WarpShare™

It’s The Customer – Stupid

I must admit to being a media slut. If it’s fun and shiny then I just gotta get it and tell others about it. Fortunately, the Internet allows me to satisfy this hunger but it does not allow me to satisfy my ethical standards. Artists and producers pour their heart and soul into their creations and deserve to be compensated when I enjoy them. However, in order to compensate media owners: I have to give up the ability to listen on my computer and also in my living room, car, iPod, etc.; I have to search multiple services to find one that offers the content I want; I have to load multiple programs on my computer to access different services and pray they don’t conflict and crash; I have to load special players to play content from certain services; I have to give up the context and curation provided by my friends and like-minded netizens; I have to…

Holy crap, just so big media can feel safe they expect the customer to sacrifice fun, convenience, personalization, computer integrity, control, freedom, privacy, first-born, left-nut, etc. This is entertainment folks not Homeland Security! It’s no wonder for every iTunes song downloaded 35 songs are downloaded through unmonetized channels.

Well it’s time to stop investing in services that inconvenience customers and build services that actually serve customers what they want, how they want it, when they want it, where they want it. Then let these customers turn their friends into customers. All within an infrastructure that fairly compensates owners…wait, that sounds like a business opportunity.

Categories: Industry Thoughts

Inform Is The New Sell

I appreciate how Google presents advertisements because they prioritize informing me over selling ad space. By simply using the parameters of search to divine the context of my interests, Google presents both sponsored and non-sponsored links with clear delineation between the two. Often, a sponsored link is the most informative and I choose to engage it. As the web migrates from destination portals to personalized delivery the power to choose ad engagement is coming to online media consumption. I can’t say it any better than Aaron Martens:

The long and the short of it is that consumers and technology are both evolving, quickly; and the advertising industry must evolve with them, or better yet, lead the charge. Relevancy and control, even more so than the entertainment factor, are the keys to advertising’s success in this brave new world. If marketers become enablers of these instead of inhibitors, consumers will engage in the advertising experience, willingly and with open arms. However, if the advertising industry continues to hold on to the traditional advertising models of yesteryear and attempt to retrofit it, as many are, there will certainly be a surge of vacancies on Madison Avenue.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=67661

The impact of choice and personalization is revolutionizing the online ad model–small and specific beats big and general. My favorite old media magnate turned new media magnate, Jeff Jarvis, gives fair warning:

Just because a site has 100 million users, that doesn’t mean 100 million people see your ad. It’s not TV. Repeat: It’s not TV. The only people who will see your ad are the ones who see the page on which it appears. If you buy 10,000 impressions, aka eyeballs, you can buy them on a big site or a bunch of small sites, it doesn’t matter. Big brings no advantage other than convenience and it also brings some disadvantages like inefficiency and price. This is the essence of the change in the economic model of media. Post that on your wall and stare at it.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/08/20/big-is-over-portals-are-past/

Success in new media requires prioritizing users and taking the time to understand what they want…how novel.

Categories: Industry Thoughts

The Sound of Inevitability

While legions of lawyers battle for “control” over media distribution and usage, a large majority of global consumers have defected to “pirate” sources for media. Forfeited in this battle of wills is the discourse needed to redefine the value provided by producers, advertisers, and consumers along with how to exchange this value. From a high level it seems straightforward. Producers create content consumers want to spend time with and advertisers want to be associated with. Advertisers want to inform consumers and associate brands with content. Consumers want content and information. Everyone brings value to the table but they lack a common marketplace and common metrics. It’s time to step into this chasm with an open marketplace where consumers, producers, and advertisers freely trade value based on shared metrics.

Traded value must change from extracting value from the movement of stockpiles to extracting value from the flow of data. To maximize value it must flow everywhere freely. Free flowing content focuses the market on the most important goal: attracting and keeping the attention of the content consumer. Anything that impedes this goal appears as an obstacle and the flow will be routed around it.

(nod to Gerd:  http://www.gerdleonhard.net/2007/07/gerd-leonhards-.html)

“Do you hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.”

Categories: Industry Thoughts