In The Digital Age, Failure Will No Longer Be Lucrative

In the non-digital age, we knew that half of all the advertising that ran didn’t work.

In the non-digital age, agencies were paid well regardless how feeble or magnificent their efforts.

If an ad didn’t work, agencies blamed many things. Not surprisingly, the creative itself was seldom on the top of the list.

In the Digital Age, all this changes. Especially when it comes to video. If you haven’t yet read Josh Chasin’s piece in Tuesday’s Metrics Insider, do so now. Josh makes the interesting observation that video is a content-type that accrues duration. In other words, it has a definite start point and stop point, both of which will soon be completely in the control of the viewer.

If a viewer clicks-in to watch something, it’s probably because they are interested. How long they stay interested, can be measured as duration.

Are duration and engagement the same thing when it comes to video? That’s probably best left for another column. But what’s nice about the word “duration” is that it can be measured — someone starts watching and someone stops watching — without all the baggage that comes with the word “engagement”.

The headline of this piece is “Failure Will No Longer Be Lucrative”. When you read the word “failure,” did you immediately think sales?

The “Engagement Mapping” discussions that Microsoft is spearheading in conference rooms across the country seem to indicate that a “sale” is a component of many elements.

View duration is just one of those elements.

As video view duration can easily be separated out and measured, advertisers will soon be able to hold their agencies accountable for delivering more duration rather than less.

A sixty-second spot, for instance, offers the possibility of sixty seconds of viewer duration. How many of those sixty seconds did the viewer decide were interesting enough to actually hang around and watch? I can only assume that if the advertiser paid for sixty seconds to be created, they must want all sixty seconds watched. Otherwise, they would have made a twenty-four second spot. Or, a forty-one second spot.

Whose responsibility is it to get the viewer to stay and watch more, rather than less, once they click-in? Most would argue the creative agency.

And, if they get viewers to watch less rather than more of what they were paid to create, well, couldn’t that then be considered failure?

Once advertisers start monetizing view duration, that failure will no longer be lucrative for those agencies.

Some of you might be thinking that this will result in agencies creating shorter and shorter spots. And, you’re right. Many will.

But a handful of agencies, those confident in their ability, will see this for what it really is. An opportunity for their agency to be compensated based on how creative it is. And, even more importantly, an opportunity for a true creative renaissance to occur.

Ironically, supported by, of all things, the science of measurement.

We can now measure duration. Duration is created, not born. Agencies that know how to create it will be more desired than those who don’t.

Granted, many agencies will not be up to the task.

They made their fortune on mediocrity. And, since mediocrity could not be measured, they flourished.

In the Digital Age, there is no place for mediocrity. Or, one could argue, those agencies.

In the Digital Age, failure will no longer be lucrative.

Suddenly, the penny drops.

Google Defines Quality As Time-Spent

Ad agencies should be afraid. Very afraid.

According to Google, their TV Ads system will soon be sharing with your clients how well your commercials for their brands are working.

Or, not working.

A commercial’s quality, according to Google, can best be defined as how relevant the commercial is to those who start to watch it. And Google defines relevance as how long viewers are involved in the commercial.

In other words, having viewers watch thirty out of a possible thirty seconds means the commercial was more relevant than if only ten out of thirty seconds were consumed.

In true Google style, the more relevant the commercial, the better the commercial worked for the consumer. So the less it will cost the advertiser to run.

Which means the higher the Return on Involvement in the message itself, the higher the Return on Investment for the advertiser.

What’s enlightening about this decision by Google to use second-by-second—or time-spent data—as a proxy for quality, is that it has no correlation to sales.

In other words, Google has basically redefined the online platform from being strictly a direct marketing space to being a branding space.

Branding is about building relationships over time. By measuring the amount of time spent with a brand’s messaging, Google is starting to give advertisers a measurement as to how well their brand messages are working.

They are, in a sense, making branding quantifiable in a “qualifiable” way.

So, now play this scenario forward just a bit. An advertiser gets the data that says, on average, that only 10% of their thirty-second commercial was watched. Do you think they will bring this up to their creative agency?

Would you?

After all, the creative agency charged the advertiser for thirty seconds worth of content. Of which 90% failed. The advertiser paid for thirty seconds worth of production, which by today’s rates cost them around $12,000 per second to produce.

Of which, $324,000 was wasted.

Can you say, “refund?”

But instead of being reactive, perhaps a better option is for advertisers to be proactive. To work out with their agency a fee structure for creative development that is tied into viewer time-spent. In other words, the longer viewers are involved in the commercial, the more the agency would make.

The opposite, would, of course, also hold true.

Would agencies take this challenge? Most, no.

But there’s one in Boulder, one in San Francisco and one in Portland that would probably welcome it with open arms.

After all, what it would mean is that for the first time, they would be able to be paid based on how good their creative is.

There are now financial models that allow this to happen. Well, at least, there’s one. It’s called DAOS, an acronym for Digital Asset Optimization System.

DAOS is structured on the Return on Involvement principle. One could argue that Return on Involvement is the ROI of digital branding.

In fact, it appears as if Google already has.

Content? Context? Or, Control? Which One Really Rules?

“Content is King” is an overused phrase which we’re all too familiar with.

The word “Context” is quickly entering the vernacular as something of importance when developing a media plan.

Mike Bloxham wrote a nice piece about Content being King and Context being Queen in Wednesday’s Mediapost. Mike, being from Great Britain, would be the one to reference royalty when talking about advertising. Most, in this country, reference fertilizer when referring to the same subject.

But in honor of the upfront soon to be upon us and the new C3 measurement metric being bandied about, let me add a third ‘C” to the conversation.

This third “C” stands for Control.

My contention is that Control trumps both Content and Context in importance. And, in fact, when it comes to the digital platform,
Content must be created in Context of Control.

We are rapidly evolving into a future where we will have two types of advertising – the type which viewers have Control over and the type which viewers don’t have control over.

In case of the latter, advertising’s job will continue to be intrusive in nature - to interrupt whatever it is someone is enjoying. Since that person will have no Control in regards to fast-forwarding through the commercial, the job of the commercial is to intrude in such a manner as to arrest attention. And, if time permits, create interest.

In the case where the viewer has Control, and, in an ideal situation, has actually chosen to opt-in to watch the commercial, the job of the commercial is very different. The creative doesn’t need to attract attention. After all, the viewer has chosen to watch.

Interest has also been established by their clicking in. Basically, someone has knocked on the door of the brand and said, “Please tell me more.” When someone does that, the creative needs to treat them very differently. Not to mention, deferentially.

There is no reason to shout, yell, or, do goofy things to get attention.

After all, attention isn’t the goal. Involvement is.

A commercial who’s objective is to gain attention is a very different commercial from the one who’s objective is to involve. To that end, it must be created very differently from the get-go.

Which helps explain why re-purposing advertising that was designed to bust through the clutter that is mass media, has proven to be so horrendously inefficient when people opt-in to it.

The Content was not written in Context of Control.

Well, actually, the Content was written in Context of Control. But it was written under the assumption that the advertiser is the one who is in control.

In other words, it was written under false pretenses. And somehow, viewers can sense this.

So before media agencies go all gonzo over Context and convince advertisers that they have the answer to dwindling audiences, we need to look at reality as it really is, not as we would like it to be.

There are two types of advertising. The type that allows viewers to be in Control. And the type that doesn’t.

Advertisers need to start there, allowing their agencies to create Content accordingly.

Once they do that, then Context can enter the discussion. If, of course, advertisers still feel it’s necessary.

Many won’t. Because once an advertiser cedes Control to the viewer, an interesting thing happens. Their Context changes as to how advertising works.

It’s the viewer who’s King.

Advertising's job now, like it or not, is to serve.