Why, as an advertiser, wouldn’t you pay less for a diminished experience, asks Dominic Mills – plus: JWT’s legal comedy show
After first airing the idea…oh…well over a year ago, it seems the Financial Times’ idea of a new price metric – time spent or cost per hour (CPH) – is finally getting both traction and industry recognition.
Next up, according to the FT’s commercial director Brendan Spain, is adding CPH to its mobile inventory.
Well, good luck with that one, I thought, as news of the new Apple SE phone, introduced late last month, dropped into my inbox.
You can read an excellent, all-round analysis of Apple’s strategy here, but its most significant feature, it seems to me, is the smaller, 4-inch, screen size.
Hmm, I wondered, how might that affect the ad industry? After all, Apple was the first phone maker to make adblocking software available.
A small screen would make the advertising experience, depending on your point of view, at best even more negligible, and at worst even more horrible.
That might just prompt even more people to download adblocking software.
[advert position=”left”]
Meanwhile, as Apple makes phone screens smaller, so other screens get bigger – notably TVs and some desktop monitors. Ask yourself this: have you ever bought a smaller TV?
But apparently, and sometimes you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of anyone involved in the mobile ad eco-system (it’s just hard-wired into them), the smaller screen size isn’t a problem. In this utopia, there are no threats, but only opportunities.
How on earth does that work? Well (and hat tip to my old friend ‘Geraldo’ for drawing my attention to this), here’s Mr Exuberant, one Mark Slade of Opera Mediaworks (which has nothing to do, by the way, with the OMG buying unit), writing on CampaignLive under the headline: ‘The iPhone SE: why smaller may be better for advertising’.
Slade starts as he means to continue: “Although there are concerns that the iPhone SE and its smaller screen are a step backward for our industry, we are viewing this new device as an opportunity for innovation.”
Opportunity. Yessss! Innovation. Woo-hoo!
The optimism courses through his veins: “In our eyes size shouldn’t necessarily be a challenge for advertisers, as the industry has worked with similar dimensions before. By following best practices in mobile video, such as using quick cuts, shorter run-times and not being over reliant on sound, advertisers can still make an impact.”
Well, phew. Let’s breathe a sigh of relief.
I am being a little unfair on Mr Slade insofar as – which he makes clear – that the cheaper price of the SE will open up new markets in the emerging world such as Turkey and India, and also amongst the younger demographic.
He also talks about how some of the new technology available on the SE – vibration, gyrometers and accelerometers – will boost creativity.
Hmmm. I’ve said before that the level of creativity in all advertising – not just digital – is usually directly related to the cost of the medium. That’s why creative budgets for TV are so high.
This applies all the way down to digital and mobile. If the inventory is cheap as chips – which it essentially is, because supply is unlimited – creative budgets are pared accordingly. That’s why there’s so much crap mobile advertising out there.
Serve it up on a small screen, getting smaller, and the experience is, well, diminished.
Go on, test yourself: can you remember the last mobile ad you saw?
So, the obvious question is this: why, as an advertiser, wouldn’t you pay less for a diminished experience? After all, a smaller ad in a newspaper costs less, and in out-of-home a bus shelter costs less than a 48- or 96-sheet. It’s all about impact.
So why not apply a new metric to mobile: screen size. Of course, adding an extra element to the pricing dimension will complicate things. Apparently, the FT’s efforts to sell CPH into media agencies has been hamstrung by the fact that agencies’ Excel spreadsheets can’t accommodate the extra column (sometimes you can’t make it up) – so adding an extra one again will be hard.
But it seems vital to me. Not all screens are equal, and nor are all digital impressions. Treating them as if they are amounts to a dereliction of duty.
JWT’s lawyers put on a comedy show
Almost as much as I love writing about adblocking (for a journalist, it’s the gift that keeps giving), I’m enjoying even more the spectacle of JWT’s lawyers making complete idiots of themselves in court as the Gustavo Martinez/Erin Johnson sexism lawsuit rumbles on. It gets more entertaining by the minute.
First, JWT’s lawyers tried to claim a key video couldn’t be shown because it would also give away proprietary organisational secrets (such as whether they have Nespresso machines and whether the office chairs are blue or black).
Now, JWT employees are filing affidavits to defend alleged comments by Martinez – including this gem, in response to suggestions JWT staff were in a sub-standard hotel in Miami – “I was thinking I was going to be raped at the elevator, but ‘not in a nice way’.”
Defence #1: Other JWT employees didn’t find the comments offensive. The affidavit says: “Given the content of the highly unusual events occurring at the hotel in the night before the meetings, combined with Gustavo’s lack of command of the English language and the fact that he was making a joke about himself, we did not find the comments he made offensive.”
Yeah, well they would say that as the corporate strong-arm is applied to their future careers and bonuses.
Defence #2: “It was clear that Gustavo was trying to ease the tension that we were all feeling and the people in the room seemed to appreciate his attempt to do so.”
Ok, so this is just light-hearted ‘banter’, and anyone who didn’t think it was is a sensitive wuss.
Defence #3: Martinez is not a native English speaker – “Gustavo’s lack of command of the English language”, the affidavit says.
Let me see if I have this right. JWT appoints a worldwide boss, and he is based in its biggest market, the US, where the first language is…English. It doesn’t wash, does it? If his English was not up to scratch, how did he get the job?
Amusing as this is on one level, it’s also highly embarrassing. JWT’s reputation has already taken a huge hit. Now it is making itself a laughing stock.
