Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

Just over a year ago, a new website called Hulu.com started showing television episodes from popular series like “The Office”, “Prison Break” and “House M.D.”. The NBC Universal and Fox TV venture was the first to show full episodes on a massive, consistent scale. Currently, the site is hugely popular, ranking as the 6th most watched video site this past September, with more than 142 million streams. That’s more than ESPN (128 million streams), CNN (118 million streams) and MTV Networks (97 million streams), according to Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus. But while online TV viewership continues to soar, traditional TV viewership has tanked.

This past Sunday’s premiere of “24: Redemption” failed to attract former loyal “24” viewers, indexing at 85 when compared to the last full season of “24”, which aired back in 2007. That’s a 15 point drop in loyal viewership. Even more telling is that “24”’s performance propelled Fox to finish first among the top networks.

When Senator John McCain cancelled an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman in September, Letterman’s disappointed remarks drew a web audience of 2 million page views across sites that reported them in the days following the show. The actual show drew a meager 4.25 million viewers.

But this trend is not new. Television viewership has been eroding for years, while scores of people have become even more dependent on the internet for content, entertainment and information. For the first four weeks of the new season, each of the five major broadcast networks was down in total audience, and across the five the decline averaged 11 percent. What’s new is that TV Networks are finally realizing that there’s a lot to learn from the web’s success, and it works both ways.

Television Networks need to combine TV’s branding power with the Web’s targeting and measurability capabilities. Already, cable companies have created a national platform to bring Web advertising techniques to mainstream TV.

Ironically, the device that will help TV become more like the web has been a significant contributor to the derailing of the traditional TV model: the DVR, now in about 28 percent of the nation’s homes. Research shows that people who have DVRs skip through 60 percent to 70 percent of the commercials to which they’re exposed. However, DVR has the ability to store targeted ads aimed at individual households and pause programs while viewers go to an interactive ad and then return to the program, allowing more engagement than traditional television.

TV has a chance to look a lot like the web, with near-limitless content choice and targeted advertising made possible by a digital backbone. That’s why the web, in turn, will become to look more like TV. And it already has. Google and Microsoft are making credible bets on TV as a major new revenue source. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has committed the company to getting 25 percent of its revenue from advertising in a few years, which will require growing the largest video ad channels.

Both Google and Microsoft executives agree that major tenets of the online world will make their way to TV. Advertisers will be able to segment audiences, measure performance in near real time, target specific audiences by demographics and behavior, and, crucially for them, manage inventory by allowing third parties to sell some space. Yet TV’s evolution will not inevitably look like the Web’s.

“One of the greatest enablers of the online world is its open architecture,” says Scott Howe, General Manager at Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Unit. “In the case of TV, it’s a series of proprietary technologies” making it more akin to the hodgepodge of standards and gatekeepers in the mobile world.

Regardless, TV’s growing acknowledgement of the superiority of internet advertising as it now exists is an industry turning point that will greatly affect media planning and buying. The question for advertisers is, when digital can provide all the benefits of telelvision, with greater measurability and targeting, less turn around and waste, at a fraction of the cost, why are you still running 30 second spots?

Rachel

In a recent New York Times article chronicling the success of NBC’s Olympics coverage , author Bill Carter identifies the critical moves the network made pre-Olympics to ensure viewership and cash in on advertising revenue. Certainly, as the article points out, the publicity surrounding the Olympics, the politics, the protests, the athletes and the expectations, all contributed to the event’s success.

But the driving success factor was timing.

With the support of U.S. swimming star and Olympic legend Michael Phelps , Dick Ebersol , chairman of NBC sports, not only convinced China and the International Olympics Committee to propose an August start date, he influenced them to schedule the swimming and gymnastics events in the morning so they would air live on NBC primetime. 200 million viewers and more than $100 million later, NBC concluded coverage of what was one of the most watched and talked about sporting events in recent history.

The main lesson to be learned from NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics is not new. Timing is everything. The early date of the Olympics, which began August 8^th, meant school had not resumed. The weakened economy forced Americans to stay home and not vacation. The primetime coverage pulled in viewers and intrigued advertisers; many ran advertisements congratulating Phelps’ gold medals in the first commercial break following each victory.

When advertising online, especially in an e-commerce setting, advertisers should take advantage of timing to increase relevancy and decrease waste. Advertising where your consumers are most likely to buy is a cost-effective and powerful way to increase sales and promote positive branding. Just as Ebersol took advantage of a time when he knew viewers would be watching television to air Olympics coverage, advertisers should take advantage of online e-commerce applications to influence consumers where they are already going to buy.

Rachel

To read the entire article click here.

NBC 10 Lori Takes on Your Job!

Check out this video of the news broadcast where reporter Lori Delgado takes on Gayle Boag’s job as a personal shopper at the ShopRite of Synder!

Gayle passes on her personal online grocery shopping knowledge onto Lori. Lori must then fulfill the orders coming in from ShopRite’s online shopping application powered by MyWebGrocer.

Video:(c) 2007, WCAU. All rights reserved.

Cheers!
Courtney

Gayle Boag of ShopRite will be challenging reporter Lori Delgado of NBC news to do her job for a day. Lori Delgado will have to tackle Gayle’s job in the ShopRite from Home program of the Snyder Plaza ShopRite.

Be sure to tune in on Thursday July 24th at 5:45 am and again at 6:45 am. If you miss that broadcast check it out Saturday July 26th at 9:00 am.

For those of you who are outside the broadcast area (Greater Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley, South Jersey, and Delaware) it will be posted on the web at NBC 10. From there, click on “Lori, Terry Tackle Viewers’ Jobs” tab after the Thursday broadcast!

Cheers!
Courtney