Launch Day!

Connecting In a Provider-Centric Way

Today saw the birth of Telltale Health, the brainchild of Zach Gursky. I worked with Zach a decade ago at a previous start up, and he was kind enough to seek me out. The site is a good v1, with some solid image finds (we had to dig deep to avoid cliche in this category, as it's all royalty-free images and overfarmed), and works just as well on your mobile or tablet. That's not a small thing, especially now that Google is moving to mobile-first SEO, and an opportunity for many in the field to help put the spurs into long-standing and stagnant products to upgrade the old Web site.

As for Telltale's business prospects moving forward? It's the best kind of business idea, in that it takes a proven innovation and applies it to an industry that's a little behind the times in terms of optimal practices.

Anyway, check it out if you like. It's been a bit of a challenge to get it all done, but that's the way of these things. No such thing as a painless delivery.

Relax. The IoT Is Going To Make Online Advertising Much, Much, Better.

Sunrise or Sunset? It's Your Call

If you've paid attention to our industry recently, you've seen all kinds of very unfortunate developments. There are big concerns about viewability. Malware is sneaking into new places, creating exceptional risks. CPMs are plunging for publishers, penetration levels dropping in key demographics. SEO is threatened by full automation and click fraud. Email is Dead. Copyright piracy is on the rise.

It's a wonder anyone can get out of bed.

But I've always been the kind of marketer and advertiser that prefers executing a positive message (Hope) over a negative one (Fear). So it comes as no surprise that I can't wait for New Tech and New Ways to make our lives better. And that's why I'm hyped for the Internet of Things (IoT), the blanket statement given to non-traditional devices getting online access.

In a slight paradox, I'm probably also going to be the last guy on my block to actually install a Web-connected fridge and smarthome tech (I have kids and pinch pennies). But who am I as a consumer isn't what's going on in the market. And the IoT is going to make our lives as marketers and advertisers much more interesting and effective. Let's get into the reasons why.

1) More data means less irrelevant messaging. 

Any grown woman who is reading this can, in all likelihood, rattle off the names of several prescription medications that she will never, ever purchase for her own use. Any grown man can do the same with hygiene products. On an everyday basis, especially in dense populations, we are drowning in advertising messages that are, at best, useless to the individual, and wasteful to the advertiser. At their worst, they are in placements that actively discourage use or encourage ridicule. And since the attention paid on all of these ads is constantly on the decline, because they are not relevant... well, you've got to show more. Tragedy of the commons writ large. In an IoT world, we just might be able to get to a point where the data starts to close out poorly placed ads. (Yes, I'm an ad and marketing pro who dreams of a world with fewer ads.)

Several SaaS providers are already offering the promise of single-casting ads in broadcast based on data from the user's web use, or from additional sources. So, taking this down to the individual level, maybe the fact that I'm a homeowner, father and husband who watches pro sports and lives in the suburbs (i.e., prime target for financial services and big family-friendly cars)... will finally get synched to the data that also says that I own a hybrid hatchback, multiple bicycles, and adopted CFC light bulbs as soon as they were available. Working from that data, perhaps my ad feed is best served not with truck ads and horror movie trailers, and more with fast food and the latest from Disney/Pixar. But the impact doesn't stop with better ads on just one screen.

2) Less irrelevant messaging makes for more interesting campaign choices.

Once we've eliminated the waste from those distribution campaigns, you and I will have many more choices as to what to do with our budgets. Maybe you put more into creative, and develop "Easter Egg" content for your site about your movie, and a guerrilla campaign that gets the word out. If we're selling trucks, maybe we invest more in co-pro campaigns at lifestyle events, or just pass the potential savings from the more effective spend into a better price point, or give our dealers more incentives in financing and rebates. Maybe both companies just pocket the difference and pay their employees or shareholders more. In any event, we've got a better situation than today.

3) Routine chores get easier for consumers, and advertising becomes more of a service.

The knee-jerk reaction to the IoT is that no one wants to get email from their freezer. But on the consumer level, I can't tell you how many times I've been at the grocery store, staring down a 2-for-1 deal on some of the stuff my family eats on a routine basis, and not knowing if we've already got it, or if there will be room for it once I get home. And sure, I could plan better, or just buy less, but wow, that's a great price, and everyone in the house loves this. So in it goes, for good or ill. Or I wind up making multiple trips. The IoT, as imagined here, is saving me money and time, cutting down on local traffic, lessening demand on the infrastructure, and so on. And that benefit scales.

Now, let's return that to the advertiser. In the example above, the refrigerator is connected to the smartphone, and helps to populate my grocery list (let's say, by an app developed by the store chain). The app then has the ability to offer coupons for products in super-targeted categories, in real-time... and also, to learn from past data, so that less attractive offers are filtered out. I'm still getting ads, but only for what I want to buy, and when I want to buy it. (A small aside: one of my past start ups provided just this sort of opportunity for marketers at the PC level. Our response rates, and CPM, were absolutely phenomenal. But I digress.)

4) The true market is revealed.

Want to make an online advertising pro grind their teeth? Talk about Super Bowl ad pricing. But at the end of the day, it's difficult to prove that one ad format is "better" than the other, because the online ad has near total data accountability and little brand appeal, while the latter is more or less completely flipped.

Now, consider a full IoT world, where marketers can connect viewer data from the screen. The fridge reads the bar codes on CPGs. The car can track to various locations. Information flows from the laptop, smartphone and tablet, and it all connects. Slowly but surely, we can start to get a much more complete picture of what ads are working, and which ones are not... for more than next-day recaps of which ad was funny, or touching, or, well, whatever.

Data analysis is its own reward. Connections serve to inspire further concepts and ideas. And while there are substantial privacy hurdles to overcome, and a great deal of permission to acquire and "last mile" pipe to install, the rewards are too great to ignore. The IoT, if done correctly and with enough policing to ensure that good faith efforts succeed over black hat types, will make our world more efficient on time, money, and resources... while also giving marketing and advertising pros better and more engaged audiences.

We can, of course, turn this into a "Blade Runner" / "Minority Report" dystopia of constant intrusion and irrelevance. Poor choices that lead to frequency cap abuse for high value categories, or "cyberstalking" concerns around sensitive products or categories, are going to happen, as part of the warts and all rollout that occurs with any development.

But when I see those future dystopia images, they seem a lot more like what we endure today, rather than what we will enjoy tomorrow.

Sunrise, not sunset. Hope, not Fear.

It's a better product to sell.

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You've read this far, so by all means, connect with me personally on LinkedIn.You can always email me at davidlmountain at gmail.com. And, as always, I'd love to hear what you think about this in the comments.

Media Buy Musings: Jon Stewart, ESPN, and The Vanishing Youth

Not Shown: Salaries

A couple of seemingly unrelated news items about media... which seem related to me, and might have impact to those who live with media buys in broadcast. Let's go down the rabbit hole.

1) Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show... and also, Samantha Bee and Jason Jones for their own shows on TBS, and, presumably, a host of other lesser-known but wildly important talent that will take the opportunity to follow Bee/Jones and/or Stewart, if he finds something new to keep himself busy. Stewart will be replaced by relatively unknown young comic Trevor Noah.

As a routine viewer of TDS, I love and am going to miss Stewart, the same way that I love and now miss Stephen Colbert. But where I used to watch Colbert every night, now I'm pretty much watching "The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore"... which is probably a net win in the long run for Comedy Central, since Wilmore, especially in Year One, should cost a lot less than Colbert Year Nine. So   from a pure blood and dollars standpoint, I have to wonder if Comedy Central might be thrilled, in the long term, to watch him go. Here's why.

Stewart, by dint of his ability to attract a scale audience of wildly attractive young viewers with affluent / college demographics, was making up to $30 million a year from that chair. One has to assume that Jones, Bee and the other emigres were also making nice salaries, given their seniority with the program.

Noah's salary is currently undisclosed... but would anyone be very surprised to hear if he were making as little as 10 to 20% of what Stewart was making? Even at, say, $2 million annually, that would be an opportunity that any young comic worth his salt would leap at. It might also be why Comedy Central had a seeming lack of interest in going after a major name (Tina Fey was many people's dream host)... which also migh speaks to a certain confidence that the network has in the franchise's backhone -- aka, the writing and production staff -- can keep it going at, say, 90 to 95% of the current ratings. And maybe for a whole lot less, or maybe just less, with the remaining staff getting hefty raises for loyalty.

In any event, cutting costs makes a lot of urgent sense who you read that...

2) ESPN is having major issues with Verizon for a "skinny" package that excludes the channel.

According to the Wall Street Journal, every monthly subscriber to cable television in America paid an average of $6.04 per month, or $72.48 a year, for the sports channel. That's over 4X more than they pay TNT, the runner-up in this measurement, and 6X more than Fox News. Coupled with the likely inclusion of ESPN2 on most plans, and Bristol took home over $81 a subscriber last year. Rates are expected to rise by over 39% in the next two years (!).

How have they managed to pull this off? Simple; every other smaller network has been losing ground, and non-sports viewers are simply getting less for more. Which makes Verizon's move a simple matter of economic self-interest in pricing a commodity. Offer a lower priced version which strips out the big ticket piece, and keep the non-sports viewers who might otherwise cut cable entirely.

Up to now, ESPN has been basic despite its cost... and that's absolutely critical, because if the network had to rely solely on the people who watch it for sustenance, the estimated cost would be $37 a month.

Now, it's possible that the network has its hooks that deep into America's sports fans that it could survive on its own, and that the public would simply make it an either/or choice of ESPN or Rest Of Cable. (The average cable bill is, BTW, a little less than $55 a month for everything.) But if and when that happens, you'd have to think there would be some collateral damage for Comedy Central to not keep it's current TDS ratings... or for ESPN to stop being such an attractive source of new to file consumers, since there would be a whole lot less casual viewers at a 6X price jump from the current rate.

Which leads me to the final point....

3) A study last week showed that viewership for TV across the board is down 11% in the US, 13% worldwide, and 33% (!) in the "seed" generation of 14 to 17 year olds.

I don't think it's all about watching stuff on your own screen, or not being in the big TV room with your parents, or preferring short attention span theater of Vine, YouTube and Hulu, though that's clearly a big part of it. I think, instead, that there's a growing and seismic change in the way that cable television is disseminated and paid for, an that the industry is sacrificing long-term stability for short-term profiteering. And that today's younger demos, strapped for cash with weak employment markets, high education costs and an increasing wariness of debt, are not very likely to just go along and pay the freight.

So, rolling this back to the beginning... did Stewart jump, or was he pushed?

And if he was pushed, were ESPN's fingerprints found at the scene of the crime, or did the kids do it?

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You've read this far, so by all means, connect with me personally on LinkedIn.You can always email me at davidlmountain at gmail.com. And, as always, I'd love to hear what you think about this in the comments.