Marketing.com.au would like to thank Davin Broadbent from Creativa Web Videos for taking the time to share this insightful article on the digital content revolution.
Lessons To Be Learned From The Music Industry Versus Internet
The Internet is, as we can all probably agree, a fairly invasive and pervasive medium. Back in the 90’s when the Internet made the sharing and consumption of MP3 files popular and easy, far from recognising and adapting to this new trend in consumer behaviour, the record labels cried “Piracy” and then closed their eyes, put their fingers in their ears, stamped their feet hoping the Internet would just go away.
Well let’s just say that recent figures released by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), show that sales rose by 0.3% in 2012 and while this seems less than impressive, you have to understand that the industry hasn’t seen ANY growth since 1999. Any guesses as to what lead the upswing? Of course it was YouTube and stars like Psy, Justin Beiber, Carly Rae Jepsen and even Gotye. Of course the music industry didn’t spend the last 14 years throwing a tantrum, they did spend quite a bit of time innovating, transforming themselves and learning how to meet the needs of their consumers and hopefully this is now starting to pay off.
Surely the television industry has learned something from the undignified behaviour of its older sibling? From consumer preferences to the way that video content is packaged and sold, we the people are finally being offered a real choice and I am certain that executives in the television networks are taking notice.
The thing is, television is and has been the holy grail for marketing and advertising for a long time and in most countries the limited channels (let’s not get into cable) are controlled by a select few. The cost of production is (rightly) high and advertising costs put this medium out of reach to most small companies. So with viewers of the Super Bowl hitting around 150,000,000 in the US alone it sounds fair to charge almost $4 million for 30 seconds of TV air time right? Well, maybe not…
Above the line, TV networks control the content, online however there are hundreds of sites, channels and videos with Super Bowl like numbers, all of which provide an affordable and targeted advertising opportunity and let’s not forget the content part of the revolution.
Production companies are already shifting their focus online and the unique opportunity exists online for organisations to create their own content to feed the mill. Branded content online is opening up a whole new category for marketers and with the recent approval of 5 new online video ad formats by the IAB the future is looking bright for advertisers too.
So eventually viewers will choose between a medium that forces you to watch programs at inconvenient times and broadcasts an ever increasing amount of non targeted, non-measurable advertising. Or a medium that offers variety and convenience plus ads that you are actually interested in.
As marketers and advertisers we need to advise our clients where they will get the best return on investment and quickly work out the best way to capitalise on the growing audience demand for video online.