Epic Fail: ESPN Charging ISPs, Net-Non-Neutral

ESPN is sending a telegram through a phone line, as if the failure of AOL dial-up's 1990s and early 2000s business didn't clearly show that internet-provider-exclusive-content is pure failure.

If your ISP doesn't want to pay for you to watch ESPN360, there's nothing you can do about it, short of switching to a provider that pays for it... ESPN is doggedly pursuing the same strategy online that made it a success in the TV world: licensing pipes, not people.

Free Press' Ben Scott thinks the this new internet model will ultimately be bad for providers. 'My gut reaction is that it's a terrible business model,' says Scott. 'The beauty of the internet is that you put a piece of content on your server, and it's available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world that's connected to the internet. If you begin walling off your content and selling network operators [the right to distribute content], that defeats the whole idea of maximizing the exposure of your content.

(emphasis added, from Wired). This goes against the paradigm of the net, and tries to perpetuate the Broadcast and Cable TV model to a medium that is fundamentally different; the internet demands ubiquity of access. It would be better to charge customers directly since premium content is often monetized that way, and the audience accepts that reality.

The audience wants what they want where and when they want it. To ignore this is to ignore the audience.

Christian Bale Out (flash)

Remix of on set distemper (rated R).

Update February 9, 2009: Christian apologizes mp3

Video Views Over Time on YouTube

In the first month on YouTube

• 70% of videos get at least 20 views
• 50% of videos get at least 100 views
• Fewer than 20% of videos get more than 500 views
• Fewer than 10% of videos get more than 1,500 views
• 3% of videos get more than 25,000 views
• Around 1% of videos get more than 500,000 views

(from Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media).

Loving Fan Mash-Ups of Your Work

Cobbling, the word a PDF presentation 'Sailing the C’s of Change' by Kate Rutter, uses for mash-ups, work arounds and adaptations, can start to be embraced with these steps:

1. Accept that cobbling will happen. Look beyond the threats to see the opportunities.
2. Screws, not glue. Make it easy to open [DRM-free might be the equivalent for online video and social media].
3. Decide who has the first response: legal or marketing.
4. Identify and participate in emerging communities about your products.

History of the Internet (flash)

An animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet (rated PG).

Old, New Media Play Together

It's not that the Internet isn't enough, said Tom Guida, an entertainment attorney with Loeb & Loeb who represents new-media clients including Comcast Interactive and EQAL.

It's that every property needs to be everywhere. You can make money with a Web series if you have advertising, but to maximize the value proposition you need to put the show everywhere, he said.

That's no different from what networks must do today. Networks are releasing their shows on multiple platforms. Digital producers need to do the same.

No one gets to play in just one sandbox anymore. We all have to get in each other's sandboxes

(emphasis added, from TVWeek).

Every Audience Member/Visitor/Customer Counts

Let's suppose you own an online advertising platform and someone is running ads with a daily budget of $2.00. A week ago your systems showed this advertiser's ad to one of the advertiser's friends, even though that friend is not in the targeted group that is supposed to be shown the ad. Today your systems showed the ad to the advertiser themselves, despite both not being in the targeted group and being the person running the ad (which your systems are intimately aware of as they choose what ads to show).

Since your 'fictional' ad platform allows an advertiser to target only specific groups of people, showing the ad to people outside of the targeted group is a failure; you didn't do what you told your customer you would do, and you are charging them anyway.

What will you do to make things right with this $2-a-day customer? How quickly will you address their concerns? What's the return on investment in a quick and complete response to this customer?

You might think with the $2-a-day budget the advertiser doesn't matter to your bottom line. You would be wrong. The company the advertiser works for spends millions on online ads. Millions. Fail them, lose millions. Please them, and your return on investment is millions.

In fact the relatively small unit the advertiser works for alone spends around 3.6 million dollars a year on online ads, or about $10,000-a-day. The advertiser is evaluating your ad platform for possible future advertising for their business unit (that $3.6 million a year).

The $2-a-day spend is a test, a test you are failing since your systems aren't following the targeting rules the advertiser set up. If you don't explain yourself, and quickly, you lose not only the $2-a-day, but you'll likely see no part of the $3.6 million a year. Plus the advertiser will advise other business units in the company of your failure as well.

If you let your product look unreliable, or uncontrollable, an entire fortune 500's online ad spend is at risk. There are literally millions at risk if you fail to address why you showed ads to people this $2-a-day advertiser didn't target. Many think making your customer service effective even for the customers spending very little money with you isn't worth the money.

Turns out you can't afford not to delight every customer. Disappoint the customer who spends little with you, and best case they tell a friend, perhaps online on a blog or in a twitter for all to see when searching for you online. Worst case you lose millions.

As you may have guessed, this 'fictitious' ad platform example is not fictitious at all, it is very real and happening as I type this. Time will tell how it turns out for them.