As we cross 35M streams since launching a couple of years ago:
WatchMojo.com is happy to welcome a couple of our latest distribution partners, the first is Sling Media:
“Sling.com is a wonderful combination of premium video content, television viewing, robust editorial and consumer-friendly access and socialization features,” said Jason Hirschhorn, President, Sling Media Entertainment Group. “Users will have a blast watching great clips, full length shows and movies while customizing the viewing experience to their liking.”
Sling.com features:
- Robust editorial programming: Sling.com’s editorial team creates great content including blogs, playlists and clip collections.
- Socialization features: Users can subscribe to any channel, show or user to create a feed of programming and activity that reflects your personal tastes and those of your social network.
- Slingbox access: For the first time, Slingbox owners can now access and view their home television (cable, satellite receiver) and DVR via the Sling.com website, making their Slingboxes available without a software client download.
“Our mission from day one was to enable access to content regardless of screen or source,” said Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO of Sling Media, Inc. “Sling Media will continue to link and meld video solutions from the television, computer and mobile device to create seamless experiences for consumers.”
Check out our channel here.
Also being announced today, but live for some time, is our relationship with 5Min.com. Here is the press release on that, more info on Tech Crunch, and a video to boot:
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WatchMojo NewsletterFrom our friends at Tubemogul: While nearly 90% of viewers watch the first 10 seconds of a video, only 10% watch more than 5 minutes. Worth noting that WatchMojo.com’s videos are 1 to 3 minutes… with most of them being in the 60-90 second range. Tubemogul has over 30,000 users (we’re one of them) so while this study might not be 100% empirical, it is definitely representative of made-for-web video content:
SAI and MediaMemo jump to conclusions that I think are somewhat faulty because while some traditional media companies such as CBS and FOX use Tubemogul, a bunch do not (or do not use frequently). Surely if you lump in viewing patterns of traditional media - which tends to be longer - then I think these numbers might get skewed a bit.
Then again, this begs the question: would online users, who clearly have short attention spans, sit through longer-form content? My gut says no… and this is a programming reason why TV companies are slow to move their content online. Of course, the bigger reason is an economic one which is captured by this table:
When traditional media companies do venture online, they find that they are replacing their offline dollars with online pennies, to quote NBC’s Jeff Zucker, who isn’t alone:
Discovery CEO David Zaslav expanded a bit on what he said last month about the value of full shows online for the cable net, in an interview with B&C: “I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the economics. If you take out a pen and you add it up, there’s not a lot of economics there [of putting full shows online]. The business model is not that strong…we get substantial value by distributing our content on dual-revenue-stream platforms, domestically and around the world. We’ve been able to take the best of our content and use pieces of it through HowStuffWorks.com or on our other sites..there’s no reason for us to take a fire hose and take a fantastically valuable library and make it available on the Web for free.”
In other words, the economic incentive isn’t even there, which explains why when it comes to traditional media and online media: those who can won’t and those who want can’t.
Could Google possibly be looking at two straight years of lower revenues? First, let’s look at Google’s historical revenue growth:
Then, let’s consider the horror. Via Barron’s:
Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry laid out in a research note today. He sees the company posting revenues of $15.71 billion this year, $15.23 billion next year and $14.57 billion in 2010, with profits of $19.44 a share this year, $19.24 next year and $17.98 for 2010. While his 2008 number is about in line with the Street consensus, he is way below most other forecasts for both 2009 and 2010. Chowdhry today set a price target on the stock of $270, which as it happens is not far from where the stock closed.
What does this look like with regards to year-over-year growth?
Is this possible? Well, anything is possible. Of course, if this pans out, then forget about my 2006 call for Google to be worth more than MSFT by 2010. But let’s explore this argument and see if indeed Google can see declining revenues.
- Conventional wisdom is that paid search is more resilient to a downturn, because it is an ROI-based form of advertising, whereas banner display ads will soften up. As a result, the Google Bulls would say this doomsday scenario is impossible.
I am not so sure. I think it boils down basic economics.
- I agree that search is a better way for ROI-sensitive advertisers to market themselves compared to display banners, but the problem is that paid search is powered by individuals, small and medium-sized businesses who will have a higher propensity to reduce their ad budgets in a downturn. In aggregate, this will add up to quite a loss of revenue. Could it represent the missing $3-5B. Possibly.
- At the other end of the spectrum, while Fortune 500 marketers will reduce their ad budgets too, they will continue to shift dollars away from untracked, offline media to online, tracked media.
- When it comes to the biggest marketers and global ad agencies, this means a shift to display banners (in the form of rich media) and video advertising, not paid search. Yes, paid search will remain a major part of online advertising (it’s 40% now), but this is not where ad agencies and marketing executives want to play in: marketing remains a “soft science” so don’t expect the Web to devalue intangibles like branding and brand equity.
- Brand equity, my friends, is not measured via text link. Only display banners, rich media and video advertising will really increase brand equity (though text links can play a role there, too).
- I know what you’re thinking: display banners will also move towards a performance-based model. Hmm… not sure, not so fast. Yes, crappy sites with crappy inventory will have to accept advertisers’ requests for performance-based pricing models (CPC, CPA) but the premium sites will never accept this. They don’t have to.
- The social networking boom has increased supply of inventory, but on the low end of the spectrum… the experimentation will dissipate as marketing budgets come under pressure and there will be a flight to quality on premium content sites.
- Laslty, there is an “underground” mindset with paid search that has a lot to do with outbidding your competitors than earning a positive ROI. When I was running text ads promoting my second book The Confessions of Alexander the Great: 33 Lessons in Greatness, I was at one point more concerned with outbidding a fellow author than with sales.
Sad, but true. The same could be said about Google’s revenue growth in 2008-2010. This does raise the question: what is Google’s management doing to diversify Google’s revenues away from its one cash cow?
- Doubleclick will help Google a bit on the display end of things, but Doublelick is an ad server with brutal margins and limited upside potential.
- YouTube might be generating hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but it won’t be making up the shortfall any time soon. Disclaimer: WatchMojo.com supplies videos to YouTube.
- Feedburner had some potential but I don’t see email advertising being a multi-billion dollar business for Google either.
As such, no wonder Google is looking at cost reductions to make up for falling profits.
PLAY
