How I Ran an Ad on Fox News...Pretty Interesting

[Tim Polster]

Hello,

I was sent this by a friend and it is quite interesting. It seems Google is taking its advertising model to your television. Not all of the details are outlined here but I think it shows a market direction.

How I Ran an Ad on Fox News | Arts and Life | SlateV

(I have no affiliation with Fox News!!)

I would be interested to hear your thoughts...

[Richard Miller]

1.3 million viewers and 1000 hits for the promoted web site. seems like a low ratio. I see potential, but the experiment is not impressing me.

[Dave Blackhurst]

IMO, it would help if the "commercial" wasn't an obscure "branding" piece... a professionally produced proper marketing 30 sec. spot would probably improve response rate, as would careful market targeting, which seemed to be available.

1000 responses isn't bad for a casual haphazard "test"...

[Adam Gold]

On the other hand, using the old model of cost vs. total reach (views of the ad), it seems this is a pretty good bargain if their numbers are to be believed. At a $9 CPM (cost per thousand views, presumably of total persons -- not out of the ballpark for TV rates) an ad with 1.3 million views would cost you about twelve grand rather than the $1300 he says he spent. My CPM calculator is a bit rusty so I could be way off, though.

Remember, all the TV ad placement -- the media buy -- can promise is impressions. Sales/click throughs are up to the creative. Demographically, psychographically, are the viewers you can get and afford the ones you want? Is this a good substitute for a real media planning agency? Probably not, but it's an interesting point of entry.

Might be good for the DIYers among us. Interesting.

I'd love to hear what Bill Davis thinks of this.

[Tim Polster]

The first thing I thought of was that the commercial production world is next in line for the salary wrecking ball that is the internet. I think it is good that the upper end of production is exclusive and not available for the masses. This keeps the quality high and the appreciation for experience and expertise.

Imho, if television is "Youtubed" we are all in trouble from a career point of view.

[Adam Gold]

Well, this model is about the media placement and really has nothing at all to do with production. Cheap crappy production has been available for some time from our local cable companies. It's the media buy that's been unavailable to the masses until this.

So I can't see this affecting production folks in any way. That horse is already out of the barn -- the democratization of media is not always a good thing. There were gatekeepers for a reason. And interestingly, many regular TV viewers agree with you on this. When we talk to viewers of certain networks that contain a lot of viewer generated content, we often hear, "gee, aren't there professionals out there who are supposed to do this?"

[Tim Polster]

I gently disagree and hope what you are saying holds true.

I believe if lower level (cheap) clients are buying the air time there is a high likelyhood that they will want the production for cheap as well.

One thing that I wondered about was where was this commercial being played from? Was it played from a Google server or submitted to a network for broadcast? If it is from a network what is their trick to offering the same service at fraction of the cost?

[Bill Davis]

Originally Posted by Adam Gold

On the other hand, using the old model of cost vs. total reach (views of the ad), it seems this is a pretty good bargain if their numbers are to be believed. At a $9 CPM (cost per thousand views, presumably of total persons -- not out of the ballpark for TV rates) an ad with 1.3 million views would cost you about twelve grand rather than the $1300 he says he spent. My CPM calculator is a bit rusty so I could be way off, though.

Remember, all the TV ad placement -- the media buy -- can promise is impressions. Sales/click throughs are up to the creative. Demographically, psychographically, are the viewers you can get and afford the ones you want? Is this a good substitute for a real media planning agency? Probably not, but it's an interesting point of entry.

Might be good for the DIYers among us. Interesting.

I'd love to hear what Bill Davis thinks of this.

Well, since you asked...

If the central problem in simple marketing campaigns was exclusively "exposure" than this might make a difference. But the reality of commerce is significantly more complicated than any one element. Good marketing is like cooking a stew. Any one can go the the store and buy basic stew ingredients - but the key to an excellent result is that you need to spend a lot of trial and error to determine the MIX of those elements, the temperatures involved, the spices and the creative spark that elevates your result above the competition.

Heck, anyone with a copy of Joy of Cooking CAN, with maybe some practice, make a passable stew. Maybe not the first time, but with just a modest amount of trial and error. And similarly anyone with a product that's attractive could likely sell some units using this kind of small-scale marketing campaign.

BUT. In the game of selling stuff, the target is SUSTAINABLE sales. And the Salon guys managed to spend $1200 bucks to generate 1000 web site hits. Which does NOT surprise me. The question unanswered is whether they could generate actual SALES out of those 1000 folks necessary to leverage that $1200 into $6000 or even $12,000.00. THEN go on to keep generating those kind of sales numbers over the time necessary to build a sustainable business - the infa-structure of which includes much more than making the phones ring. It deals with Cost of Goods, margins, the cost of labor in fulfilling orders, and all the other business dreck that companies have to cover in order to keep moving and grow and develop the NEXT successful product.

Media is in a massive re-invention. I posted somewhere here about a recent experience I had delivering HD TV spots to the San Diego market. To my shock, the (network affiliate) station there that I dealt with has no control room anymore - just a skeleton staff - and their content is served out of Atlanta.

That's just a small slice of what's happening in commercial television business. Decentralization, gutting of knowledgable talent, web-izing everything (my spot delivery consisted of me uploading files from my computer directly to the station who simply forwarded them to Atlanta - no qualified eyeballs looking at quality, or judging the appropriateness of what was happening. Just everyone in the chain hoping that I and the VERY small team behind the ads knew enough to build content without significant flaws.

In fact, i learned after the fact that our very hard work to produce really nice HD content was going to get "center punched" by one station because they simply take the HD feed and knock off the sides to create a standard def signal for their cable feed. There wasn't even anyone left to COMPLAIN to about that. Their SD signal is viewed as just a way to make a few more bucks off their content stream - nothing more.

The point, I guess, is that a good chef in a nice restaurant doing creative things with food is still a valuable thing. But the broadcast industry is being "McDonalds-ized" at a stunning pace. They just want to serve up whatever they can in the largest possible scale so that they can take the money and run before the internet takes over everything.

Such is life.

Still, my feeling is that just because you CAN do your own simple media buying with services like the one described by the OP - isn't a recommendation for doing so. I think it's a lot like do-it-yourself typesetting was a dozen years ago. For a while everyone wanted to play. Then the reality set in that it's HARD to learn all the attendant details that up the odds of success for the experienced player. There will be a few high profile "lottery winner" types in the new media buying process as time goes on. But in the end, the only sure path to success will be the same as It's always been. Those who study long and hard, day in and day out for a long time, will most likely be the ones to suddenly be the "overnight sensations" in this area as well.

My 2 cents, anyway.