The 'Pivot to Video' Was An Expensive Failure. Will We Make the Same Mistake with Podcasts?

Almost nobody wanted the Internet to “pivot to video.” It has been an utter disaster. Surely we have learned our lesson, right?

Well…

The year is 2019, an ad blocker effective against inline video ads has been released. Advertisers see a new hope in the podcast format. They believe it will be difficult to block podcast ads if they are read by podcast talent and incorporated into the show. Even if ads can be identified they will be difficult to remove without negatively impacting content. Advertisers start pressuring the media companies that pivoted to video for them to now pivot to podcasts.

Everything podcasts!

There is a war of attention being fought and it is getting more absurd by the day. All of the stakeholders want positive outcomes, but it’s a mess. Selling effectively often involves a bit of nagging and intrusion, but imagine going to a steakhouse and the waiter saying you can only order pizza. You ask why and they say, “well, we make more money that way.”

The disastrous so-called pivot to video has been driven entirely by advertiser demand. Sponsors want eyeballs on ads; the audience rarely wants eyeballs on ads. Browsing an ad-supported site without an ad blocker generally causes undesirable experiences and slow page loads. Traditionally ads were tied to a media — print ads were printed, television ads were on television. We have lost that constraint with the web. Now someone reading an article may be presented with animated ads that jump across the screen, autoplaying videos and other horrors. That’s a jarring reading experience. What’s the value proposition for the reader? There is none, so the reader uses an ad blocker.

What happens next? Sponsors, determined to get in front of eyeballs no matter what, start pressuring media companies to eschew the written word in favor of video. Why? Because there is not yet an ad blocker for inline video ads. Plus, of course, inline video ads completely interrupt and replace content so there’s less competition for attention.

Taking away the written word from readers against their will and providing them with video instead is incredibly daft. The only bright side is that the readers simply aren’t watching the videos so they aren’t seeing the ads so they don’t know which sponsors to hate for inflicting this nonsense upon them.

It is the responsibility of a media company to know its audience. It is the responsibility of a sponsor to sell its product. The media company is selling the sponsor advertising. The sponsor hopes buying said advertising will lead to loyal customers. What’s missing? Communication.

It is no longer enough for media companies to provide the demographic data for their audiences and sit back. They need to share deep audience data with sponsors. The competition for advertising revenue is fierce. Media companies that provide data and tools to help sponsors best convert their audience into loyal customers will have an edge.

Sharing historical, anonymized A/B experiment results and market research with advertisers is a great place to start, let them see for themselves how the audience responds. Select advertising partners could be allowed input on future A/B tests, try out ideas before committing to a costly campaign. Content and Audience will always be key pillars, as they have been since print media, but we need to add a third pillar: Understanding.