According to Mookie Tenembaum’s latest piece, “The real secret of achieving long “real time spent” is in providing the consumer with something MORE than just the ad message”.
What’s this mean? Content sites can’t just put an ad in front of people without some substantial content attached. It’s a fair exchange – I watch a 15 second car ad on Cnet, for example, for a two minute discussion of the latest digital camera trends by a respected reviewer. Actually, I’m not tuning in to watch the ad, but I am watching it anyway. By gum, isn’t that just like TV?
So how much can customers tolerate – the average length of streaming video is 2.5 minutes with one (or several) ad, total running time 10 seconds max.
So why are publishers complaining about bleeding ink? They’ve already got the editors, writers, and customers reading their magazines and newspapers – all they have to do is put them in short interesting videos talking about what they do!
Of course, there’s that bugbear of “short interesting videos”. Last time I talked with a publisher, I heard all about “that video guy” who never delivered, never finished on deadline, and never made anything interesting. I guess that’s why I work for ExecProducer and use MinutePitch for polished videos in minutes. Because I can’t wait around for “that video guy” – time is money.