Further milking of the cash cow

Christmas is coming and the Stig is getting stuffed. Actually its just a doll version but the message is still very much the same.

I’m still not 100% certain of the timing of the start of series 12 of Top Gear - it’s either at the end of this month or the very start of next - either way it will finish near Christmas.

On the flip side the timing of a new licensing partnership between BBC Worldwide and Wow! Stuff that will see a range of new TopGear toys released by Autumn 09 - is well planned.

The deal will see a doll of the The Stig made as well as other toys, gifts and gadgets for the already very well milked hit show.

But I would rather this than advertising. It’s better that the BBC fill any funding gap, and help keep the licence fee low by selling fringe marketing materials for its hit shows - than demand to carry advertising or go subscription based.

Initial product line plans include remote control cars, novelty gifts, desk top toys and a hotly anticipated doll of the Stig – all due to hit retailers in Autumn 2009.

Other new deals include a toy and game range for Marks & Spencer licensing to Peter Black Holdings, which will hit shops this October.

Apparently there is also a deal with Kinnerton Confectionary that will include celebration cakes (from January 2009) and childrens lunch bags/water bottles.

What this really proves though - other than the fact that JC has clearly and obviously just signed a new deal giving him more of the TG Wordlwide profits - is how many kids actually watch the show.

I know I sit down every Sunday and watch it with my five year old lad.

I guess we can now look forward to ‘the amazing adventures of Stiiiiig’ on CBBC within the next six months.

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Who needs TV

Theres been a long standing relationship between big business and commercial television - the television channel shows a promotional video for a big company in between its programmes and in return big business gives the TV channel a big chunck of money.

In the new media age, the era of Generation Y, the time when those of us under 30 (or around 30) are in control of the advertising budgets and what goes on to the TV screens - the roles are almost reversed.

Well actually it isn’t a case of roles reversed - its a case of the TV station being taken out of the equation completely.

A video on You Tube can get upwards of a two million views if its good enough - taking in account the number of people that turn over during the adverts or walk out to make a cup of tea - you’d have to advertise during something like Coronation Street or Doc Martin to get those sort of views for your ad.

The cost of getting millions of views for a clip on You Tube could be anything from sod all to thousands depending on how much you spend on making the advert itself as thats the only cost.

However the chance of getting millions of views on You Tube is pretty slim - first you need to build momentum for it by getting people to talk about it in blogs or message boards and then you need to cross your fingers and hope it strikes at the heart of the fickle new media audience.

The cost of getting millions of views for an ad on ITV (during Corrie) is probably around £50,000 for 30 seconds PLUS the cost of actually making the advert in the first place (which you’d have to spend to get it on You Tube).

But - an advert during Corrie is probably guaranteed to be seen by at least 1 million of the 10 million viewers it gets on average - so you’re paying for the guaranteed view.

So if you’ve created an Ad Campaign thats pretty good and says what your business does - the normal everyday traditional advertising campaign that you see all the time - spend the extra cash and run it during Corrie (if thats your target audience).

But if you have a really good idea for CONTENT - so something that ads a little extra to society whether it be a drumming gorilla, a half hour sitcom or Danny Wallace talking about every day masterpieces (new Fiat campaign) - get it on the web and hope for hte best.

The biggest mistake though is to only have the video available through your own site - at the very least release short versions or a few full versions of the videos on all the major social video sites and MAKE THEM EMBEDDABLE.

The mistake Fiat have made with what could well be a pretty good, rampant success of a viral video series - is restrict it to their site only. If they got the well produced, very funny videos out to the wider web (with a picture of their car in the bottom corner or something) it would be seen by MANY MORE people than just putting a few banner ads on popular sites.

I’m going to keep going back to the Fiat site just to watch Danny’s Clips as he’s a funny guy but I’m not going to look at anything else on the site - but if you gave me the content in a way I could easily access then I might just take more of an interest - even if you put the info on the right hand side in the notes - or provide something ‘extra’ on your site in addition to what I can get from the You Tube clips.

Although - as the Fiat 500 looks like a pig ugly piece of crap of a car I don’t think I’d be that interested however much stuff they gave me on their site. Although I’m sure it drives wonderfuly and it does have that ‘cult’ appeal that will mean it will sell VERY well among a certain subset of society.

The same subset that loves watching You Tube videos while bored in the office - hello Fiat?

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Not to adblock?

Every time I read the comments under a story, Digg post or forum thread that has even a small mention of adverts on web pages there is always at least one, but often MANY MORE, posts from people saying “I never see adverts” or “I use AdBlock so it doesn’t bother me” or annoyingly “what ads?”.

I can sympaphise with people that block ads, some websites go well over the top with the flashy, noisy, introcive banners and other sites aren’t using particularly trustworthy ad servers - so you could end up with all sorts of crap loaded on to your computer if you’re not careful.

But there is another side to this as well. I don’t normally contribute to threads about adverts on websites because my point of view seems to be the polar opposite of many others.

If you read some of these threads you get the feeling that they think everything should be free, there should be no adverts and they shouldn’t have to do anything to get what they want.

Content isn’t free though - ok it might appear to come online for nothing - this blog for instance doesn’t cost you a sausage and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pay to read my ramblings - but it still costs me to host it, the domain name costs money and although I do it for passion - it still costs time to produce.

The same applies to other sites, especially newspapers and magazines where the content is written by professional writers who need to be paid, has heavy bandwidth that costs a small fortune and often includes images that have rights costs associated with them.

With this in mind I posted this simple comment to a thread on a message board about adverts on a popular magazine website recently “I don’t mean to sound harsh or anything but don’t you feel guilty about using adblock?”

My argument FOR leaving AdBlock off is a simple one - its the ads that cover the costs of running the website - it’s been made fairly clear that people aren’t prepared to pay for content online so the advertising model has been flourishing as a way of covering the costs of paying journalists, bandwidth bills etc.

At the moment not enough people use adblock for it to matter but if it does spread and nobody is seeing ads - do you think content on sites like topgear.com or guardian.co.uk will stay free for long?

I personally make a point of looking at ads on a site and if it interests me - clicking on the ad - after all - if I’ve enjoyed the content provided by that site - for free - then I think I owe them a little of my time in return.

If a website doesn’t get enough money to cover costs it will be forced to drop staff or cut services - nobody wants to see that from a site they enjoy.

Also - with advertising revenue and sales dropping through the floor in the traditional newspaper business - online revenue is going to become ever more important - that means showing adverts.

Good quality content doesn’t come cheap. Top writers charge a lot of money for their words, great photographers go to great legnths to get the photo and expect to be rewarded - musicians deserve some reward for their craft, talent and art - and so do film makers.

If everybody had the same attitude as some on forums, comments etc then nothing would get made. I do think we pay too much for some content - £15 for a DVD when it first comes out is rediculous - especially as the creatives behind the film see very little of the profit made in the end - Music is even more of a telling tale with most of the money going to the labels.

But we’re starting to break free from that now - musicians are releasing their own music and getting more of the final profit - indie films are becomming more popular and finding wider markets and soon we’ll see authors doing much the same.

Back to websites - A question I was wondering was “would you pay a monthly subscription for your favourite website in order to have the adverts turned off?”

For example - its very likely that people outside the UK are going to start seeing adverts across bbc.co.uk soon - the idea being that with half of the sites users coming from outside the UK, or people that don’t pay the licence fee that covers the sites costs - those people should contribute something.

Would you pay a monthly subscription of, say $5 to be able to view everything on bbc.co.uk without adverts?

Another question I was thinking about was “If a way was found for sites to be able to block access to anyone with AdBlock enabled - would you disable adblock to view the site or stop using it completely?”

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