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TELEVISIONS CATCH-22
Written by Roger Wood, Vice President, Digital Media, iCrossing
MARCH 2012
That cycle of absurdity is being broken. It only feels like TV is holding its ground against YouTube and Hulu because digital video is taking audience share away from TV gradually, one genre at a time instead of a sweeping change that is easier to notice. Statistics tell us there is no doubt that digital is stealing audiences from television. Ive ranked the principal TV genres from top to bottom, with Number 1 on the list being the most immediately affected by digital video and Number 7 the least:
1. News 2. Comedy 3. Sci-Fi/Fantasy 4. Lifestyle/Talk 5. Drama 6. Reality 7. Sports Now lets take a look at why Ive ranked them the way I did.
Source: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/category/ratings/morning-news
Those are tiny numbers relative to viewership on the web. YouTube eclipses all the major networks combined during the coveted 7:00-10:00 a.m. dayparts, and I estimate that 50 million of the 4 billion YouTube views per day (about 10 percent) happen in the morning slots of all times zones in the United States. At the height of the Arab Spring, YouTube hit 135 million unique viewers per month, and at its current growth rate, YouTube may reach 500 million monthly unique viewers, or a Super Bowl audience each week, by the end of 2012.
MARCH 2012
revenue. The industry has become a casino, with networks placing bets on expensive talent and selling advertisers on emotion instead of measurable viewership data. With its relatively low production requirements, the comedy genre will translate easily to the web. Lazy Sunday, JibJab, Fred and now Annoying Orange spawned millions of comedy producers who now deal only in digital formats. A digital version of Lorne Michaels is inevitable, and we will soon see a sustainable multi-year comedy franchise on the web. In the very near term, advertising revenue for TV sitcom will be surpassed by video display advertising revenue for comedy on Hulu, YouTube, et al.
MARCH 2012
SUMMARY
Back to Catch-22. Advertising executives can avoid the Catch-22 scenario by thinking of their video-based advertising on a genre level, as shown in the previous examples. Doing so enables them to articulate to their bosses that they are shifting money from, lets say, CBS to CBS Digital in a structured way that anticipates audience migration and reduces wasted ad impressions. If the TV best producers embrace digital video wholeheartedly, advertisers will only pay for view-through, cost per lead, cost per action, and many other proofs of effectiveness. Advertisers will actually spend less on advertising, with greater effectiveness.
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