rafimama's blog.

“These sites are primarily concerned with the user experience and are exploring ways to monetize their sites and apps by providing value to advertisers by intertwining brand messages within people’s activities.

…The trick for each of these companies is providing premium advertising at scale, without disrupting the user experience.”

In yesterday’s SXSW Panel “Changing the Channel: The New Golden Age of TV at SXSW 2012” (brought to us by Hulu), Andy Forssell (SVP Content, Hulu) reminded us that in 1958, a 30 minute episode  had 4 minutes of commercials.  in 2012, that number is 8.5 minutes.  To a room full of independent film and television creators, technologists and marketers, he called for a day where commercial ad loads return to 1958 levels.  Fewer, more targeted ads.  

(Source: AdAge.com)

Contrary to the opinion of many, strategically dispersing ads across many smaller audience shows is not mutually exclusive with buying those several high-rated shows which clients seem to prefer. They complement each other, and you get much more reach and much better balanced frequency. 

Last week a Credit Suisse analyst reported that paid TV services like Cable and Satellite will lose 200,000 subscribers next year citing that there is a generation of viewers called ‘Cord-Nevers’ that will never subscribe for those services. 

In a follow up article titled, “TV’s Scariest Generation: The Cable-Nevers’, Bernard Gershon digs deeper into this new generation:

Cord-nevers - This is the most troubling group for the traditional operators. They are graduating college, leaving the nest and have become comfortable finding their viewing choices online. They don’t recognize networks - they know “shows.”

Before ‘on-demand’ viewing became prominent, the only way to ensure a viewer would have access to their favorite content was to bucket them into networks.   This was the great allure of cable.  A channel dedicated to music, comedy, sports, cooking, etc.  Cable networks found that there was a growing number of viewers interested in niche content and that those viewers would watch their network as long as they knew that they could find content that would appeal to them on that specific channel at any given time.  They were the Independents.  They were underdogs.

Now that viewers can watch pretty much anything they want on demand, the position on the dial is less important.  I can’t remember if ‘Mad Men’ is on AMC or Bravo.  Or if ‘It’s Always Sunny..’ is on Fox or FX or TBS… no idea.  

The new generation of viewers know shows, not networks.  

This will continue to be true for network TV programs as well as independently produced web series.  It won’t matter if a show was created for FX, TBS, HBO, or if it was distributed online only.   Great shows will reach their audience no matter how remote and quirky they are.  As long independent web series continue to be creative and unique in their approach to creating content, these cord-nevers will find the content they want.

Surely as measurement technologies advance and we have better ad targeting capabilities for television, actual content viewing and response to advertising will outweigh the age metric. In another post on this topic in Gigaom, “Bad news for Nielsen: TV ads to be bought more like online ads,” Ryan Lawler quotes Michael Hayes, president of Initiative Digital, suggesting that the 18-49 demographic does not matter because what matters is the buying behavior and intent, regardless of age and gender.  If we can measure this — which is the goal with digital ads and IP enabled set top boxes - then the age demographic is irrelevant. 

62nd PRIMETIME EMMY® AWARDS -

OUTSTANDING CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENT IN INTERACTIVE MEDIA FICTION OR NONFICTION

Interactive Media Peer Group members will review the submissions to select the Primetime Emmy Award Nominations and determine the Primetime Emmy Award Winner(s). There may be one, more than one or no Emmy statuette awarded to the individual(s) or company(s) that is directly involved with and principally responsible for the recognized interactive media programming. Entries must be made online and all supplemental information and associated fees must be submitted as per the instructions below by Friday April 30th, 2010, 6:00pm PT. Nominees will be announced on Thursday July 8th at 5:35am PT. The Primetime Emmy Award Winners will be announced at the Creative Arts Awards on Saturday August 21st, 2010 or on the Primetime Emmy Awards Telecast on NBC on Sunday August 29th.

To get a sense of what today’s production budgets look like, we asked the producers of a web series to share their balance sheet with us and explain how the numbers fit together. Get a peek at the books for a multi-episode comedic web series that was commissioned and financed by the digital arm of a mainstream network. […]

Read more: http://pro.gigaom.com/2009/12/by-the-numbers-budget-analysis-of-a-web-series/#ixzz0hv9rahVj

“Sanctuary” had its origins as an Internet show. The original conception of “Sanctuary” was to merge an internet program with gaming and social networking.

“Lofty goals to be sure, and a great idea,” Tapping said. “But unfortunately I think we were quite a few years ahead of our time. And in terms of figuring out how to monetize it on the Web, that’s the biggest issue that we had. We had a lot of eyeballs watching ‘Sanctuary,’ but not a lot of eyeballs were paying for it.”

So while the Web show didn’t make money, it did lead to new opportunities.

“Out of the ashes of the Web series rose the phoenix that is the television series,” Tapping said.

Read more: http://newsok.com/web-show-gains-tv-audience/article/3410351#ixzz0UURFj3kO