CBS Finds Ads Do Better Than Subscriptions
from the open-the-floodgates dept
Even though TV networks have realized that there's money to be made from the internet, they're still trying to figure out the best way forward. There are two main schools of thought: sell access to shows, either downloads or streams, through subscriptions or individual sales; or to put your content online and sell ads around it. We've held for a while now that broadcasters have more to gain from taking the ad-supported route, and CBS' experience with its online broadcast of the NCAA basketball tournament illustrates the point nicely. In years past, CBS has sold out-of-town tournament games on a pay-per-view basis on DirecTV and online, but this year they'll stream them on the Web for free, and the company says they've already booked ads worth more than the subscriber revenues from last year. They've also pre-registered nearly 200,000 viewers, compared to the 115,000 or so on the subscription plans last year. So let's review -- more viewers and more revenues from content that's free to the end user. What's not to like?
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free
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bandwidth...
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Re: bandwidth...
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Re: Re: bandwidth...
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To be honest though, I don't mind Ads if they are done tacfully. Pop up ads only serve to annoy me. I've never bought anything because a pop-up ad comes up to annoy me, actually I get pissed at the company doing it. While I might not keep a log of each one, I may well later not buy from the company because they annoyed me in some fashion (even if I can't remember how at the time).
The subscriptions are getting out of hand, I admit - like anything you want to do in Entertainment anymore requires some stupid subscription. I have enough monthly obligations, cable's the only one I'll pay for - I don't subscribe to a thing on the web, other than the ISP's service plan - and that's quite enough.
So in the end - yeah, if it's "free" and the ads aren't too annoying, I'm sure I may well watch it - if I gotta pay for a subscription, I'll find something else to do.
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Ads techdirt
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free...???
But, I'll concede that sports events, at least the American ones which have been designed to provide incessant time-outs -- cunningly designed to stuff full of commercials! -- are lots different from movies and dramas. In fact, the BBC exploits this difference in maintaining ultra-fast pacing in adless shows like "Hustle" and "Spooks."
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Ads can be good
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Build a better ad mechanism...
That's the problem with relying on ad revenues on digital media. Some people hate adverts so much that they'll spend hours working a way around them. There will always be those fanatics.
However, for some things, this could work really nice. For instance:
Pepsi-Cola presents the Latest Britney Spears single! (10 second advert at the start, and a 30 second ad at the end). High sample rate (192), great quality.
Of course, these timings should be different for different singles, so as to avoid people releasing "ad-cutter" programs that will hack off the first 10 and last 30 seconds from an MP3 file.
Make the ads "enjoyable" (funny commercials that people don't mind seeing again and again), and people will want to keep the adverts in.
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All this talk about
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Ads aren't free
It's like when a Mars probe is lost -- those millions of bucks aren't lost in space, they were paid to humans on this planet for products and services as wages which those humans used to purchase other goods and services.
I know economics is supposed to be autistic but not acknowledging the human element is merely a convenient obfuscation.
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Re: Ads aren't free
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Offer the old format techdirt and see which is pre
Why?
Because in the old format I could see more posts on one screen
ans could skim faster.
Now you have one smaller column in the middle and
so I read it less.
I am not thinking I will slashdot and digg.com instead.
I know that i have only read you 3 time this week - I used read techdirt every day.
If I am the majority you will lose viewers - and influence?
If I ams a minority then
Question: Why not put up tech dirt. com in both
formats and see which people like.
i.e. www.techdirt.com of www.techdirtorig.com
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Re: Offer the old format techdirt and see which is
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