Think Forward

Why do I pay for advertising supported television?

I was having a conversation the other day with one of our clients around the future of television. We were all talking about observations we have all made about the broadcast industry and where we think it is going. I came away from the conversation confused about the paradox in which we find ourselves with most of America. We pay money, most people $50 or more, for something that was once free and the experience has not changed. Think about that, it used to be free that is where advertising came in to subsidize the broadcast costs. So TV was free but advertising supported. However now we pay for almost exactly the same thing, over 70% of the most common channels are the main networks, and we still see ads.

So I am asking the question to what I am paying for and why do I see ads if I am paying for it. This I believe will be a driving factor as digital TV becomes the standard. New services will show up that we pay for because of the value of brings. Advertisers will need to get creative if they want to get our attention in the future.

Celebrity User Generated Content

I have been saying for a while then when an actor, especially comedians, decide to do their own UGC that it would be huge. I had brought this up in panels and other speaking engagements well over a year ago and the example I always used was Will Ferrell. Well wait no longer the day has come at www.funnyordie.com. The video on the homepage is one made with Will Ferrell and it is simple UGC. The brilliance of this is that it clearly cost almost nothing to make. The site launched just over a week ago and this particular video has already had over 7 Million views.

Now if I am Will Ferrell I should be asking myself "how can I monetize this." It took virtually no time or money to make and I am sure he is filled with tremendously funny ideas for shorts. He is already a brand and already has a huge fan base with no where to go to get their fill of him. Imagine that he creates this content and has companies give him money for product placement or something even more creative. The possibilities are endless for someone like Will Ferrell to make massive amounts of revenue off something like his own UGC.

This for a celebrity also has incredible brand awareness and marketing potential. The main reason that an actor/actress can generate such high movie salaries is because of their brand awareness. Notice when a certain actor is hot how many movies they seem to show up in some 2 or 3 a year or more. When the public awareness of a actor/actress is high movie producers want to capitalize on their public awareness. So someone like Will Ferrell can use his own UGC content to keep his public awareness high and fan base engaged which in the end will lead to a maintaining of the steep fees he can command to be in a film or even raise them higher.

Let's use an example. Imagine he had Willferrell.com, which he can't cause some yahoo already owns it, and willferrell.com gets 20million visitors a month. A studio would look at that and do the math and figure at least 20 million people are going to go see a film he is in. This is amazingly powerful and incredibly easy for Will Ferrell to do.

I believe this also holds true for the music industry. There are so many artists out there that it is absolutely essential to spend massive amounts of marketing dollars before dropping a CD to bring an artist back into the public eye. Why not keep that artist engaged with fans online in new and creative ways so that they never loose their fan/public awareness thus making marketing easier, promotion easier and basically guarantee sales.

This is how the entertainment industry needs to view new media and the power of the internet. As the single greatest marketing and promotional engine they have ever had in the history of their industry.

Interactivity will be a KEY feature of IPTV

I have spent much time thinking about IPTV these past few month's. It seems just about all of my clients have been asking some very interesting questions about IPTV and sent me out on a quest to gather all the relevant info. This is good timing to be doing some forward thinking thought around IPTV because a lot of people still don't really understand what it is or what the value will be. I myself had been digging for a series of features that would actually draw me away from cable and over to IPTV. We are still a ways out from a pure IPTV solution. Even the mild offerings we will see from AT&T and others are light on the IPTV side and heavy on the Satellite side. So as I have been watching TV lately I have been asking myself, if I this were IPTV what would be different. I came up with a lot of answers, which I will outline in a later post. One of the differences that I am particularly excited about is around sports. I am a pretty big sports fan and like to know as much about what is happening in the sporting world as possible. I am also a big fantasy sports player and like to know precisely how my fantasy team is doing at that moment in time with real time updates. One of the things I think will be great around sports will be the ability to watch the sporting event but simultaneously be able to navigate sports news, fantasy updates and any number of things I am interested in while still watching the game of my choice. This is particularly interesting in the slower sports like baseball, which is my favorite, where this is a lot of dead time. To be able to get highlights, news updates, fantasy updates, scores updates and more would be terrific. As well as be able to quickly dig deeper on any bit of information you wish to know more about or even watch it. The beauty of these new set top boxes around Sat and IPTV is that just that is possible. So the scenario is, and this is just one of many, that I am watching the SF Giants game on my TV. My set top box is feeding me personalized sports info every little bit. Similar to the ESPN sports tracker that continually runs scores and updates but this info is personalized to me. I use the Internet to set up my preferences, which would include players on my fantasy teams and leagues. All of this info would be fed to me on my TV, because I want it to, and I would have the ability to dig into any info I want and even watch my fantasy player highlights. All while the game I was watching either paused or minimized if it was a commercial, etc. This level of interactivity deeply enhances my TV watching experience. As new models of TV viewing are rolled out by cable companies, Satco’s and Teleco’s we can not expect to see actually TV shows distributed through the Internet to replace Satellite and Cable any time soon but we can expect to have levels of interactivity and compelling information that is user specified to enhance our TV watching experience. They will use the Internet for what is was created for which is information and interactivity. These first rollouts will use the Internet more as a way to acquire content services like Movielink, MovieBeam or Cinema Now and enhance users experiences rather then actually distribute TV over the Internet. I actually think this is good and will clearly outline the benefits in ways consumers can understand and in the end leads to better competition.