new media – new opportunities for doc creators

april 2008 (niv adi)

The world has changed. This is a matter of fact. The upheavals in Media are creating a new agenda, which affect the entire food chain. Writers, creators, directors, producers, photographers, broadcasters, etc. – the world is different now, and the revolution, which continues right before our very eyes, is sweeping across with entirely new rules.

 

Revolution – just like we said…

We shan’t get into the details of this fascinating global process. It has to do with economics, with one American viewer, and another; with a Japanese viewer; a Chinese viewer, and with viewers from Eastern Europe, who first used their TIVO remotes to avoid watching commercials, and next, are spending over three hours each day watching a different screen altogether – their pc’s or laptops.

 

We shan’t get into the sheer scale of this phenomenon, the numbers, but it is about global advertisers and major global advertising agencies, which measure each and every rating trend, as they must. Their indicators have been shattered hundreds of times over the past years, pointing to an impossible state of huge losses due to investment in advertising, in particular in printed press and TV. The slow, cumbersome advertising industry, has been reaping huge profits for years, albeit thanks to particularly ‘cool’ “creative” – but without having to resort to true business creativity. The revolution’s effect was exasperated in part by some of the account managers at the advertising agencies, who did not see this in time (or did not wish to rock the boat), and kept on charging the advertisers 300 thousand dollars US per TV commercial, and millions of dollars for airing. When the reports concerning the level of effectiveness of this investment came in, the powers that be were stunned. At the end of the day, it is they who affect us, and on each creation and production: huge companies which are in the business of selling consumer products – e.g. Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Pepsi and General Motors.

Anyway you look at it, when two hundred of the 650 billion dollars in the advertising industry are pouring into new media – and this trend is nowhere near over (given that the Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese and the Eastern Europeans are watching TV less and surfing the net more). This is an industrial revolution un-paralleled in the past five hundred years.

 

Mom, dad – I want this…

How does all this affect the single creator and the documentary segment at large?

As long-term players in this vast industry, who are constantly involved in cooperation ventures and funding, we have grown accustomed, instructed even, to approach ‘mom’ (any Israeli TV channel), ‘dad’ (The Israeli Film Fund) or the ‘Uncles’ (a foreign TV channel or fund). In the framework of the former, orderly world, we used to collect our ‘pocket money’ – or not. That (ancient) world had quite a few advantages – and quite a few disadvantages as well. One of the prominent drawbacks has always been dealing with the same people, sometimes permanently positioned in their powerful posts as acquisition managers or fund managers. They ruled over that world, often issuing their fateful verdicts for years. Many creators, who knew not how to play the game well enough, lagged behind, having to shelve their exciting creations at the script stage. These creations may well have become major success stories, had they made it all the way to the screen – and to the audiences.

This revolution we have been describing here succinctly and generally, is in stark contrast to the process still in practice in documentary segment. The new rules of the game enable creation without any mediators or selection by ‘know-it-alls’. It is all about a direct dialogue between the creator and the audience. It is this dialogue, which can transform a little known director to a major star – allowing the use of the Internet by the audience to express their opinion, to influence the process and to intervene. This does indeed have a few drawbacks, there is a great deal of advantages, and at any rate, it is altogether very different indeed.

So ‘mom’, ‘dad’ and the ‘uncles’ we have all come to know are running out of money. The industry no longer lets them decide and cast their verdicts. Rather, we the ‘children’ are given the choice to either cry in the corner or take the bull by the horns; seize this terrific exciting opportunity and leave home (which is disintegrating anyway); create directly, vis-à-vis the viewing audience; seek out the people who have been producing the snacks they have been feeding us all these years; create without any limit, and also develop revenue sources we could never have envisaged under the yolk of the greats. What is to become of all those managers and editors along the way? Look at them very carefully; watch their grin disappear from the global markets, fairs and selection committees, whose funding had been discontinued.

 

Not to worry – TV is not on its way out

No. Far from it: TV is hardly disappearing from our world, nor is cinema. One would do well to switch to another channel, away from this trite debate, between those (usually, interested parties) who claim TV will triumph, and those who claim the Internet will triumph. The answer is that the single person, be it the viewer or the user, the person surfing the net, will triumph either way. This person’s variety of choice is increasing, the screens are becoming more numerous, and the major leading channels are transforming into small broadcasting bodies and content providers.

For those who like waking up slowly, worry not – its fine. The documentary funding array is going to last a little longer, and its funds are to remain on offer for the next few years to come. Nevertheless, the deluge is upon us, and as we all know, a serious tsunami sweeps major dinosaurs too. Commercial TV indeed sees no profit in investing in low rating programs, which reap low revenues from advertisers. Even so, the public scheme behind local productions, co-production agreements and funds, will not remain in place either. Governments and legislators alike also follow multi-channel TV – Israeli Knesset members too – and in this reality, it hardly seems logical to keep all those editors and junior editors on the payroll of documentary and culture departments at ARTE, when it generates a rating of 0.2%. This does not mean that we should forget about ARTE, but it does mean a change is in order. And indeed, ARTE and BBC are changing, and any survival-minded channel is setting up VOD infrastructure, along with an Internet site designed to attract a new audience.

 

There’s money in the playground that is the Internet – and lots of it

In the new world – the creator must treat every platform with respect. The Internet is not TV’s ‘garbage bin’. The Internet merits a great deal of thought as to what can be produced for it beyond, that is, spinoffs of shows from other platforms. The cellular screen (we shall not touch on it in this article, for it deserves a separate analysis) is also a worthy media for your creations.

Those who claim there’s no money in the Internet know not of what they speak. There is a great deal of money, and the world’s leading Internet sites’ turnover is far higher than that of the leading TV channels. The 60 billion dollars advertisers spent last year alone on Internet advertising alone attest to that. Hundreds of millions of daily streaming and an annual growth rate of 25% also serve as a clear indication.

Those who claim it is unclear how money is to be made… are approaching the actual, poignant question. The opportunities created by the Internet and afforded by the Internet to creators, in terms of both exposure and profitability – are beyond description. It’s just like a child, for whom you buy a different toy every time, and each day the child is taken with a new toy, all enthusiastic, and then, one day, the child is brought to a huge playground where there is everything of everything. It’s all very confusing at first, perplexing, stressful, even. What is the child to do? Play with one thing at a time? Play five games at once?

 

The road to innovative creation leads to new revenue

The rules are different here. There are no guidelines and committee protocols of any kind; no lectors; no production budgets; no production profits; no broadcast day, nor press reviews. There are no threshold demands (it does indeed seem like anyone can do it, but it isn’t really so); no actual talents, and no fixed format (neither 52 nor 3 minutes). It’s a world of no rules – for better and worse.

What you do have, is a world of opportunities to become familiar with. This is a world in which the viewer / surfer is totally interested in the experience. This is a world the surfer would like to influence, and indeed can, at times. Interactivity is hardly a curse – it is the doorway to creative dialogue, and also to revenue creation.

After the deluge, money is no longer in the hands of the broadcasting media. One can approach the Internet sites and demand hundreds of dollars for a chapter in a documentary series for the Internet – yet this is a limited business model, and it shall remain so. Money is in the hands of (careful, painful revelation ahead…) the advertiser. It has always been so, only that all the mediating parties, who have disappeared in the meantime, were far stronger – so it seemed that while we were selling our creation to this TV channel, or another (each may serve as the culprit), in fact – we practically sold our soul to the Head & Shoulders shampoo.

If the advertiser has the money, and we now have Internet, TV, and VOD, then one has to think about it. What shall we do about this? In this new world, where people are the focus of attention, some foresee unparalleled success for the documentary pieces. And since the viewers determine, at the touch of the mouse button, how much money would pour into the Internet site – then this is an invitation to create the next sensation in the documentary segment, whose form may be different (for instance, non-linear production and editing), whose perspective may be different (one can, for example, take advantage of interactivity), yet nevertheless, it is still about documenting real phenomena and real people and personal stories. Do not do TV or cinema on the Internet.

The key to making money is the number of surfers watching your production and engaging in the interactive things they can do on new media. Translating the volume of surfers and activities to cash flow is done by ratings systems particular to the Internet (and this is also big news, as these are no longer general rating systems as in TV). One has to study the terms (see list). When one begins to realize what can be done in this huge playground, and begins to see income being generated from CPC and CPM, one can move forward and consider cooperation ventures between creators and sites, and a direct link between creators, producers and advertisers – which lead to serious money, in the form of sponsorship and marketing content.

Moving from a structured world to a wild jungle is far from simple. But there it is. There is no one potential customer. There is no reason why a documentary piece should not appear on YAHOO or AOL’s portal. It may very well happen. It is quite possible that advertisers throughout the world would like their name to appear before, during, or after your 4- minute clip. The Internet enables all this. This is your opportunity to create revenues directly. This is also a world in which powerful players are emerging, such as content companies and interactive companies, who realize fully how to make ideas come true in new media. These players are excellent venues for creators.

 

One last word about quality.

There’s a rumour going on, that the successful stuff in Internet and new media is of questionable quality – amateur and surfer content. The news is good on this front. All the surveys show that 85% of the surfers seek professional, quality content and prefer it, so the business model concerning video and film content in the Internet is based on professional content. Especially in light of the fact that in this environment, ‘the people’ are the ones making the choice, there is room for quality and creation unheard of even in the public channels, which were supposedly the venue for independent creators in the previous world.

So there are no excuses. The world of Internet is worthy of your creation, and expects it.

 

Terms you must to know in the new world

·         CPM ads (”cost per thousand views”; banner ads online and regular ads in print, TV and radio)

·         CPC ads (”cost per click”; think Google ads)

·         CPT ads (”cost per transaction”; you pay only if the customer brought to you from a media sites becomes a paying customer. Here’s an example.)

·         Lead generation (you pay for qualified names of potential customers)

·         Subscription revenues

·         Licensing of brand (people pay to use a media brand as implied endorsement)

·         Licensing of content (syndication)

·         Getting the users to create something of value for free and applying any of the above to monetize it. (Like Digg or our own Reddit)

·         Upgraded service/content (ed: aka “freemium”)

·         Alternate output (pdf; print/print-on-demand; customized Shared Book style; etc.)

·         Custom services/feeds

·         Live events

·         “Souvenirs”/”Merchandise”

·         Co-branded spinoff

·         Cost Per Install (popular with top Facebook apps who can help others get installs)

·         E-commerce (selling stuff directly on your website)

·         Sponsorships (ads of some sort that are sold based on time, not on the number of impressions)

·         Listings (paying a time based amount to list something like a job or real estate on your website)

·         Paid Inclusion (a form of CPC advertising where an advertiser pays to be included in a search result)

·         Streaming Audio Advertising (like radio advertising delivered in the audio stream after a certain amount of audio content has been delivered)

·         Streaming Video Advertising (like streaming audio but in video)

~ by nivadi on August 24, 2008.