Imagine Mickey Mouse is running for a bus. It’s just pulled up at a bus stop 100 metres away and people are getting on. Mickey is running frantically down the street, dodging people, street furniture and rain puddles. Everyone is on the bus and the driver starts to indicate and pull out. Mickey is still 20 metres away, just as the bus drives off. Mickey has missed the bus.
Now replace the idea of Mickey Mouse with the The Walt Disney Company. And the bus with “the point” and you’ll see that Disney have really missed it with their new advertising idea, outlined over at The Big Picture.
Their idea is to put programmes on the web for free download, the day after they first get broadcast. So shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives will be available for the first time and they are to be applauded for this part of their vision. No longer will people have to rely on BitTorrent and the questionable legality of using this channel.
The programmes will contain embedded ads, which is also fair enough and a proven model - subsidised content. But they have made the ads impossible to fast forward or skip in any way. You HAVE to watch the ads, whether you like it or not or whether they are any good or not.
Surely, the way to approach this is to work with advertisers to make sure that the ads embedded in these programmes are compelling enough in their own right to engage the viewer and make them WANT to see them? I don’t suggest that this is easy, but it is possible to produce great advertising and heaven knows people in ad agencies are paid enough to demand that they produce great work for every client, every time.
And with a new channel like this, Disney could vet the ads themselves and only allow ads that really sing to make the cut. That would also be interesting from a sales perspective, as agencies would have to beg to be allowed to buy ads in the programmes or admit to their clents that their work just isn’t good enough.
The final factor is that someone, somewhere is working on a hack to delete or fast forward these ads, so Disney could save themselves a great deal of hassle by abandoning this weird idea now. What will their next move be? Kidnapping people and forcing them to watch endless loops of crappy advertising? Mugging people with branded knives and coshes?
Come on people, do the right thing.
You say they missed the point, but you didn’t clearly articulate what ‘the point’ is, even though you say that offering the videos for downloads is a good idea. What exactly did they do wrong?
I think the new model is ingenious. Now I have a choice of ad-free downloads from iTunes for a price or free ones subsidized by ads.
Joe, sorry but I’m not quite sure what’s unambiguous about:
“But they have made the ads impossible to fast forward or skip in any way. You HAVE to watch the ads, whether you like it or not or whether they are any good or not.
Surely, the way to approach this is to work with advertisers to make sure that the ads embedded in these programmes are compelling enough in their own right to engage the viewer and make them WANT to see them.”
Russell
I’m not an ad expert, but the problem in my view with the idea of making ads “compelling enough … to engage the viewer” is that part of ads effectiveness, like it or not, is repetition. Viewers, however, don’t like repetition, even of great movies or shows (or conversations for that matter).
I think maybe embedded product placements (when will the NFL allow teams to sell ad space on their jersies?) and sponsorships (maybe a frame around the screen) are a better way to go , but I don’t know how well the economics work vs. forcing viewers to watch ads.