
From Apple to Zuckerberg: What I Learned At D8
It was the best of interviews, it was the worst of interviews. It was something old, something new, something borrowed and something very blue. It was the 8th version of D:, the conference that brings together the top 1,000 650 people in media and technology, put together by The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D editors, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg.
The conference started off as a love song to Apple’s iPad, a gear crush of epic proportions, kicked off by a wide-ranging interview with Apple’s Steve Jobs. The next two days explored the changing notions of what a computing device really is — or is not — along with a deep dive on Facebook privacy and security, and a surprisingly upbeat exploration of newfangled old media success.
APPLE: But, as I said, it started with Steve Jobs. The Reality Distortion Field was in full swing; Business Insider put together a great list of the top 10 lies from Jobs’ interview. But those aside, I was most intrigued by Jobs’ assertion that we are entering the "post-PC era," as he said the PC would become like a truck — and that only one in every 35 vehicles sold today is a truck. The iPad, iPhone and other mobile devices, in his analogy, are the cars — and he said that only a very few people would use PCs in the near future — just like only a very few of us drive trucks — if you discount all those Ford F-150s, I guess.
Jobs also had an interesting rationale for buying Quattro as well. "We are getting into the ad business because we want to help our developers keep making free or low-cost apps." It’s not for the money. Jobs pointed to Apple research that shows that on phones "people are not spending time searching" — at least not as much as on a PC. Instead, they are using apps to find what they want, like Yelp for a local restaurant, or another application to find out if your plane is late. In Jobs’ view, ads will become an integral part of iPhone and iPad apps, and will enable the developers to continue delivering free or very low-cost apps.
As for other mobile ad servers and platforms? "We think what they are doing sucks," said Jobs. The mobile ad experience is broken, because that ad takes you out of the context of your application — and with iAd they will deliver a rich experience that overlays and then puts you back where you were. Of course if Apple’s devices let more than one program run simultaneously that wouldn’t be a problem. But they don’t support multitasking, except, I guess, if you’re using all Apple products. Jobs also slammed analytics firm Flurry, and vowed to keep iAd closed, at least for now.
But the Apple love fest started winding down when Dell showed off its cool new "Streak" tablet, which combines a phone with a 5" screen. An interesting hybrid, it’s a pocketable tablet that’s far bigger than even the biggest Android phones, with a crisp and bright screen — but one that plays back internet and movie content as well as (or maybe even better than) the iPad.
MICROSOFT: But not until Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage the next day did the iPad hugathon come to a screeching halt. "Mac Trucks," Ballmer sneered, as he attempted to torpedo Jobs’ thesis. "Is the iPad a PC?" Ballmer asked, pointing out that it does pretty much everything a PC does. "You can type on the iPad," he explained, and then dismissed its balky on-screen keyboard in the next breath: "I tried to take notes on one the other day… and that was fun." He went on to insist that the internet just wasn’t really a great experience on phones or small tablets, insisting that "the internet is designed for the PC, optimized for the PC. On the phone, I’m not a PC, I’m a phone." Ballmer also admitted that they hadn’t been doing very well in the mobile software area lately, but promised to change that.
MOVIES — KATZENBERG AND CAMERON: Some very successful old media creators also showed up to share their secrets. James Cameron talked extensively about 3D, and how he might just do another "Avatar" movie in four or five years. Jeffrey Katzenberg spoke longingly about an upcoming Intel architecture called "Knights Corner" that will let them do real-time frame rendering on an artist’s workstation, rather than sending it to a render farm for eight hours of processing. The first movie that Dreamworks makes with this new technology will be out in 2012, and the technology will dramatically change animation. And although he didn’t explicitly say this, just as all chip technology goes from super-expensive to super-cheap, this also means that yet another industry is about to explode, because within five years a kid in Kalamazoo could make "Shrek 5" in his basement over the summer.
MODERN FAMILY: Steve Levitan, the creator and producer of TV’s biggest new hit "Modern Family," showed up and poured water on the whole cross-media concept. He controls every aspect of the "Modern Family" brand, and does not see the benefit of doing web-based tie-ins, websites or anything else — because he just doesn’t see those ancillary media driving show viewership. And that’s because today the only thing that matters to him is overnight ratings, not Hulu, not day three, not DVR. That’s how he is judged.
Levitan is a geek, though, and I was particularly taken with how the show team uses Twitter as an immediate feedback loop. When "Modern Family" airs live, the show team watches the audience "laughing on Twitter." He called it "Google Mirth," and thinks that social networks are "bringing people back to watching TV live (because) they want to participate in that program."
LlOYD BRAUN: As a northern California type, I had always been dismissive of Lloyd Braun’s Yahoo tenure, thinking it was the perfect example of how Hollywood and Silicon Valley just don’t mix. I was wrong. He just couldn’t do what he wanted within the stuffy confines of Yahoo. The success of Wonderwall and Glo on MSN have been nothing short of genius, and Braun spoke passionately about how you "bring brands to life in the digital world. It’s not scripted TV," he insisted, "you can’t think of it as television." Instead they’ve been focusing on building big scalable brands in "what is a very different medium." It was fascinating watching his ex-Yahooligans grill him, from top sales guy Greg Coleman to one of his early direct reports, Craig Forman. "This is the stuff I tried to do at Yahoo," Braun explained, but couldn’t because that company’s priorities were more around search than content — at least while he was there. His most damning line about his tenure, which he claimed to really love: "I can do it better as an entrepreneur on the outside"
There was tons more, from a fascinating look into the future of mobile chips, gadgets and phones from Qualcomm CEO Paul Roberts to Demand Media CEO Rich Rosenblatt defending journalism, while saying "We think we’re not disruptive, we’re an enabler." Rosenblatt denied that he was actually practicing journalism, however, instead preferring to call it "content creation." WebTV founder Steve Perlman finally showed off his new project, OnLive, which promises to stream console and PC games from the cloud to any device, including iPads, phones and TVs. The demo was amazing, but ex-Business Week columnist Steve Wildstrom poured cold water on it, saying "I can’t get excited by another Perlman demo, because I’ve seen so many that promised so much, but never arrived." The conference itself was extremely well run, insightful and consistently high quality — as Mossberg and Swisher seem to be really hitting their stride.
Oh yeah, and some guy named Zuckerberg melted down on stage and started babbling like a fool. But you’ve probably already heard about that one.
Location-Based Social Networking: All Fun and Games Until Your Kids Get Involved
I’ve been having a blast with Foursquare, checking in to new locations, finding my friends on the go, and exploring this new type of social networking.
But it changed from fun and frivolous to scary and threatening when my young son got involved. And it caused me to overreact a little too – although in that protective parental way.
Here’s what happened: My son goes to a school in the little northern California town we live in – one not known for its preponderance of socially connected millennials. So one day when I dropped him off at the playground, I created his school as a location on the popular geo-social-net foursquare, and checked in. I checked in again the next day and became mayor: Foursquare confers mayoral status on the person who checks in the most during a set amount of time, along with other secret criteria known only to them.
It was no surprise that I was easily able to grab the mayorship, since the parents at the school are not – for the most part – the foursquare demographic.
All was well and good for a few weeks until I was suddenly dethroned. Aha, I thought, maybe my little town’s not as much of a backwater as I thought. But then I did a little research into who usurped me – along with a somewhat digital-savvy parent and friend, and what we found was concerning.
Turns out the new mayor, from what I could see, was a real FourSquare pro. He’d amassed more than 40 badges – awards Foursquare gives out for certain behaviors, and in this case those awards included:
· Crunked – 4+ stops in one night
· Player Please – Look at you checking in with 3 members of the opposite sex
· Animal House – Off the Wagon Appreciates Your Business, COLLEGE!
· Douchebag – Doublepop that collar son
· Hookup – Two different hotels? This is Austin, not the Jersey Shore! (though you made The Situation proud)
Along with a variety of other Austin, Texas specific badges. This guy was definitely a foursquare playa.. he also earned the Super Mayor badge as well, for holding down 10 or more of these mayorships simultaneously.
And of those 10, almost all of them were in Austin – the only bay area ones (along with my son’s school) were “Underwater and ON THE MOON”, and Firefly Restaurant.
Oh, and his profile picture, included here, was not one to inspire confidence in a couple of suddenly suspicious Dads. Who was this crazy, bar and bed-hopping guy from Austin? Why was he mayor of OUR school?
I suspected that he was just gaming the system to amass mayorships, badges and street cred. But what if he wasn’t? What if he really was a creepy guy who liked to hang around our kids’ school?
So I found him on twitter and sent out a tweet with his handle embedded, wondering publicly if he was a pedophile or if this was just a foursquare bug.
Turns out, much to my embarrassment, that he was actually a parent at our school, and his step-son was in my son’s class! I felt awful – and apologized profusely (and do so again here) for over-reacting and calling him out.
So yeah, I was a moron for going over the edge. But what would you do in a similar situation? This guy and I weren’t friends, had never met, yet I could easily penetrate the veil of Foursquare and find out what he’d been doing, read his twitter feed, peruse his Facebook profile, and check out all those incriminating badges. They all painted a plausible, although ultimately incorrect impression of someone that I really didn’t want within 500 yards of my son.
This tale is, in part, yet another log thrown on the privacy bonfire. But in this case it’s not about Facebook. It’s about locations, kids, parents, safety, and what your combined online persona says about you.
I’m convinced that our school’s “mayor” is a nice, warm and loving father. But from everything I saw that day, he seemed to be a shifty, creepy Texan with an unhealthy obsession with a small-town school on the coast of California.
All this social networking, checking in, badges, awards and profiles are all fun and games until your kids get involved. Then it gets personal. And ugly.
On a macro level, it gets scary too. It’s simple to find all the schools in any given place. Just change your Foursquare location to a city or town, and put “school” in the search box. I just did, and found 50 venues within a few miles of my home, ranging from Noah’s Ark Preschool to 12 elementary and middle schools. Perhaps I can win the Pedophile Badge by becoming mayor of all of them.
5 Things the IAWTV Needs To Do NOW To Avoid An Epic Fail
So next week the IAWTV board is planning on meeting in LA with its members to let them “voice (their) thoughts about recent events”.
“Recent Events” being a code word for the disastrous Streamy Awards last month. From what I can tell, the meeting is designed to give the IAWTV board, and chairman Michael Wayne, latitude to engulf and devour the Streamy Awards. I want nothing to do with this charade, as I think it is ill-timed and misguided, and frankly I have better things to do with my time and travel budget.
The fallout from the April 9th Streamy Awards has been swift and severe. The machinations behind the scenes have been equally bizarre. First IAWTV chairman Michael Wayne posted an apology about the awards on April 12th – an apology that has seemingly disappeared from the site (but you can still see a cached Google version here.). Behind the scenes, Wayne and the board were trying to take over the Streamy Awards program, started by Brady DeForest, Josh Cohen and a handful of other Tubefilter employees. Their pitch to keep the Streamys independent is laid out here, along with an entertaining set of comments. They even launched a site called Rebuild the Trust designed to lay out their proposal for what the Streamy Awards should be.
How disappointing. We’ve gone from high school irresponsibility to kindergarten name calling. Frankly, I will not be attending the meeting in LA, because I’m tired of wasting my time on an organization that seems more interested in Kremlin-style palace intrigue, and throwing big parties, rather than moving our industry forward.
This incessant prattling and obsession with an awards show is putting the cart before the horse. Awards shows are earned, not created. If the IAWTV wants to earn the right to celebrate the industry with an awards show, it first needs to develop legitimacy as an industry organization, and that is done by helping our adolescent media be taken seriously. Red carpets, parties and stunningly bad stage shows, all are irrelevant to building a healthy and growing media that should take its rightful place next to television, radio, print and interactive.
So that’s what we should NOT be doing. What should the IAWTV focus on? Here are five key challenges that we need to solve TODAY, before we can take our product to the next level of respectability:
- Viewer Trust: Bloggers have already been taken to task by the FTC in its recent Endorsement guidelines. Disclosure rules are mandated when money changes hands between brands and bloggers. Well guess what? The internet video industry has an even bigger problem here. I regularly listen to branded entertainment producers who boast about how they integrated a sponsor into their video so sublimely that the audience only subconsciously perceived the brand. That’s just wrong. If you don’t disclose, you risk destroying the audience’s trust – and that distrust can quickly move from one online video creator to all online video producers. We desperately need content ethics guidelines that we can publish, and all follow.
- Advertiser Trust: Here’s a dirty little secret of the online video industry: Advertisers are not getting what they’re paying for. Stream fraud is rampant – some think that more than 30% of all online video advertising is fraudulently delivered. These issues take a number of forms, including autoplay of pre-rolls below the fold with audio muted, to advertisers running on non-approved, bogus or non-brand safe sites, to out and out lying about how many videos were served.
- Viewership Numbers: How do you count a video view? Is it when that video starts playing – whether autoplay or user initiated? Or when the entire video has been consumed? What about half a video, or 10%. Our current standard in the industry is play start, which means that you only need to watch an instant of an hour long video for it to be called a “view”. I think that’s wrong, but everyone seems to have a different opinion as to what counts as a view and a viewer. The TV industry has ceded its control over viewership to Nielsen. Their viewership numbers are a fiction, but one that everyone subscribes to. Comscore, Neilsen and many others are trying to own this space, to dictate what a view is. We need to get out in front and drive this process.
- Encoding Standards and Video Codecs: Let’s come up with some standard guidelines on standard video sizes and codecs, so that we all don’t have to reinvent the wheel when we re-encode. At the same time, why not work with the MPEGLA, open source and other codec vendors to get favorable terms or other insight in exchange for official recognition. The H.264 codec we’re all using to encode our videos will someday – maybe soon – require license payments. That could be devastating. We have leverage as an organization; codecs and encoding standards are a huge deal, and we’re doing nothing about it.
- Build an Inclusive Organization: Finally, and this is the toughest one of all, the IAWTV and the Streamys need to move from an insular clique to an inclusive organization. Right now, the vast majority of the nominees and winners of the Streamys, and those invited to participate, are friends or clients of the IAWTV board of directors. If you’re not part of that inner circle, you’re not part of the group – and you won’t win an award. Take the tremendously successful video creators who are plying the waters of YouTube – and building audiences 100 times bigger than most of the IAWTV inner circle while making real money. They were virtually ignored at the Streamy Awards, and have not been represented at IAWTV meetings either. That’s just stupid wrong, and smacks of both elitism and desperation.
I’m not just complaining without action either. I’ve repeatedly offered to create a content ethics policy for the organization to debate and adopt – I’m actually already halfway done. I’m currently working with a number of industry players, along with the IAB, to build online video advertising transparency guidelines. And I am constantly lobbying Comscore and other research organizations about the best way to define a view.
I would love to see the IAWTV become a strong and effective force to move our industry forward in these and other areas. But this incessant backbiting, sophomoric name-calling and inability to focus on what’s important are pulling the group apart. So IAWTV board, I call on you to refocus on what’s important, and leave the awards program aside for a few years. Award shows – like awards – have to be earned, not taken. And right now, the IAWTV is earning no awards in my book.
Apps or Pipes Define the Future of Cable
I recently heard a top cable exec argue that the current cable TV business model is sound, robust, and primed for the future. His bullish rationale was that the dual revenue stream works great for everyone. Content providers get carriage fees and advertising revenue, while cable double dips with subscription fees and advertising revenue too.
Yes, it is a cozy little relationship, isn’t it. But he left out one very important constituency – the customer. And history shows that when technology enables customers to get what they want, how they want it, for less, inevitably they get their way.
The internet is all about unbundling. Newspapers and magazines have been unbundled – why pay for the whole thing, when you can just read the articles you want online for free? Music has been unbundled – why buy a CD with 11 crappy songs for 15 bucks when you can just buy the good one for 99 cents? Even TV shows are unbundling. Why suffer through the whole show when you can just catch Letterman’s top 10 list at CBS.com, or the funny bits of Saturday Night Live on Hulu or YouTube?
Cable TV is next. Why should I pay $75 or more for 500 live channels when I only watch around 15 regularly? That works out to around $5 a channel, a month, by the way, a princely sum that only ESPN, HBO and Showtime meet or exceed from cable ops – and ultimately customers. But I pay for those 500 channels via affiliate fees, meaning I support ESPN, Comedy, Disney and Nickelodeon – which I’m happy to pay for – along with Hallmark, FoxNews, Animal Planet, and 482 others I couldn’t care less about.
And that unbundling is already starting, especially among the millennial audience we target here at Revision3. Many are cutting the cord, and moving to an on-demand ala-carte world, enabled by new types of devices and services. I just did a round-up of over these new over-the-top boxes for a panel at the most recent Ad:tech, and the progress has been amazing.
Roku’s steller $99 box now offers a wide range of independent channels (including Revision3), along with Netflix, Amazon and sports channels from baseball’s MLB and basketball’s NBA. I also had a chance to preview upcoming set-tops from Boxee and Syabas as well, and they are equally impressive – adding in support for YouTube, CNN and many other mainstream channels and services.
I’m already saving more than a hundred dollars, and getting more to boot, by dropping just one premium service and going ‘net. I used to pay more than $200 annually to DirecTV so I could watch 3-4 NY Mets games at home in San Francsico (I know, I’m a masochist). But with the MLB’s new on-demand streaming service – coupled with a simple yet effective channel app on either Boxee and Roku – I now can stream every Mets game each week in full HD. It looks amazing on my 52” LCD TV – only a purist would notice the very slight quality downgrade compared to DirecTV’s heavily stepped on signal.
And this is just the beginning. Just as magazines and newspapers are embracing the new App World, TV networks will begin to do so as well. What’s keeping HBO, Showtime or Epix, for instance, from creating their own Netflix-like channel, complete with a paid subscription model? I’ll wager a princely sum that programmers inside each of those organizations are feverishly coding up apps that work across those platforms.
And if they work there, you know they’ll be modified for the iPad, iPhone, Android and elsewhere. Because in the end, apps and pipes are the future of content. Consumers don’t need cable. They will pay for content – but only enough to support what they really want. We’re moving to a “best screen available” model, where consumers are going to want to watch what they want, when they want, on whatever screen is around right NOW. And programmers will have to adapt or become marginalized.
In five years we’ll be installing apps from our favorite content providers that work across big-screen TVs (via Roku, Boxee, Syabas, or some sort of embedded TV client), our computers, tablets and smart phones. Heck, it could even be delivered via the old-fashioned 750Mhz cable plant – more than one multi-channel service is readying an app store for their set-top boxes that could take the place of today’s bundles.
We’ll also be paying for some sort of transmission, whether it’s broadband at home and 4G on the go – or some sort of bundled WiMax service that does it all.
We’ll buy programming from the providers directly, and pipes and plumbing from someone else. And that’s the future of cable companies. They can optimize for delivery, and build out a best-of-breed network that delivers high bandwidth to the home, and high availability on the go. They can snap up programmers that have a proven ability to deliver both high quality programming and compelling applications. Or they can do both. They just can’t continue to rely on a business model that’s built on scarcity when that scarcity no longer exists.
(This originally appeared on Business Insider, where a nice long comment stream is happening)
What, Exactly, Is a TV?
According to the latest release from Nielsen Wire, the average American home has 2.93 TV sets, a jump from 2.86 TV sets in 2009.
I’m sure glad they didn’t ask me to participate in that survey, because I’m not sure how I’d answer. But to help out the good folks at Nielsen, here’s how I’d try.
Let’s see. First, there’s the TV in the family room. It’s a 52-inch Westinghouse LCD, definitely a TV because it has an over-the-air (ATSC) TV tuner that’s not used, along with built-in speakers. It’s connected to a DirecTV satellite receiver — along with an Xbox 360, Wii, and a Sony Blu-Ray DVD player. I get "TV" via the DirecTV receiver, but I also get TV shows on the 360, Netflix on the Wii and Blu-Ray player, and YouTube on that Blu-Ray player. We’ll count that as a "one."
Moving on to the kitchen, we’ve got a 19-inch LCD TV, with built-in speakers and an ATSC TV tuner, again, that’s like a wing on a penguin. It lacks any classic "TV" sources, but it is connected to an Apple TV that is mostly used for Boxee — and through which I watch baseball games and other "TV" programs, purchased from Amazon or streamed via Boxee’s service. Is that a "TV"? It has a TV tuner, yet it isn’t used. But yeah, it’s probably a TV. So that’s two.
It gets a little harder when we move to the living room. There we’ve got a 32-inch LCD monitor that lacks any sort of over-the-air tuner at all, but does include built-in speakers. It is connected to another DirecTV HD receiver. Is that a TV? It’s used to watch NBC, ABC, Disney, MTV and the like — mostly on-demand, via the built-in DVR. But the set lacks a TV tuner — not that I’d actually ever use one, because I mostly detest live TV. But because it is used to watch traditional broadcast and cable, we’ll call that a "TV" too. We’re up to three.
Let’s go back to the bedroom. There we’ve got another LCD TV, an older Gateway model, which includes a TV tuner, but only the older, obsolete analog type. It’s got a Panasonic Blu-Ray player hooked up to it, which is used to watch movies on disc, but also TV shows and movies via Netflix, along with baseball and independent web TV shows like ours from Revision3 on that Roku. Is that a "TV"? I’m guessing yes, because it actually does have a TV tuner, and includes integrated speakers. Four.
Dropping downstairs to the office it gets even more confusing. There I’ve got a 42-inch Panasonic plasma display that lacks speakers and a TV tuner. It’s essentially a big computer monitor. Yet it mostly displays shows from DirecTV, along with games and video via a PS3 and another Roku. It’s a bit of a gray area, but yeah, let’s call it a TV. Now we’re up to five.
Out in the garage is another conundrum — a 24-inch computer monitor that’s clearly not a TV. But it’s also connected to a DirecTV receiver, along with my garage computer. Sometimes it displays TV, sometimes Windows. What’s that? A half a TV, half a PC? Sure, I’ll go with that.
But what about my office computer? It’s definitely not a TV, because it is used mostly for work (and some games). But I’ve got an external HDTV tuner connected to it, via a USB connection, and I use Windows Media Center to record broadcast HD shows — mostly NFL football games in season. Is that a TV? What about the three notebook computers we have that each run the DirecTV2PC software, which streams shows from the satellite DVR to those notebooks via my home network. Are they TVs?
Now we’re up to 10, for a house of three. A bit excessive? Yes, but I haven’t even started counting the smartphones, iPads and other "screens" that will be increasingly littering my house, and capable of playing "TV" of one form or another.
So yes, I definitely think the number is increasing. But if you count everything capable of displaying a video signal, streamed from a hard drive, satellite, cable or IP connection, that number will grow and grow and grow.
I’m glad I’m not the one doing the survey. Because I got me some TV to watch!
Top 10 Reasons Why Internet TV Won’t be Like Regular TV
I was lucky enough to be part of a really fun panel at last week’s Ad:Tech, focused on the funniest people on the internet. Hosted by Kevin Nalts (Nalty), it was a rollicking hour-long look at great emerging web stars. But to kick it off, we put together a top 10 list, ala David Letterman. So with apologies to Worldwide Pants, here’s the top 10 list we put together…
| 10 | On TV: 7 Clones of Modern Family… |
| On the web we’ve got a Gay Leprechaun | |
| 9 | On the internet you can actually WAIT until your show is over to go to the bathroom.. |
| Heck you can actually take the show with you in to the crapper.. | |
| 8 | LOLcats are cuter than Snooki! |
| 7 | TV’s best presidential impersonator: Dana Carvey. On the web…. It’s Alphacat! |
| 6 | No actual talent required! |
| 5 | On the internet we don’t have writers’ strikes… Heck, we don’t even have wrighters! |
| 4 | We’re trading grimy old analog dollar bills for shiny new digital dimes! |
| 3 | On television, innovation goes through Cable Labs. On the web its all up to Steve Jobs! |
| 2 | On TV when your show’s cancelled it’s over.. |
| In the internet it lives forever.. And ever.. And ever.. And ever! | |
| 1 | On TV it’s three men and a baby. On the internet we’ve got 2 girls, one cup |
Moving On From the Streamy Fail
I wanted to take a day to think about the disaster that was Sunday night’s Streamy Awards, before penning my thoughts on the dreadful event.
David Samuels from KoldCastTV , iJustine, Barrett Garese, Jace Hall and many others on Twitter have already shared their thoughts on the misogynistic, puerile, protracted and poorly executed event. Heck, in the aftermath, some predicted that it spelled doom for the nascent internet video industry, that we had so hoisted ourselves on our own petard of idiotic, juvenile jokes that we were unlikely to recover for years – if ever.
But after fulminating, ruminating and pondering, I’m not so sure. In fact, this might be just the systemic shock we need as an industry to finally grow up.
Let’s face it, we’re a young industry. Born just five years ago, even last year’s first Streamy event was more like the tentative steps of a toddler than the confident strides of a tween. But in one year we seem to have (aged) from cautious kiddie to full-blown adolescence, with all the attendant pain, suffering and ultimately growth that that awkward age brings.
As I searched for metaphors to describe last night’s carnage, I ultimately realized that it seemed most like a precocious teen, newly minted learners permit in hand, borrowing the family car for the night – and promptly wrapping it around the tree.
The Orpheum theater had all the hallmarks of a classic awards programs thrown by our elders, including Oscar, Emmy and Grammy. With red carpet, two humongous jib-cameras, five additional cameras, and a fabulous looking audience. The location has hosted numerous awards shows in the past, so it seemed ideal for the job.
Unfortunately, the evening quickly went downhill from the start, with technical glitches, directorial miscues, a torrent of dirty sex jokes that only reinforced the (wrongful) impression that we’re only about sex and sleaze, and a monologue that went beyond poking fun at the industry and was more like a spit in the face. And then there were two buck-naked streakers, flashing their dangly bits for all to see, that put the icing on the biscuit.
Yes, like an adolescent, the Streamys reached too far, attempted to do too much, and veered horribly off course. We know better, the producers seemed to say, as they flouted conventional wisdom by trying to load in, build sets and launch without setting aside a day for rehearsals. I’m not sure how the steady stream of bad-boy vulgarity got approved, but clearly someone was asleep at the wheel here as well.
So we wrecked Dad’s car. And there will be repercussions. We’ve got to repair the damage we caused, take responsibility for our actions, and make both amends and reparations.
We’re grounded, certainly, for at least six months. During that time we need to reflect on our actions, find new resolve to do the right thing, and do what we do best: develop and launch a broad array of entertaining and informative shows, build new audiences and communities, and strive to put this accident behind us. We’ve got a lot of trust to rebuild, with the sponsors who had their names and brands attached to the event, to the show creators and supporters who abandoned the theater mid-way through the four-hour show in disgust, and the viewing public.
But just as teens tend to learn the most from hard lessons and abject failures, our adolescent industry will come to a new maturity from this. We’ll take our lumps, learn our lessons, and not fall prey to hubris, over-reaching, insolence and potty-mouth humor. Well, at least less of the latter.
Because next year’s Streamy Awards will be better, I know. Growing up is hard; an uneven, rocky road. But often the best adults come from the most unruly, and irresponsible kids. The web TV industry has a lot of growing up to do – but in the end we’ll be a better industry because of it.
(star wars pix from Jace Hall, car from http://failblog.org/)