Tag Archives: media

August 6, 2015 · 11:32 am

No News Isn’t Good News

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  Here at the World Headquarters, we step away from the computer screen at lunch time, usually to watch the big screen.  Generally it’s a whip around through the various news channels to make sure that it’s worth continuing to work the rest of the day.  After all, if the world is going to end, I’d rather try to sneak in one last round of golf than write a few more emails.

One thing I’ve noticed lately as I watch CNN/MSNBC/FoxNews during lunch is how little actual content I see.  Mostly I see ads.  After many years in the TV business I understand why, but when you factor in national breaks, promotional spots, and the local cable affiliate breaks, a viewer can leave the set for 5+ minutes at a time and not miss a thing.  Entertainment programming doesn’t seem much better. Then again, maybe I’m just old and cranky and wrong.

It turns out I’m not.  As Business Insider reported:

Almost every major TV network in the US is stuffing more ads into their commercial breaks in a “desperate” attempt to prop up ad revenues as ratings across the industry decline, according to a report from investment research and management company Sanford C. Bernstein. The report shows that prime-time TV audiences (as determined by Nielsen C3 measurements: TV watched both live and three days after the show was first aired on catch-up services) are down 9% year on year, yet ad loads on some networks are up as much as 10% on last year.

The chart I’ve embedded shows how commercial hours have changed in the last year across major cable network groups.  3% or 4% may not sound like a lot, but when you’re running over 10,000 seconds of commercials a day, that’s several minutes more each day.  Times 7.  Times 365.  The problem with that is that in the process of maintaining revenues you’re exacerbating the problem of viewer abandonment.  In particular, viewers are going to streaming, where commercials loads are way smaller if they exist at all.  What I find nice about the commercials on Hulu, for example, is that you know exactly how long they will last.  I have no clue as I’m taking my short lunch break if I’m ever going back to the news.  In this case, no news is very bad news since it means yet more of what I definitely did not tune in to see.

We can’t alter our products to preserve an income statement when that alteration provides a lesser experience for the consumer.  It’s a short-term fix that will have very bad long-term ramifications.  Cheaper ingredients, lesser workmanship, or ad cramming are all part of the same mindset.  It’s one we should avoid, don’t you think?

 

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April 30, 2015 · 12:58 pm

Selling Without Supervison

Sometimes I wonder the hell managers are thinking.  Did I say that out loud?  Well, it’s true, and when I read survey results such as those I’m going to share with you, my wonderment moves towards serious concern.  Today’s bit of business insanity is about salespeople.  I love salespeople, particularly since I spent many years being one.  One thing in which we prided ourselves was knowing the product.  It wasn’t just knowing the ratings history (we sold TV) or the nuances of the talent and event coverage.  We also knew the competitive landscape and could discuss it in detail.  Most importantly, we were grilled on it by managers and went over it in sales meetings.  At times there were even external sales training sessions to reinforce our listening and presentation skills and to help us better understand our individual selling styles. I still have some of those materials since that’s the sort of stuff that doesn’t get supplanted by new technology!

That’s a roundabout way of preparing you for the survey results.  I’ll let the press release speak for itself:

Corporate Visions, Inc… today announced the results of a sales messaging survey that polled more than 500 business-to-business (B2B) marketers and salespeople from around the globe. The results revealed 85 percent of companies agree their sales teams’ ability to articulate value messages is one of the most critical factors in closing deals, yet only about 41 percent of companies ask their salespeople to perform stand-and-deliver or role-play practice of their messages. In fact, an alarming 34 percent of respondents indicate no one is responsible for coaching and certifying that salespeople are proficient in delivering their company’s value messages at all.

I wonder if as media is moving more towards a programmatic future, an emphasis on sales competency has gone out the window.  That’s ridiculous.  Maybe the nature of sales will change and what’s being sold isn’t the medium but the platform. I can’t believe, however, that the educated, informed salesperson won’t continue to have an edge over the person who stands before a potential customer just flapping their lips and saying nothing.

Can you imagine a manufacturing company where no one is responsible for product quality?  Why should a third of sales organizations be permitted to shrug their shoulders about that issue and let salespeople say whatever they choose without supervision?  Putting aside the potential legal risks, we only get so many chances with buyers.  Superior selling organizations make sure their people understand the product, know the research (not just the talking points) and deliver it clearly every time.

Do you share my wonderment at companies that do otherwise?

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April 15, 2015 · 9:22 am

What Goes Up

One thing on which those of us in media could always count was the constant gradual increase of prices.  Oh sure, unit rates might drop as audiences came and went, but the underlying metric – the cost per thousand views (CPM) of a target audience – would almost always increase except in times of exceptional economic downturn.   When pricing the CPM of an in-demand target such as young adults, the increases could be pretty substantial. 

That truism may no longer hold.  Witness the start of this piece from the Media Daily News:

In what could be the first material sign that even network prime-time TV is not immune from the physical laws of a rapidly expanding media universe, the average cost of broadcast prime-time inventory has eroded for the first time since the recession. While the rollback is small — the average prime-time cost-per-thousand (CPM) of buying adults 18-49 on the broadcast networks fell 2.4% to $43.06 in 2014 — the fact that it declined at all during a non-recessionary period may signal that even the most premium advertising inventory has hit the wall on Madison Avenue.

It’s all the stuff you read about in economics class coming to pass, I guess.  Inventory is no longer a scarce commodity although one could argue that if we’re still approaching every impression as equal we haven’t learned much.  Cross-platform content may be triggering cross-platform buying, and the lower CPM’s from those newer platforms might just be a drag on the older ones.  The reality is that we’re moving from buying demographics to buying behaviors and so many of the old measures just aren’t applicable.  Men 25-54 can’t really be aligned with “people who visited a car dealer website in the last week” even though both can be purchased.  That said, the trend lines for all the CPM’s are headed downward which can’t be a good thing from any ad-supported business model.

I guess if you’re a buyer you don’t mind so much.  The problem is that over time much of the high quality bait (read that as content) for the audiences you seek may wither away, lacking adequate financial support from the inventory it generates.  The audiences will go elsewhere, of course, but maybe not to something that’s ad-friendly (or ad-supported).  Penny-wise and pound-foolish?

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