Captive audiences in the digital age

For years now we have seen content distributed to captive audiences. The content is generally subsidized or paid for outright by advertisers who take advantage of the viewers complete attention to display product placements.

From the “backwards thinking department” at Techdirt comes an example of old media’s inability to understand the media market of today. The CW Network has a show called Gossip Girl that apparently is very popular and draws a significant numbers of online viewers. Unfortunately, advertisers pay more for the ads when they’re run on TV than online so episodes of the show have been taken off the web.

The traditional model for advertising relies on a large captive audience, unable or unwilling to look away from the ads being thrust at them. In our movie theaters we see ads before our films, on TV we see ads every 10 minutes and on the roads we see giant billboards at every turn. Even on some websites, before reaching your content you have to sit through an ad.

This model is somewhat out dated in the modern age. The ads of yore didn’t care if you were interested in the product being sold. Of course, attempts are made to sell ads based on audience demographics, but the most important thing was that a large audience to be forced to watch.

Today ads target their audiences very specifically. Modern billboards can change their content based on the drivers passing them. The ads you see online are targeted to you based on the site you are visiting, the searches you have done and other factors specific to individual viewers.

The online ads rely on knowing your interests and tendencies. Even then they must get past ad blockers and compete with a variety of other visuals as well as compete directly with the content you are actually trying to view. This makes online ads less enticing than traditional advertising.

These ads, therefore, are also much cheaper to run than traditional ads. For content providers this may seem frightening. While, the revenue from traditional ads is certainly greater, there are other factors to consider.

First, the internet is only starting to bloom. I’m convinced that in 10 years we will not have TV at all as we know it today. The differentiation between data signals for TV and for internet traffic should disappear as online video content becomes the means of choice for media consumption. As viewers move to new modes of consumption, it seems likely that a significant drop in the number of people watching TV will follow. The the value of those advertisements will fall as a result.

The internet, however, has advantages for the content providers that TV does not hold. The primary example is that it is significantly cheaper to distribute content on the internet than it is to broadcast it on television. That means that the same profit can be made with lower advertising revenue. The ease and low cost of distribution also means that viewers will come to expect the ability to watch their favorite content online.

One thing that will never be successful is denying viewers access to content in the way they find most convenient. As we become used to the idea of all video being available on demand, we will see viewers shun content that is not made easily accessible when they want it.

Content that is not made available by the TV networks for download or to watch online will be shared by other means. We have seen evidence of this in the rapid rise of P2P video sharing. This form of content distribution results in no profits at all for the network.

The captive audience is a thing of the past. Instead we are headed to a world where the audience will watch the content distributed in the most convenient fashion. This trend leave behind content providers who think they can restrict viewers choices and open up the market to anyone with a camera and a good idea.