Content Matters

This Sunday’s New York Times featured an article penned by Randall Stross entitled “Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens”. The basic premise, with which I have no argument, is that television is holding up as an advertising platform much more effectively than newspapers.

 

What I disagree with is the author’s analysis, that the reason for the disparity between the two media is that “consumers are increasingly avoiding newspapers… because the text mode is now used so infrequently that it can feel like a burden”.

 What?

I probably consume about five times as much text as I did ten or fifteen years ago. Where my text intake was once limited to a daily newspaper, a bunch of memos and a few faxes, today my entire day is consumed with text. I still read the New York Times during my morning commute, but also read emails on my Blackberry and news feeds and Twitter on my iPhone all before getting to the office and firing up my laptop. Text used infrequently? Not exactly.

It is true that forms of text are changing. The long-form article favored by the Economist or the New Yorker might be losing favor as we scan Tweets for new information. But even with Twitter, the 140 character Tweet is often simply a headline with a link to a longer post on a website somewhere.

And while video is growing, for most of us, video remains a small part of their content. Video remains the media of choice for entertainment. But it remains less effective for traditional information consumption and business use.

As supposed "evidence" for this trend that users want to passively consume more video, the author talks of how much of our Internet use occurs while we're in front of a TV set. I doubt those users are watching video on their PC while watching video on the TV. Instead, they're using their PC to read or share text, not more video. It's a sign that the passive watching of television is not enough and that users are looking for a more interactive experience.

If television is doing well comparatively, that’s largely a function of the media buying process. If you wish to reach several million people with your message, a commercial on American Idol will get you there quickly. Trying to reach a comparable audience on the web is much more difficult. The targeted audience that niche content sites provide can be attractive, but trying to roll that up to spend a consumer product company’s ad budget is like finding shovel-ready projects for an $800 billion stimulus. Spending large sums on many small projects is a challenge.

The problem also sits with the ad agencies. Despite years of efforts to become digital media agencies, most remain much more comfortable with the idea of running 30-second spots on the networks.

Is television strong? No doubt. Will video on the web continue to grow? Absolutely. Is reading text a thing of the past? Not even close.