A recent post read: Discovery CEO David Zaslav, speaking at the conference, said that despite the large content library that Discovery owns, viewers are unlikely to find any of it on line in the near future. I had to investigate and was quite surprised by what I “discovered”. When I visited Discovery.com and the homepage loaded, it was covered in advertisements for Maxi pads. Although I am a female, and they do track demographic information (see Privacy Policy bullet 4 (four) under (2) Non-Personally Identifiable Information ), any demographic information that could be tracked via my PC or Browser would Identify me as a 72 year old male, by design. 😉
That is strike one. Having paid close attention to how and what is advertised at me over the years, and being a marketer and a technologist who is known for intensive QA (Quality Assurance) processes – it is clear that no one is actually checking to make sure that the campaigns that are going out make sense and/or that the targeting is working correctly.
OK, homepage is one thing – I made my way through the site to track down a long form video “full episode” on the Discovery.com site – I found something that was even more bizarre.
There are only two Programs left in long form, so I navigated over to Prototype This!: Robotic Firefighter Assistant and as the page loaded, I found all the ads were also pointing at a different demographic than what I had expected – so what is with the baby products and feminine hygiene obsession? The real truth is that monetizing content requires more than selling the ads, the advertisers need to be represented in a respectable and sensible manner – otherwise the advertisers will not see any ROI on their investment.
Beyond the obviously humorous advertisement to program profile – on a much deeper level, if programming on your TV came up like this – and if every time you tried to skip ahead on your DVR an ad popped up, it wouldn’t be an acceptable experience.
Not only that, but on a functional level the player kept freezing and I had issues skipping ahead in general. It isn’t really “streaming media” anyway – we call this PDL (Progressive DownLoad), there is a major difference.
There are many creative options when working advertising into programming – this was not a good example of implementation. The more graceful options available are so rarely used. How about this, don’t interrupt my viewing experience – just invite me to interact with creatives that are relevant to what I am watching. Or, offer me something, why in the world would I want to click on this “swipes” ad / banner? It isn’t offering me a discount or anything free? If I were a 72 year old male, what would I get out of visiting the Pampers site – I would actually take offense at the constant diaper & maxi pad references, like a jibe at my age.
Ok, maybe this is an anomaly, but I did try more than once, and sometimes I did get ad’s that catered to the male demographic – but more often than not, I got “feminine” advertising.
On another attempt, Potty Training advertising popped in for a visit. So, Broadcasters, maybe before you start complaining about how you can’t monetize long form content, or allude that streaming media has no business model, you take a look at the systems you have in place and make sure they are working before pointing fingers.
On a final note, it was not an obvious navigational experience to arrive at the long form video and once there – the video quality was “shoddy” – with pixelation and artifacting. And when I went to replay the video, the overlay got stuck –>need I say more?
This is pretty typical of the kind of ridiculous attempt at advertising to me that I discover on-line, Discovery.com is not the only site where I found these types of issues, they just became my target when I read further into that post: “You won’t find our long form content on the Web,” Zaslav said. “There is no long form business model yet, we will be really careful [in that area].”
It could work very easily, They are just doing it wrong and patronizing their viewers – on many levels. I hate to see everyone stepping back instead of forging ahead. KEEP THE FAITH!
Why do your findings not surprise me? The history of the net has thrown up bad practices ever since Boo hit the headlines, and it is amazing how the people in charge just don’t get it.
Everytime a new technology hits the marketplace, the dollar signs start chinging in executive management eyes like some cartoon character, and these execs seldom ask the advice of the people on the coal face before setting their models and goals.
Result – alienation of the audience and failure to deliver the figures.
In desperation to show investors that they can make money, and cover the costs of developing the business short term, Sales dictats always take precedence over content managers better judgement.
So you see your pre-roll nappy ads at the start of a documentary on the baby experiments of Josef Mengele, or 40 second Apple adverts on short-form clips.
Until content managers, who develop the user experience, get a bigger say in how the business model is developed and managed going forward, more Discoveries will hit the headlines.
The people in charge must be prepared to take a hit short term, with a view to create a winning business for the medium/long term by making UI their most important investment.
Ten cent charlie’s sales targets (and bonus) must be changed accordingly or the Discoveries of this world will continue to waste money developing a business that doesn’t appear to work.
The net is part of a future delivery mechanism for long form content, so the likes of Zaslav better take another look at what they are doing.