On this day in 1847, the Chicago Tribune began publication. With the decline in newspaper circulation & change in people’s media consumption habits; take a few minutes to imagine what they’ll be saying about the internet in 161 years. The manner in which we access & interact with it currently will be so foreign by 2169; people will have a difficult time comprehending how what we do now was the norm. They won’t have to access anything because it will just be there; on demand & ready to fly. Who knows, it might not even be called the internet by that time.
Your work space & internet activity will be more Minority Report than contracts, notes, laptops, & smartphones. Astronauts will have already traveled to & from Mars, hopefully our dependence on oil will be minimal, the city of Philadelphia may have won a championship (editorial addition – the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in 2008)…let your mind wander for a bit. How do you think people will be interacting with each other & information more than half way through the twenty second century?
ESPN Turns Off Ad Nets to Protect Brand, Content
I’d bet there are some nervous ad sales managers & reps within ESPN’s interactive division. Assuming ESPN is going to beef up their sales staff & efforts, as well as commit the resources necessary to determine the true value of their content, this could be successful. Or, it could be something temporary like eBay’s hiatus from Google Adwords. Anyway you look at it, there is considerable investment required to pull off something like this.
- Premium brands with popular online destinations with plenty of unsold advertising inventory.
- The desire to possess absolute control over the brand & price of inventory vs. the potential to make money off otherwise unsold space.
Personally, I can’t imagine this working within the current interactive space’s economic climate. The need to generate revenue now is vital.
Not everyone interacts with all online content for extended periods of time. Checking scores, power rankings, & injury updates do not take a whole lot of time. And, similar to how they add analysts to pre-game & post-game shows, I notice more & more content going up on ESPN. As their site grows, so does their available inventory. In dealing with many different clients, I have come to learn that online media can be a hard sell. Existing advertisers are not going to buy that much more space. Even if they can sell all available inventory, can they target as well as the networks? It doesn’t add up.
On the flip side, if ESPN & other top publishers succeed, it would certainly add a few more jobs across the board. Agencies, publishers, & clients alike would all have to staff up to maintain such a focus on the digital world. That would be good for the economy, wouldn’t it?
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