Pivot from Video
The end of advertising as we know it
The other night, we finished watching Stranger Things 2.¹ Like the first “season” (see below), it’s absolutely brilliant. But in the end, I was shocked by just how fast it felt like we watched it. Yes, it’s only 9 episodes. But that’s still roughly 9 hours of content consumed in seemingly an instant.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving. Yesterday, I also watched about 9 hours of content in the form of three NFL football games. But as opposed to Stranger Things, this felt like an absolute slog. And it’s obvious why.
Sure, part of it is that the NFL games and matchups weren’t great. But a bigger part is just how little content you actually get in those nine hours. It’s pretty well known that the amount of actual gameplay during a typical game is something like 11 minutes — eleven minutes! — games themselves are 60 minutes on the field, but much of that is taken up with time in between plays. And the other two-plus hours these games are on TV but with no actual action on the field is taken up by a mixture of commentary and advertising — but mostly advertising.
Stranger Things, of course, has neither of these. If you wish to watch some commentary on the show, you can do so afterwards — something I think should be expanded upon even further. If you wish to watch commercials during Stranger Things, you’re shit out of luck. There is, of course, no advertising on Netflix.²
A lot has been said and written about the “death of advertising”. Obviously, “death” is overstated. But things are changing, and I wonder if they won’t start changing faster as a result of services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and the like.
This is also not a particularly new thought, but it’s feeling like there’s a lot happening at the moment that lends credence to this notion. If Netflix (and the like) continue to grab both mind-share and time-share, the kids that grew up watching such programming are going to be a lot less patient when it comes to sitting through advertising. It will be increasingly foreign to them. Hell, I’m already in this camp because I cut the cord over five years ago. I cannot stand sitting through advertising any more and only do so when I must — which is, of course, during live sporting events. And it’s awful.
At the same time, we’ve spent the past couple of years watching content site after content site “pivot to video”. Why? Not so much because video is great — it can be great, but often isn’t the ideal format for content — but more because, to quote Willie Sutton, “that’s where the money is.” That is, large content sites have reached the bounds of monetization at scale for text. The real money in advertising, as everyone knows, is in video — because it’s the form on which television has survived and thrived.
And so everyone has been waiting for all of this video advertising — again, television advertising — to move online en masse. That was what “pivot to video” was all about. Video content just waiting there with open arms to embrace the TV ads when they inevitably make the jump.
But again, what if that jump isn’t coming? Not because these sites/services can’t provide scale — obviously they can — but because the era of dominance for that format is ending?
We can also see this in things like Fox trying six-second commercials. They’re sort of weird, but also sort of brilliant. (RIP Vine, you were ahead of your time.) Will they remain brilliant when the novelty wears off? We’ll see. We also increasingly see “game breaks” brought to you by some sponsor — if the game break is 30 seconds, the first 10 seconds may be mentioning the advertiser. These game breaks are done for one reason: to advertise.
Often, both of these are done in-game, when there’s still action on the field. Because there’s no way someone is going to click away if there’s still action on the field, which they might if it was simply an ad. The key seems to be trying anything and everything to convey a brand message without making the user want to click away (or pick up their phone, or anything else one can do that takes away the all-important metric: attention).
None of this is particularly new either — Megan and I were watching Quiz Show the other night, where a key part of the plot is the show’s sponsor. It’s sort of funny to think about this in the context of the current renaissance of podcasting — it feels like 1950s-style advertising.
In a weird way, it seems like we might be starting to go back in that direction. Say goodbye to the 30 or 60 second television ad, say hello to the brand sponsorship read by a host or commentator. And product placement in-shows. Also not new, but also perhaps better suited towards our current world.
In this regard, soccer in Europe may be ahead of the game. Those matches have no television breaks for advertising except at halftime. Instead, they advertise throughout the game in the form of the players’ jerseys and in the stadium itself. The NBA just started with advertising patches on their jerseys this year. The other “major” US sports will not be far behind.
It’s hard to know if the sport leagues know what is coming with regard to television advertising or if they’re just trying to add more money on top of what they’re getting. It’s almost certainly more the latter, with other partners pushing them to think about the former as well. Because sporting events are one of the last remaining vestiges of value with regard to “live”, they’ll have the longest to ride out the television advertising wave.
And, in fact, it may be that television advertising survives in its current form only as it relates to live sports. As the big brands that typically advertise on television age and consolidate, it’s perfectly reasonable to think the next generation of companies at scale won’t be as interested in television advertising (because, again, the core demographic they’re trying to appeal to aren’t watching). This points to a world of drastically scaled back TV commercials, that run at an even higher premium during live events.³
But again, it’s hard to see how all of that translates to the Netflix era of television, let alone online. Because I don’t believe it does. In our ever-more-busy lives, we simply don’t have time to sit through minutes of content in hours of time to accommodate advertising. Yes, traditionally the advertising has paid for that content (and as such, our time), but the world is changing. Advertisers might be able to buy our “live” time, but our “non-live” time is increasingly not for sale. There’s simply too much else to do.
¹ Total aside: I love that they called it “Stranger Things 2” versus “Season 2” or whatnot. Really plays up the fact that this is more like a film than a traditional television show. A really long film.
² Yes, it’s an unfair comparison. First and foremost, football, especially during Thanksgiving, is something that’s often on in the background. Second, more generally, this model still works for sports. Because sports has to be watched live. Stranger Things is a show that must (well, should, or what’s the point?) be watched actively. And it actually cannot be watched “live”. But hear me out…
³ Wouldn’t it be weird/interesting if every sports event — or really any event that must be watched live — became like the Super Bowl with regard to advertising? That is, the brands put in so much effort (and money) on these spots that they also become “must-see TV”? That sure seems like a win-win, but are the powers-that-be smart enough to see that? They’ll have to scale back in order to push this future forward…
