December 23, 2013 · 11:41 am

The Pandora’s Box Of Content

As we get to the end of the year, many people (myself included) use the leisurely pace of this week to reflect and/or plan.

Pandora's Box Side

(Photo credit: yum9me)

With that in mind, I think we should spend a bit of time reflecting on Pandora’s Box and how it relates to content.  As you remember, said box was said to have contained all the evils of the world.  Modern usage of the expression is more like the Butterfly Effect I’ve written about before – small things leading to major impacts.

The Pandora’s Box to which I’m referring today is that of native advertising.  I’ve written before about this topic as well, but as the pace of publishers to utilize sponsored content that’s made to look like editorial increases, I wanted to pause and reflect on it again.  As The Wall Street Journal reported

Spending on sponsored content is expected to grow 24% to $1.9 billion this year, a faster growth rate than for most other forms of digital marketing. Total digital advertising spending will total $42.3 billion this year, according to eMarketer.

In other words, roughly 5% of all digital ad spending will be on this form.  That’s a lot.  I’m old school – ads should be easily recognized as such.  That said, I have no problem with content put together by a sponsor and a publisher as long as the substance of that content is accurate.  For example, this blog could be considered an ad for my consulting practice.  That said, I go to some lengths to be sure that what I put up here on the screed is fact-based and not one-sided so that you can mind up your own minds.  An article on, say, the health benefits of french fries (good luck with that!) that exists solely because McDonald’s or Burger King commissioned it and seems like every other article on the web page or magazine or TV news report seems well over the foul line.

This Pandora’s Box is wide open.  Even the New York Times digital is accepting this kind of advertising.  Think is will be long before it isn’t 30 minute infomercials we see on TV but 2.5 minute “news updates” that use station talent?    I’m glad the IAB is working on guidelines and I’m glad the FTC is holding hearings.  Ultimately, however, it’s those of us who  are the product (it’s our eyeballs they’re after!) who need to weigh in loudly.  You agree?

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December 20, 2013 · 9:55 am

Kitchens Without Garbage

It’s the last Foodie Friday before Christmas and this week  I want to talk about garbage.

Garbage

(Photo credit: Editor B)

It’s on my mind because last night I watched an interesting episode of Chopped, the Food Network’s show where cooks have to use a basket of ingredients that don’t seem to go with one another to make great dishes in 30 minutes.  The baskets last night all consisted of “garbage” – food that most home cooks often toss out.  Herb stems, bread ends, fish heads and other generally discarded items made up the ingredient lists.  The cooks did well and as food professionals they demonstrated the principle that nothing should be wasted by  a professional.  Or as The Dead would say, “one man gathers what another man spills.”

Jacques Pepin has said this for years on his TV shows – use everything, throw nothing out.  He even takes leftovers and turns them into new dishes.   Which of course is an excellent thought for all business professionals, especially as most businesses move into content creation (surely you’ve heard that everyone is a publisher, haven’t you!?).

Some of my clients fail to observe the immutable law that there is no garbage can on the internet.  While something shot for a TV commercial may not be usable in that 30-second format, the web has no such time constraints.  The speech given at a small conference to an interested audience of a hundred people can become a blog post and then summarized for inclusion in an email newsletter (talk about making something new out of the leftovers!). The audience of a hundred can now be thousands with very little extra effort.

Everything we create in our business lives has some value.  Perhaps that value isn’t to us in the moment but tossing anything of value out when there are so many ways to slice and dice it into something quite tasty is more than a waste.  License it out, recut it, format it for another channel.  The trash bin is the last place anything ought to go.  Agreed?

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December 19, 2013 · 11:42 am

It’s The Pipe, Stupid

Any of us who consume content via the Internet are aware of how profoundly that consumption has changed over the last few years.  The advent of smart mobile devices and tablets has freed that consumption from the tether of the desktop computer and has started to fulfill the promise of “always on, anytime, any place, any screen.”   From a marketing perspective that has been incredibly frustrating as brands try to keep up with the ever-changing consumption patterns of their intended customer bases.  From a user perspective, it’s gloriously liberating.

From eMarketer.com

Some statistics from the good folks at eMarketer with respect to that change are over there on the chart.  You can see online – desktop – time spent dropping even as consumption of video and social increases.  Look, however, at the rapid growth on mobile devices.  There is a similar pattern to the type of content consumed but the time spent has gone from negligible to half of that on desktops and laptops.   But I don’t think that’s the real story.

Just as important – maybe more so – as the growth of these mobile devices is how all that content gets on those devices.  In other words, the pipe.  For tablets, a lot of the usage is in the home where it’s reasonable to assume the pipe is the home wi-fi network that’s drawing from the basic internet connection – the cable or DSL provider.  For phones and some tablets, it’s the mobile network.

The issue in my mind is that usage of these devices is artificially depressed by the usage constraints placed there by those carriers.  It’s hard to get an unlimited data plan with many carriers and those of us who have those data plans grandfathered in still get hit with bandwidth caps – usage points at which the data gets slowed down.  The carriers often say it’s about managing network capacity.  Which means, of course, it’s about money.

Building a wireless data network is a huge, expensive undertaking.  The carriers have every right to earn back that investment and have an obligation to do so to their shareholders.  The wireless business defends itself from undercutting by municipalities that attempt to install free public wi-fi.  Google, however, has proven it’s possible to roll out an uncapped very high-speed network at reasonable prices.  Admittedly so far this is not a wireless network.  Does anyone think it won’t be at some point?

If not Google, something else will break the dam of bandwidth restrictions.  That’s when the world really changes.  Just as improved cable networks have made HDTV ubiquitous (something like 75% of all homes have HD now), and just as that same bandwidth into the home has made cord-cutting a growing trend, a freed-up, uncapped pipe for mobile will drastically change the landscape.   You agree?

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