David Payne, CEO of Short Tail Media is pushing for 30 sec (& 15 sec) video commercials online through its new service Digital 30 (D30). He is working with publishers to test a :30 spot between sites, with Reuters being the first to sign on. Expect to see some this summer.
According to Payne, publishers need to "stop worshiping, and start interrupting the almighty user."
In my last post, I talked about the extreme of only looking at the user and sacrificing real revenue generating opportunities as we saw in YouTube. On the other hand, Hulu was balancing three constituents: Users, Advertiser, Content Providers. I prefer the Hulu approach; its sustainable over time.
Hulu is converging needs.
Payne is directly colliding the need for more revenue producing ads with the belief that users will not accept this. He his banking on the idea that the increase revenue from the new ad units will off-set any revenue losses stemming from user abandonment.
His perspective challenges the ethos of the internet (if there is one) as well as commonly held assumptions about potential user behavior.
Is he right? I don't know. But, I give him a lot of credit for pushing a very radical approach to an old problem... maximizing sustainable revenue.
Media week article
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