So we have all said that before at some point or another, right? You get deep into the plot of your favorite show and then it stops for a few minutes so some company can tell you about their washing powder or new better than ever dishwashing liquid. This is the traditional model of advertising on TV; it is based on the viewing patterns of the baby boomers and their parents. This model assumes that the whole family is gathered around the tube at a certain time of day, or the mom is home alone cleaning.
This model has been dead for years, for instance I go to bed at 4 a.m. most nights my movements are so out of sync with the perceived norm it is unreal. So how will they target me, the short answer is they won’t. They could get clever and base the advertising on the content, however again it’s flawed for the reason that I don’t watch regular scheduled television and when recording the show I skip the ads anyway.
So now you have advertisers spending millions on ads that never get seen. However the producers of the shows aren’t too worried they get their ad revenue and they also sell the discs. Here comes the next problem, I stopped buying DVD’s about 3 years ago if not longer, I also stopped renting DVD’s because I am always late with the damn things and get fined. What I can tell from listening to the people around me this is normal. How do you suppose these producers and advertisers will survive with a drop in DVD sales and rentals? The short answer, again, is they won’t unless… they change their model.
I watch a popular show called Chuck; I got into it while on a trip to the US. My friend had recorded a few episodes on his XBox and I watched them when I could. Now back in South Africa I, admittently, watch it illegally - for the reason that the season in my country is what I have already seen and it is on regular scheduled television so I tend to miss it anyway. I have a friend who sources each week’s episode for me from the US. I tend to watch them while I am busy with other things such as work, blogging even reading at times.
I am impressed by this show for more than its mindless comedic scenes. They have been doing a great job of placing products in the show without it looking like product placement. If you remember a few years back there was a movie called The Truman Show with Jim Carrey where the show, in the movie, was doing some serious product placements with actors announcing the benefits of these items trying to sell it to the viewers. There was even a scene in Chuck where he rattled off some stats about a Toyota which, I think, they got away with because it was pretty contextual but they could have been a bit more subtle about it.
The key to placing products in shows is it needs to fit the profile, the story being told and it needs to be subtle. If an actor is using a product that is out of character it won’t sell, it will stand out as product placement. If you product story is framed to fit that of the story line of the show together you will come out as a winner. Not to everyone but those who subscribe to the show and the story you both tell of course.
What this is creating is an environment where advertisers and producers would start working very closely together. Ensuring that the product fits the character persona and getting the timing of the placement right. I do caution though that I don’t think the advertiser should have a hand at the plot or subtleties of the story itself because again you don’t want create a telemarketer show. The content should never fit the ad the ad has to blend with the content.
This takes care of the advertising and the producers have been paid, advertisers are getting their story out to the people who want to hear it. Now what about distribution seeing that probably very few of us would go spend the money to buy full seasons of shows we would probably only watch once. Also the model of print, box, ship is old it has no value to anyone and isn’t very friendly to the environment. The content should be disposable, easy to get and easy to get rid of. More often than not I don’t have a TV near me to plug my USB stick into to watch a show, so I watch it on my laptop or iPod while busy with something else. The video is kept small so it not the main feature for me, so in this case I would only want to download the small version of the show and wouldn’t want to waste time downloading the 1Gb High Definition version.
The other problem with traditional distribution is it’s not trackable, there is no way Universal can tell me how many people really got to watch their show based on DVD rentals, purchases and cinema goers. I may have watched the DVD at a friend’s house or borrowed it from him etc. This will happen it is intrinsic to who we are, even people who don’t like sharing will do it if they get to be the one to show it you first.
So why not distribute it through systems such as Vimeo, you get stats on each view, duration of the view and even when the user paused and resumed. This data is honestly very valuable, knowing when someone paused is important it shows a few things. Things like how much time the user can dedicate to the show - should we get to the point sooner, did he pause for just long enough to get a beverage or when did the user exit. The producers can build the show around their audience now and advertisers will have a better understanding about the movements of their viewer.
I tend to have a bias toward Vimeo, they support HD and the viewing quality just seems way better than that of YouTube - I tend to only use those two the others have very weird and slow loading capabilities and crap interfaces.
Distributing to a central source like Vimeo allows you to still serve the shows from you site, allowing you to perhaps promote similar or spin off shows et al. Through having this video in a central location a dialog can get started per show, where you can again draw more feedback from your audience such as what people expect, what they hated and so on. Knowing what your audience expects is very useful. 
With the model suggested above you can enter into a per view agreement with your advertisers. If their part of the show was only streamed by say 4 million viewers they pay a smaller fee than say a placement that was viewed 40 million times - say in a really funny part, or intense scene, you know the one you rewind a few times. This creates a lot more flexibility for both producers and advertisers. Advertisers will have a better idea of the times their audiences watch their ad placed shows allowing them to attribute certain purchase to a specific show. Also it is an ongoing revenue stream for producers; I would imagine the stream would be time boxed. A product placed today has little relevance in say 5 years and why would the advertiser pay for that viewing then.
An example of this attribution would be I watch Chuck where Apple placed a new phone or Toyota a new car. I pause - along with say a few million others - just after the introduction of the product to go check out their web site and get more info about the product. So through the union of you web analytics and viewer analytics you can attribute a certain amount of traffic to your product site and acquisitions to the show.
So there are centrally a few great reasons to distribute your show on a video streaming site, one more is organic viewers. You know those who endlessly search Vimeo for entertainment, or those who googled a product and your show came up - allowing the advertiser to advertise that product. You audience can distribute your show on their blogs without compromising statistics and helping you sell your show and products through them merely liking it or even hating it.
You can still box and ship your product the market is huge someone will still want to own the disc or download the show to watch the show later - better movie viewing software could store the info about your viewing habits and upload it when it is online again.
I am afraid this model of ad placing won’t work for everyone though, unless you are damn creative. Who would place an ad in say a Wild West show and what would they place there.
It can get tricky, but what about introducing your company, that is if you go that far back, telling the viewers something about say Coke allowing them to feel closer to the company because they got to see their humble beginnings - for example.
Documentaries I would think would be easy, what gear are they using in it? If they love the gear they will more than likely give a quick rundown of why they chose to use a Toyota Land Cruiser in the Serengeti as opposed to a Land Rover Defender. So documentaries will give you - the viewer - facts, a story, the emotion, and practical advice or recommendation from an authority or someone using it for real.
Shows shot in the future I would think are pretty simple as well; it’s a great platform to introduce new product concepts. Audi did a great job of this in I, Robot with Will Smith.
So advertisers and producers get your thinking hats on and create those shows and stream it to me for free.