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February 2008
It's an on-demand world. I want what I want when I want it. That's what time shifting is all about. Print media, be it a book, a newspaper, or a magazine, have always allowed us to time shift. Then came appointment-based media like radio and television. But along came the evolution of appointment-based media, such as radio and television, and though they added glitz and glamour through sound and sight, they compelled us – often inconveniently – to tune in at specific times and places. Digital media, however, free us once again from the imperatives of time and place and return us, in a sense, to the days when print was clearly king. As Yogi Berra once remarked: “It’s déjà vu all over again…” But what does all this time shifting mean for advertisers, for those who pay all the freight for all the commercial media, no matter where or when they appear? It means those advertisers have to do a much better job of working with their agencies to clean up the commercial media environment. The popular media industry myth that consumers now avoid commercials and advertising because they suddenly have the technological wherewithal to do so is a convenient excuse. And it utterly neglects the real problem – a constant and relentless erosion of quality inside the commercial environment, inside the commercial pod itself. I’m referring to the suddenly orphaned 25 percent to 30 percent (soon to be 50 percent) of all commercial TV time that consumers are time shifting into oblivion. Today’s commercial rotation, even with seven positions every prime time quarter hour, is the only real estate that truly matters to any advertiser – and it poses a mighty problem. We have deluded and polluted ourselves into the media equivalent of the Love Canal. DIMINISHING RETURNS Back in the "golden days" of broadcasting, radio and TV sponsors or their agencies, owned the programs (Jack Benny/Jell-O; Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy/Chase & Sanborn; Bob Hope/Pepsodent). It was the only way they could effectively control the commercial environment. Nowadays, advertisers can’t even control who they are paired with or where they are placed inside the commercial rotation. The only possible way to improve performance inside the commercial rotation is through the distribution of a quality message, irrespective of time shifting or distribution technology. Indeed, the quality of the message is far more important than the distribution. That may sound like heresy to the vast majority of professional media pundits who believe otherwise, but we should be careful what we ask for. We asked for functionally unlimited bandwidth, and we got it. But then we had to feed it, 24/7. We have created a media universe of perpetual diminished return on investment, across virtually all media channels. As a result, today’s media inventory will deliver less performance per unit than it did yesterday, and tomorrow’s media inventory will deliver less performance per unit than it does today – guaranteed. Not only does the media emperor have no clothes, but he likely pays way too much for them. Those who insist on pursuing quantity over quality, irrespective of the technology or medium, will get exactly what they ask for. As Dr. Phil might ask: How’s it working for you?
Andrew Susman is President of New York-based Studio One Networks |
