Ben Craine on the fear of the iPod effect
with
Don Schechter
Ben Craine talks about difficulties managing growth, content owners fear of the iPod effect and the big question of consolidation of solution providers in the industry.
Transcript: Ben Craine on the fear of the iPod effect
Over the next 12 months I think that interactive marketers are going to continue to struggle with just managing through the explosive growth, trying to find ways with which to manage an increasing revenue 20% year over year with the same bag of tricks they had last year. That said, I think that the industry will be occupied for the foreseeable future with the ongoing consolidation in the solutions providers base and what that really means to the publisher and other providers.
Rapt's primary business is in helping publishers better monitize their advertising content and audience assets, so, as I look at the market our biggest challenge is going to be partnering with them to find the ways in which they can better leverage their data, their audience relationships, and really just their position in the media food chain to fend off the advances of some merging channel masters, such as Walmart, maintain control of their content, and protect the primacy of the audience and advertiser relationship.
When you think about the decentralization of content, it's a fascinating question. One I don't think that marketers are really ready for that because they re still very comfortable with environment, and a lot is invested in environment, what that might say about the audience, what it says about the relative value of the advertising product itself. The more interesting question to me, though, is, if we all agree decentralization in one form or another is inevitable, won't that simply breed a new variety of aggregators, what will they look like, and will we be trading one problem for another, will we just be coming full circle, ultimately, what will be gained?
What is truly innovating in today's marketplace is the quickness with which content owners, publishers, broadcasters and the like have responded to new market trends such as the effect of Youtube or the potential Pod effect on broadcast content, to really maintain control over their content assets and take full advantage of the changing relationship between the consumer and the content itself. I think there were some very valuable lessons learned from the late moving recording industry in preventing an iPod effect of their own.
What keeps me up at night will have to come back to the consolidation of solution providers and access to content, access to advertising. I think ultimately it s going to breed particularly in the technology space a higher level of competition than we've seen in the past, long overdue --- stuff that perhaps could have come at the beginning half of the decade if we weren't in the quiet time the industry experienced. That said it is of great concern. It is the number one question on everyone's lips at this event and I think will be one the industry will wrestle with for the foreseeable future.
