Thursday’s Themes . . .

February 16, 2017Uncategorizedgmtartaglia@aol.com

PRODUCT PLACEMENT DILEMMA: When does original content involving a brand cross over into paid sponsorship? It’s a fine line which the execs at NBC may be about to cross for SNL. We’ve all seen their commercial-style skits featuring real products like this Totino’s example (warning – mildly NSFW). Up until now brands have been featured involuntarily and haven’t paid for product insertion. According to AdWeek NBC is considering testing paid placements in future skits. There’s an obvious revenue motivation to do this – you’d have to assume clients will pay a huge premium for content integration. But does featuring a brand water down the comedic aspect of the skit? You can easily imagine a CMO wanting to “approve” how their product is being featured if they’re paying for it. That could make for some really lame skits if the writers can’t use cutting/sarcastic humor. It’s the classic tug of war between sales and editorial content. My bet is that NBC’s Sales team will end up with more of the rope when all is said and done. (link)

TO STREAM OR TO DOWNLOAD . . . THAT IS THE QUESTION: There’s been an overall trend in the audio industry towards streaming content and away from downloading it. The reasoning is simple – why purchase a download when you can “rent it” via streaming subscription or listen for free on an ad-supported platform. However, despite the trend there are still a significant number of downloaders out there. The following Integr8 Research link and graph illustrate the demographic profiles of each group. The line of demarcation is right at 25 yo – with younger more tech savvy listeners streaming, and their older counterparts still downloading. My guess is that streaming will begin to win out as more content becomes available via stream and those early adopters age up in the primary 25-54 yo demo. (link)

YAHOO’S WOES CONTINUE TO MOUNT: The good news for Yahoo is it looks like the acquisition deal by Verizon is still going to happen. The bad news is Yahoo’s value continues to tumble, as reflected by the purchase price being dropped by $250M. Much of this decline is attributed to the numerous Yahoo data breaches which have come to light since the merger announcement – Verizon will take on liability for these once they own Yahoo. It also speaks to a general sense of Yahoo’s declining importance as a digital publisher. Honestly, besides Yahoo Finance stock lookups and Fantasy Football what does anyone use it for anymore? Sort of feels like Verizon is catching a falling knife. (link)

PRINCE’S POWER ON PANDORA: Finally today, the power of Prince’s fan base was on full display this week with the announcement that listeners had added 686,000 new Prince stations on Pandora in the first 24 hours of his music being released to the streamer. This is an astonishing number which shows what can happen when a legendary musician who has limited access to his music suddenly becomes available to the masses. For all you math geeks out there, 686,000 listeners adding Prince equals roughly 1 out of every 450 persons 13+ in the United States – all doing the same activity on Pandora on the same day! (link)

Have a great Thursday guys!