The Digitalists

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Posts Tagged ‘online video’

Who is online video advertising’s game changer?

Posted by Daniel Granof on March 11, 2010

A few interesting advertising stats:

  • Global Ad Business in 2010:  $544 billion
  • The average city dweller gets 51,000 ad messages per day
  • Cost of 30-second spot on American Idol:  $750,000
  • 4 global companies buy 80% of advertising
  • Ad spends by industry:
    • Food:  $3.2 billion
    • Cars:  $15 billion
    • Political:  $2.6 billion

These figures, which paint a simple but enlightening portrait of  the ad industry, appeared onscreen throughout the film Art&Copy, a documentary on great ad campaigns and the legends behind them (trailer above).  In the movie, the ad creators tell fascinating stories behind some of the most famous commercials of all time, several of which were almost nixed by nervous clients.   They included Macintosh’s “1984″ Super Bowl Ad (Lee Clow of Chiat\Day, directed by Ridley Scott!), Alka Seltzer’s “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz”  jingle (Mary Wells), Nike’s “Just Do It” (Dan Wieden and David Kennedy), “I Want My MTV” (George Lois), and “Got Milk?” (Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby, directed by Michael Bay!).

A common theme among these successes was Read the rest of this entry »

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CPM watch: major video site getting $20-25

Posted by Daniel Granof on February 26, 2010

The other day I met with the head of a well-known site that publishes lots of videos (viral and series).  He said they are getting $20-25 CPMs for some of their pre-rolls.  For reference:  at that rate a single video getting 100,000 views makes $2,000.  So if you can sell an advertiser on long-tail viewing of a bunch of your videos and provide significant reach, you’re not doing too badly.

By the way, when I brought up rumors of Hulu getting $40, he suggested that the figure covers all of a sponsor’s ads within an episode, not just a single spot.  Is there anyone who can confirm that that’s how it works?

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SAG: give your content away for free, but not your acting

Posted by Daniel Granof on February 11, 2010

Sort of the same old at a panel and networking event I attended last night at the Screen Actors Guild, put on by Digital LA.  Meant to teach SAG actors as well as producers, directors, and writers about the how-tos of doing online video, it covered well-trodden ground, almost as if it we time-warped back to February 2009.  To a person, the panelists all advocated getting your series up on the web, marketing it 24/7 to build a meaningful audience, and then seeking partnerships that monetize the eyeballs.

The most interesting moment for me came during Q&A.  An actor putting out a web series told of how she got all her friends to work for free as crew and asked, so is it okay to use SAG actors and have them work for free?  Mark Friedlander of SAG’s new media department responded by promoting SAG’s fantastic and simple new media agreement that producers can use to negotiate in place of the union’s arduous processes meant for large TV and film studios.  But when the moderator followed up by asking, “So can actors work for free?” he responded, “No, not for free.”

The paradox between subject matter and location crystallized right then.   SAG hosts a panel advocating the “build it and they will come” model, but apparently it doesn’t have the same faith in such a model for its actors.  You can’t blame SAG for that position since its mission is to protect actors.  But it does highlight a kind of NIMBY phenomenon in online video.  Everyone says, “You give your stuff away for free, but of course I’ve got to get paid.”  Not exactly a sustainable, long-term ecosystem.

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NYTimes blesses high online video CPMs, whatever they are

Posted by Daniel Granof on November 13, 2009

Trying to find actual CPMs is like being the pilot in that old helicopter joke about Microsoft .  Everyone tells you something about them (i.e. rising, falling, staying the same) without really providing any actual numbers.  Very few people know what CPM an advertiser is really paying or provide any sense of context to that number, making useful economic analysis difficult.

Case in point:  Brian Stelter’s recent New York Times article reporting that online “video ads are booming” for major news sites.    The news sites are supposedly seeing higher CPMs for their video, the article says.  But the only hard data provided is for WSJ.com:  its current rate card lists $75 (advertisers usually pay less than the rate card), up from $50 one year ago.  Of course, 2 years ago its rate card supposedly listed $90, so the trend is not exactly clear.

A few months ago Business Week revealed that Hulu was currently charging an average of $40, down from $50 at some point in the past, while Yahoo! and MSN were charging “half that,” or $20, and YouTube and video ad networks CPMs were still lower. Read the rest of this entry »

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Online Video: Going Mainstream Faster Than Anyone Predicted

Posted by Dan Sachar on January 29, 2009

In the NYTimes today, David Pogue reviews the number of ways NetFlix is now bringing its “Watch Now” service to your TV. What began with 1,000 movies and was only available on PCs, now has 12,000 movies and can be delivered to your PC, Mac, or your television via TiVo, XBox, or Samsung Blu-Ray players (with more deals certain to come). This is just one more example that online video – by which I mean long-form, full-length films and/or TV – is going mainstream faster than anyone predicted.

In particular, I’m thinking of an incident at my most recent job which happened about 6 months ago. I was managing the digital media department for a small cable TV network (which has since suffered a premature demise). My company brought in an esteemed researcher of all things media-related. He conducted an exhaustive survey of online video habits and came to the conclusion that no one is consuming long-form video online and wouldn’t for 5-7 years. In fact, he went so far as to say that the best use of the Internet for content providers was to dole out small, 30-second, promotional pieces that encouraged “tune-in” on-air.

I was stunned. I disagreed with his conclusion. I told him so. Repeatedly. In fact, my colleagues were giving me strange looks throughout the discussions, looks that said, “Dan, you’re getting pretty heated here, maybe you should take it easy.” I will admit that it maybe wasn’t my finest hour when it came to interpersonal diplomacy, but I was passionate about the subject. He was delivering to my company a preposterously dated conclusion based on flawed methodology (more on that below). This was the 2nd half of 2008 and we were being advised that it was to be 5-7 years before anyone watches full-length video online and that content providers should use the Internet to encourage on-air tune-in? Researchers, and almost everyone, have fallen short of the mark in predicting the growth of long-form online video, which is happening much faster than most would believe.

Read the rest of this entry »

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