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All things digital marketing
I have the “video” controls here, and on the Blab site too, so I’m assuming the problem was one of those “too many tabs made the browser flakey”. I know you didn’t spend any time worrying about it, but I still wanted to tell you the problem was on my end.
Oscar, your sound is still terrible, I don’t know what compression your software is doing, but it’s making your audio ring with tin.
I’m also not really sure what it adds to have three faces staring blankly at the camera while the fourth person speaks. Oscar, you’ve said you think TV is dead, but they have someone managing the talking heads, cutting between the person asking questions, the person answering them, and sometimes both. Frankly, I think this podcast would be better as straight audio, because I don’t think your video adds much (even though you’re all attractive people). I know I can have your podcast open in one tab while I browse elsewhere, and I do, but you’re still eating bandwidth unnecessarily, IMO.
Even though my natural inclination is to find fault (sorry!), the content and format is good, and I’m looking forward to future episodes.
You should in fact stop finding fault with everything you experience. It would probably make you a much happier person David.
Now to respond to the other part of your comment, this isn’t a podcast. This isn’t TV. The sound issue is not with “my software” but with with the hardware. I think I forgot to set my microphone as the source of the sound and so the built in microphone in my laptop automatically took over. This should be resolved in the next episode.
The format of Blab is exactly what you saw. Up to four people having a conversation, it’s a social platform, best enjoyed live. We make the replay available as a courtesy, but if you stepped into the social web, you might appreciate these kinds of services better. Maybe Google hangouts is moreof what you are looking for.
Oh and based on everything going on around the world… TV is a dying medium. More people watch youtube everyday than they watch TV. And that is only increasing. FB is taking over for video consumption as well, cable and satellite companies are struggling to keep up with Netflix, HULU, and the like. In that regard, it’s not so much what I think, but what has been happening for the past 5 years or more. TV as we knew it up to 2006 is dying and will be something like tapedecks and vhs are to me, for my daughter’s generation when they become of age to be consumers.
Don’t forget to pencil in our show for this Wednesday. I will have my sound issue fixed.
I know your advice is meant as constructive criticism, but seeing problems clearly is a pre-requisite to developing effective solutions (and I think I’m one of the happiest people I know!) so I’m probably going to ignore it.
My advice was also meant as constructive criticism, and I don’t mind that you’re going to ignore it too. It may be that this Blab format is an acquired taste, so I will try to catch it live on Wednesday and see if it grows on me.
I guess we’ll have to wait 20 years to see whose crystal ball is the clearest, but I will note that a lot of what is streaming on Netflix and Hulu (and even YouTube) is content that was originally developed for television. Production value is, to me, a measure of respect for the consumer. What I saw happen in the last 5 years is that analog TV was replaced with digital TV, and the number of channels being broadcast became a multiple of what they were previously. I think just as radio didn’t kill theater, and movies didn’t kill radio, and television didn’t kill movies, “reaction videos” aren’t going to kill television. We’ll see.
You just need to get out more, or rather “get in” more. Especially If you think reaction videos are what YT is about.
People under 30 do not watch television, they watch content on demand wherever and whenever they want.
It doesn’t really matter where the original location for the content was. That is no longer.
When you can create a show that garners the attention of millions of viewers and you’ve spent less than 100K to do that, compared to 500k or more (just to start) in traditional cable networks, we don’t need to wait 20 years.
Quality content will never go away, but TV, as in the model of distribution, the model of consumption and monetization, that we’ve known since the 50s is done. The writing has been on the wall since 2000ish, the technology now is making it happen.
You can look at it like this, show me a company that has less than 1 million dollars in advertising budget for the year (99% of most small business) that is willing to spend it than on traditional tv commercials and I will show you a company that will not be around in 5 years.
Here is another way to look at it, or rather find out for yourself. Survey people my age and see how many of them have a cable or satellite subscription active. Then do the same for people 5 years younger, then 5 more years down.
New media is where things are going.
> If you think reaction videos are what YT is about.
Well, there are also cats.
I have no quarrel with YouTube. For the most part, it’s easy to find what you want, and there is lots of content you won’t find anywhere else.
There is also a lot of content which seems to be a colossal waste of time – people with nothing interesting to say, staring into webcams with their bedroom door closed behind them, rambling on at length about seemingly whatever drifts into their head. It has about as much production value as one side of a conversation overheard on the bus.
> Quality content will never go away, but TV, as in the model of distribution, the model of consumption and monetization, that we’ve known since the 50s is done.
And yet you began your Blabcast discussing content which was distributed using precisely that platform. That’s interesting.
And live sports is only one of the content creators which continue to see value in television as a delivery platform.
> You can look at it like this, show me a company that has less than 1 million dollars in advertising budget for the year (99% of most small business) that is willing to spend it than on traditional tv commercials and I will show you a company that will not be around in 5 years.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here, but if you are arguing that a small business with a small budget will probably not choose to advertise that business exclusively on television, I agree. The take-out places near me use print ads hung on my doors. The building contractors use radio ads, in addition to print ads hung on my doors.
None of them, that I know of, are advertising on YouTube, but I would say that most of them probably could, just as they might profitably choose to advertise in print magazines. The Time magazine that I receive in the mail is custom-printed just for me, with custom-selected ads. While that may never be possible with over-the-air broadcast TV (though I wouldn’t categorically rule it out), it may be easy to do with cable. But I think all this is probably beside the point.
The point I was trying to make is that the techniques developed over the past half century to make televised content more engaging still have something to teach creators of new media. The Blab format seems to be stuck in a Brady Bunch Opening Sequence, with heads in boxes interacting. But remember, the Brady Bunch had a catchy jingle too, which enhanced its production value. And it only lasted about a minute.
The Sunday morning news shows have talking heads too, but the heads which aren’t talking aren’t always on screen. I’ve seen shouting matches on Fox which use something similar to the Blab format, but it’s usually only for a few minutes at a time, not for a whole hour.
The Wall Street Journal frequently has thumbnails of its authors at the head of a column. Faces do help engage, to humanize and add emotion to stories recounting facts. In my opinion, though, a little goes a long way.
I think you may be falling into the “new is better” fallacy. It may be that content exists for which Blab is the perfect platform. Some of us old fogeys find it annoying when the person on-screen is delivering dead air because they’re busy reading real-time comments searching for something to respond to. It seems to devalue the viewer’s time. I much prefer the interactive exchange you and I are having now, where we each take time to consider what we want to say, and compose a reasoned (if not always concise) response.
> Survey people my age and see how many of them have a cable or satellite subscription active.
I’m a cord cutter myself. I don’t have cable or satellite, but I do have broadcast TV, and so do you, whether you choose to tune in or not. Now, I have to wait a few months for the new Archer, instead of watching it on FX. It’s a trade-off I’m willing to make, because I don’t need to be plugged in to the hot new thing. I don’t see many movies in the theater any more either, for the same reason.
But FX is still around, and provides the budget that enables Archer to be made. Movies are still shown in theaters. History has a few examples of media that fell by the wayside (smoke signals, telegraph), but for the most part what history teaches us is that new media usually augments, rather than replacing, old media. I think that’s what is likely to happen with television.
But even if I’m wrong, and television is destined for the scrap heap, my claim that it still has something to teach purveyors of new media (and especially Blabcasters) stands.
But while we’re off the subject, ask people your age to complete this phrase — “I’ll beat any advertised price, or … ”
The company that popularized that phrase has a multi-million-dollar annual ad budget, and they choose to spend most of it on radio and TV ads in the local market. Why? Because that’s the most cost-effective way to reach potential consumers in the local market, and drive traffic to their websites and then to their brick-and-mortar stores. http://www.wingmanadv.com/how-to-increase-comp-store-sales
Sure, YouTube may have more total minutes watched, but YouTube also has much higher bandwidth than broadcast media. Most of those minutes are spent watching content that most other people aren’t watching. A million views is still a big deal. PSY’s Gangnam Style video on YouTube is currently claiming 1,900,000 views, more than three years after it was uploaded. More people than that saw Steve Harvey’s blunder live, as it was happening, on television.
Advertisers who want to reach a lot of people quickly still advertise on broadcast media. Candidates running for office vie for interviews on TV and radio. People with books to promote seek time on TV and radio talk shows.
Businesses with small advertising budgets may be unable to afford time on broadcast media, but there’s a reason broadcast media can continue to demand (and get) those big-budget dollars.
This is getting interesting, mostly because I’m starting to understand how much people from previous generations simply don’t understand about the new media. In the same token, I’m already feeling a bit behind because I don’t understand some of the things that 13 – 18 year olds are using now.
But let me address some of your points because this will come up in an episode of The Marketing Download soon.
>>There is also a lot of content which seems to be a colossal waste of time – people with nothing interesting to say, staring into webcams with their bedroom door closed behind them, rambling on at length about seemingly whatever drifts into their head. It has about as much production value as one side of a conversation overheard on the bus.
Says you, but how can you say it is uninteresting when millions of people watch these “rambling” videos. Just because *you* don’t find it interesting, doesn’t mean thousands or millions of other people don’t enjoy them. For those that don’t have views, I would agree that it may be a waste of effort and time, but so are 80% of the channels in a normal cable television package. This being one of the reasons the traditional business model of cable is going away. People don’t want to pay $90 to $200 for 300 channels when they only watch 3 to 5, and when they want to watch them on their own time, not on a set schedule.
The largest channel in Youtube right now, PewDiePie which in my opinion is a waste of time has over 45 million subscribers, his videos get an average of 1 to 3 million views within the first week of release and in total he has over 11.2 Billion views, yes, the big B.
You can look at http://socialblade.com/youtube/ to get more interesting statistics on other channels. That doesn’t even count Facebook videos.
All these views equals time and attention that the broadcast television no longer has, because at the end of the day, we only have so many hours to consume media. If the next generation of consumer isn’t watching your programming because the medium has changed then it’s time to change medium and that’s the core of my point. Cable/satellite/broadcast television is dying, it’s flailing about after being stabbed time and time again by 1st, the internet, 2nd on demand video (youtube, vimeo, liveleak,), 3rd high quality original content never intended for its medium. Consider Netflix’ Making a Murderer, Orange is The New Black, House of Cards, Narcos, etc. And there is more coming. Amazon’s Prime service with VOD is trailing behind Netflix but it has a huge budget to produce new content this year that will never be aired over traditional television, shows like Alpha House, Transparent, Bosch, and whatever else is in store.
Aside from sports and daytime shows, the broadcast media is one of the last places any smart advertiser looks to. The examples you point out are old money, and they aren’t optimizing their ROI and continue to do things as they always have, but they’re changing.
But companies like Ford, Coke, McDonald’s and the other big giants that are in tune with current trends are seeing the value of social media and consumer driven content platforms, like Snapchat, Instagram, and more importantly to this topic, Youtube and Facebook video. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook begins a monetization & advertising program in its video units just like Youtube has had for years.
Sports have a strong emotional attachment to their fans but the fans are getting anxious, they want to be able to watch their games whenever they want to and they will do that sooner or later. Daytime shows are now the internet talk shows. Ellen gets more views online than she gets on her live show.
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>> And yet you began your Blabcast discussing content which was distributed using precisely that platform. That’s interesting.
Yes, and in fact the general consensus in the room was that nobody cared about the ads, and/or the Superbowl. It is definitely interesting to see how advertising in one of what used to be one of the biggest events in television is no longer effective. So much so that the advertisers are releasing their ads way in advance in places like Youtube. Definitely interesting and a supporting factor to the whole point that traditional television is dying.
The television set, the device itself is going to be around for a while because it is how we watch things at home, but who delivers the content is already changed enough that the cable companies are loosing money in their model. Televisions connect to WiFi instead of coax. This is undeniable and the cable companies scrambling to figure it out because they don’t want to evolve and look beyond their noses. They unfortunately own the infrastructure so they have a say in the matter, but it matters less each day.
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The fact that somebody doesn’t like the production quality of Blab speaks less about the platform and more about their ability or inability to absorb content in the medium which is served, especially if it isn’t available anywhere else.
Blab is brand new and it’s going through growing pains, it succeeds where Google Hangouts failed, in making a platform easy for everyone to use regardless of their skill levels. It makes the platform of videoconferencing, truly social.
As with any new social platform, only time will tell if it will stick or not. If you look back 3 years, 4 years or even 7 years, the production quality on Youtube videos was deplorable, now it matches or surpasses that of traditional television. That’s just part of the evolution process. This process is happening much faster as technology becomes more accessible.
Snapchat was “useless” 3 or 4 years ago. Now big brands are advertising on it.
And don’t forget, you’re talking about all this stuff in the context of advertising and marketing, since this is a marketing blog and our show focuses on that.
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You have to think of Blab as a virtual panel, not a talk show, it’s not where you host a 20/20 style interview or investigative report. It’s off the cuff, its rough, it’s social, it’s “now.”
When you go to a conference to watch a panel of speakers you aren’t presented with one of the panelists at a time, you are looking at the whole panel even when only one person is speaking. Would you suggest that the 3 other pannelists leave the stage while one speaks? Of course not.
The process is interactive because you can ask questions and each member of the panel gets to respond. Another way to look at it, is like a debate.
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I would also suggest you dig deeper into your research, the example of Psy’s song is way off base. The real numbers surpass 2.5 BILLION, not 1.9 million like you suggest. Gangnam Style makes up about 1/2 1,of his total 5 Billion views. That’s not counting copycat channels, replays on other channels and the like.
And to bring Miss Universe into the fold is another supporting argument for the view I’m presenting. Out of a global population, the total viewership of the show live is estimated at less than 6.3 million viewers. Dismal if you consider the title of the show. That’s about 1 million less than last year…
http://www.businessinsider.com/miss-universe-ratings-lower-in-2015-versus-2014-2015-12
This is at the core of why maybe some people don’t understand what is happening. If you’re not involved with it, then you have to research it deeply if you want to form an opinion about it.
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The example I gave you of the small business investing in television advertising is simple. If you only have a limited marketing budget (like most small business do), you would be signing your demise by spending those dollars in television. Even with huge budgets, there are companies right now that will not touch television, because the audience isn’t paying attention there anymore.
And you probably aren’t watching good shows on Youtube, because when I watch it, I see tons of advertisments for local businesses. Car dealers in neighboring cities, plumbing services I’d never heard of, landscaping services, home repair, real estate… They’re on Youtube, you just don’t use Youtube enough for people to want to advertise to you.
That’s another beauty of the platform, with Youtube you can be laser focused on who and when they see your ads. You can’t do that on TV.
Yes, there are a lot of baby boomers, and gen y, that still have a good attachment to the television model that they grew up with, but that’s done and new things are coming.
I believe that the last good shows made for TV only/first have aired or are airing right now. Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, 60 Minutes, 20/20, you-name-your-favorite. The next big hits will be online shows, oh wait, they already are.
The quote you asked me to survey my age group about… I couldn’t complete it without looking it up. The Brady Bunch… I have never watched it and only know of its opening sequence because I recall a movie that used it in parody.
I’m not falling for the “new thing” but as a marketer and as a business owner I need to know where my money makes the most sense and that is in the platforms where the viewers are watching and are engaged.
My generation is now of age to come into disposable income, they have mortgages, kids, serious “adult” responsibilities, the younger generation will be there soon and if you can’t see that they will not be spending their dollars because of TV advertising, or radio advertising, then there isn’t’ much I can say besides “go google it” to do more research about it. The writing is on the wall, it is as clear as day. But one must have the intrinsic understanding of how and why the new platforms work and will soon replace cable television. For one to understand the new, one must embrace it and accept it.