Scaling the Demand - Mike Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

By The Brothers Einstein Archives
Cover image for  article: Scaling the Demand - Mike Einstein - MediaBizBloggers

Last week in this space I suggested that our overabundant supply of ads must somehow satisfy two demands—an internal industry demand, and an external consumer demand. I further posited that scaling the supply merely gives the intermediaries in the media food chain more string to chase as they chase consumers away.

The solution to this dilemma requires that we understand the three indisputable truths of on-demand media: 1) No one demands more advertising. 2) Everyone demands more video. 3) No one and everyone are the same people.

The industry-average click-through rate for online display ads now resides south of .1%. That's fewer than one-in-one thousand for anyone who's measuring this abject failure. Yet tens of billions of short video clips – video snacks - are consumed online each month. Simple math and logic dictate that the same consumers who are busy avoiding the ads are even busier satisfying their insatiable appetite – their demand - for amusement and entertainment.

OK. Now that we've identified the real consumer demand, how do we scale it? How do we generate the kind of scalable audience reach that every big-brand wants and needs?

The answer takes its cue from the halcyon days of radio and television, when content was king and advertisers knew the audience was there to see the show and not the ads. Satisfying today's consumer demand requires us – indeed compels us - to accept the demise of advertising as intermediary and encourage the resurrection of advertising as destination.

Here's how: First, we ditch online display ads and replace them with thumbnail invitations to view video content. Consumers who click on these thumbnails will find themselves transported to a demographically compatible paying advertiser's site where the chosen video (the operative word being "chosen") is then streamed and viewed within the safe, exclusive confines of that advertiser's branded surroundings. It's like Bob Hope performing in front of Texaco's curtain. Another way of describing it is to imagine product placement in reverse. Instead of an advertiser strategically placing its product within the context of compelling content, we can now place that same content within the context of the advertiser's product, just like we did in the sponsored-content days of radio and television.

This simple inversion of the model satisfies every component in the media ecosystem. Publishers who are finding it impossible to survive on display ad revenue of less than a buck per thousand will now have the opportunity to accommodate and monetize this growing universal behavior as they get paid for each click that emanates from their sites. Content providers will suddenly acquire millions of new customers. Advertisers will acquire the safe, scalable reach they seek on a measurable performance basis. And, lo and behold, consumers will get exactly what they demand!

This approach renders virtually obsolete the myriad expensive ad targeting technologies that by design work against scale and which have driven display ad response rates to statistical zero. Besides, do we really want to target behavior hit and miss in the rear view mirror, or do we simply want to tap behavior that we know for certain already exists?

It's really quite simple…Rather than brands trying in vain to reach recalcitrant consumers through traditional means, they can enable consumers to reach brands instead by leveraging the video snacking behavior we all share; proven behavior that stands ready, willing and able to express itself billions of times each and every day.

Want to scale the demand? Start by satisfying it.

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