TV
Ad Buyers Shifting from TV to Web
TV’s overall unique audience is down and ratings are down. Many of our clients are looking at the middle of February and knowing they are going to be significantly behind in terms of delivering [ad impressions]. We are looking to make that up in digital. If we can get the impressions on television, we want to stay there, but we are at a point where we are going to have to make some calls, take some dollars back and reallocate them.
That’s ad buyer Andrea Kerr Redniss telling us what she’ll do in the face of falling TV ratings. This is why I really don’t give a shit about the ugly little GMA/ABS ratings kerfuffle. They’re fighting over a shrinking pie, and their petty squabbling is turning off their shrinking audience.
Facebook on TV: Not Good
For an online entrepreneur, appearing on TV isn’t always a good thing. In fact, it can signal desperation.
On Sunday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will appear on “60 Minutes†to tell the world that Facebook is in trouble. He doesn’t say that in so many words, of course, but his participation on the weekly news show, given the unlikelihood that many in Facebook’s existing demographic of 12-to-24-year-olds watch “60 Minutes†on a regular basis, signals that the social networking site is trying to connect with a larger audience.
Sure, Facebook has 60 million members and is valued at $15 billion, but it is still the No. 2 social network. To defend its lofty valuation, Facebook needs to grow its user base and figure out how to make money off of it, and those two things are looking like they may be mutually exclusive. Consider the reaction of the social networking site’s users to its Beacon advertising program.
Zuckerface must resort to offline promotion to acquire online customers. I’m starting to think Microsoft and Facebook are made for each other. After all, they’ve both pissed off Scoble.
