Digital Advertising: The Bad and The Ugly
Digital advertising can be a total cesspool. In fact, the last decade or so has been a study in how advertisers can create advertising that makes the general public hate advertising even more than they already did, which is no small feat. Last post, I talked about how advertising online isn’t vastly different from advertising in other spaces, so how did things get so bad?
The first thing to understand about advertising in the digital space is just how many opportunities there are to advertise, which makes modern media planning a potential nightmare. Of course, every major evolution in publishing has been accompanied by a more complex landscape in which to purchase advertising space. For example, buying advertising space in magazines used to be much simpler: there were only a handful of magazines that were read all around the country. Publishers discovered that there was money to be made in appealing to niche markets, and in a relatively short period of time, the number of magazines looking for advertising ballooned to several hundred. This happened again in the world of television. When television was restricted to a handful of major networks that broadcast over the airwaves, the available number of ad units up for sale was relatively small. When cable exploded in popularity, the number of stations offering ad units jumped into the hundreds. In both cases, advertisers adapted to the changes by researching these new outlets and adding them to their tool kit when considering ad buys. The problem with applying this tactic to the Internet is that the number of webpages looking to sell ad space didn’t balloon up from a handful to a couple hundred, it exploded into the millions.
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Digital Advertising: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
Digital is one of the biggest buzzwords sweeping the advertising world these days. From music and movies, to phone apps and social media sites, people conduct their day’s work, relaxation, and social life through some kind of digital outlet. Naturally, if an advertiser wants to reach the audience they have become accustomed to in television, radio, or traditional print they now have to look at how to do so through the Internet. Luckily, in this age of digital consumption, there are plenty of opportunities to advertise in that space. Never before has so much content been available to so many people for free, and that content is largely made available because the creators and/or hosts can monetize their efforts through advertising. This massive shift in the way content is published and consumed, and the major changes that have been required by advertisers to remain relevant, has caused websites such as Fast Company to refer to the digital revolution as the biggest change to advertising since the advent of the Television.
How Apple Dropped the Ball on Final Cut Pro X
As someone who currently works in video production, the failures of Final Cut Pro X interest me. For all intents and purposes, it is superior to its predecessor in many ways. It is faster, makes better use of underlying hardware (especially 64 bit architecture), has more features, and has better integration inside its product family, with Motion and Compressor specifically. Yet many working professionals panned it, and many studios either fled Apple, switching to Adobe Premiere or Avid, or simply refused to upgrade, opting to stay with Final Cut Pro 7. What went wrong?
Final Cut Pro X is, in many ways, a total anomaly in the history of Apple. Apple has a long history of understanding branding. When Apple designed the multicolored iMacs, they showed the world that computers could be more than just workstations, they could be colorful and fun, and they forced the rest of the industry to follow suit or fall behind. Then, Apple shifted towards the sleek, sophisticated look of brushed aluminum, and again the rest of the industry was forced to adapt. Similarly, Apple has been the computer for creative people. Ever since the groundbreaking ‘1984’ ad, Apple has been the favored computer of designers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, art directors, and many other creative professionals. In part, this image is aided by the fact that Apple includes better creative software with its operating system than its competitors (e.g. iLife vs. Windows Movie Maker). More importantly, Apple also produces a range of affordable, full-featured professional software packages, such as Final Cut Pro, Aperture, and Logic. So with this strong track record, and equally strong brand image, how did Apple so thoroughly drop the ball when it came to Final Cut Pro X?
What is Content and Why is it Powerful?
One of the growing trends in the digital age is the emphasis on creating Content. Communications agencies, from advertising to public relations, write about content on their websites and twitters, talk about content in their interviews, and some agencies have been turning more and more attention towards consulting on content creation. Some communications professionals are even saying that, in the future, every company will be a content company on top of whatever their core business is. But what is content and why is it so important?
Content is a bit of a silly buzzword, as has been pointed out by media critics such as Charlie Brooker, because it is so vague and all encompassing. In the communications context, it can refer to podcasts, videos, blogs, and white papers, amongst others. Content covers anything that a company can create for consumption by the general public, which is separate from their main product or product line. Since the point of this content is promotional in purpose, it is offered for free to improve its potential reach. It is important to make the distinction between content being a silly buzzword and a stupid one. Content isn’t something consultants made up to seem smarter or to give themselves make-work. Content is real, and it drives sales.
Take a Risk; Hire a Millennial
There seems to be a sentiment amongst some of the working world that there is no reason to hire someone from my generation. Obviously, it can be difficult to justify hiring someone young and inexperienced for a position, where you will have to invest time and money in training them, when the weak economy has filled the market with older, more experienced people who are willing to take the job at the same salary level. But there is something subtler going on, which is often only expressed in the op. ed. articles of news outlets such as Time Magazine. The perception seems to be that millennials are entitled, lazy, and fickle. Don’t believe the articles though; companies should hire millennials. Millennials bring a lot to the table. They are young and energetic, they are have a fresh perspective, they live natively in modern technology, and the negatives about them are not grounded in fact.
An ancient truism is that old age and treachery will beat youth and vigor every time. When translated to the business world, this means a veteran employee with years of experience will generally be a more capable worker than their younger, more inexperienced counterparts. While this is true, there are certain advantages that the youthful and vigorous will usually have over old age and experience. Young people haven’t settled down into a family yet. This makes them much more willing to travel for work. The Internet has basically killed the travelling salesman in many ways, but for those companies that need to have face-to-face interactions with their customers, such as on-site installation and maintenance, training, or client meetings, someone needs to go and be the boots on the ground, to borrow the military term. Similarly, the same freedom lets them be more flexible with their scheduling, which is ideal when overtime is needed to meet production crunches going into deadlines. They can also push themselves further during those crunch times, thanks to the extra energy their youth provides.
Monetizing New Media
With the popularity of YouTube, there is no better way to distribute new media to the masses. The hosting is free, the social tools help attract new viewers, and the subscription system helps keep the current ones watching. But new media isn’t just videos of a cats making a cute purr; it is full fledged, albeit low budget, productions and that carries with it a cost that needs to be recouped. So how do YouTubers make their money?
One of the most obvious ways that new media producers make money on YouTube is through the partnership program. The partnership program, if you are not familiar, gives a percentage of the ad revenue generated by any channel to the owner of that channel. This is YouTube’s clever way of encouraging quality content on YouTube, and thereby maintaining YouTube’s dominance as a new media distribution outlet. The partnership program is great for new media producers for a number of reasons. First, it is available to almost anyone on YouTube. It used to be restricted to channels that generated certain thresholds of viewership, but the marketing team at YouTube realized that making partnerships available to more people is good for everyone involved, both the content creators and YouTube itself. In this system, content creators start making money as soon as their channel starts getting hits, which helps offset the production costs of the channel as they build their audience. Second, it turns the channel into a source of passive cash flow for basically no upkeep cost. Since the channel generates money off its views indefinitely, any time someone goes back and watches old videos that archive will continue to generate revenue. One of the biggest areas for monetization of content in the mainstream old media world is the after-market, such as syndication for TV shows or DVD sales for movies; YouTube provides the archival and after-market as part of the monetization bundle that is the channel partnership program. Admittedly, however, the partnership revenue pales in comparison to even the after-market of old media. Luckily, YouTube stars aren’t limited to the partnership program for their income.