YouTube, campaign ads, and local TV
Below, David Johnson leaves a provocative comment on the impact of YouTube on local TV stations if and when political advertising migrates online:
there’s a big elephant in the room on viral video for politics. youtube could be for local broadcast what craigslist is for newspapers. most local broadcast stations desperately need political advertising to stay in the black. if the advertising pie doesn’t expand and dollars are shifted out of mainstream broadcast to online — as we’re seeing elsewhere already among major advertisers — this could have a serious impact on bottom lines at struggling affiliates.
Local affiliates are already facing a bleaker future than they’ll breath out loud because when the internet grows to become the dominant means of distribution, their value as distributors only shrinks. I hadn’t thought of political advertising as their Craigs List but I think he has a point. All political advertising won’t migrate online yet because the audience on broadcast is bigger and campaigns are inherently conservative. But there will be a point of no return.
(Crossposted from PrezVid)
Tags: ads, campaign, Exploding_TV, youtube
March 29th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Please visit Friends of the American Revolution, a website devoted to the American Revolution, and covering such themes as tyranny, events, people, places, war, oil, JFK, 9/11, historic documents and writings.
Its purpose is to support the efforts of true patriots, as many non-Americans did during the Revolutionary War (hence its name), in their struggle against what I call the counter-revolution, a struggle in which the principal weapons are not muskets, cannon, sabers and flintlock pistols, but information.
See you there!
March 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Political advertising leaving isn’t a steady everyday drain like Craigslist is to newspapers. Now if they lost automotive ads, that would be a direct comparison I would think.
Either could create hurtsville though.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
…and advertising people pay more attention to demographics and numbers than almost anyone else, excepting possibly pollsters. The handwriting isn’t on any WALL…it’s on a flatscreen MONITOR…
March 29th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Hey, the upside to this is that less money will be needed by politicians for TV ads, leading, just maybe, to less corruption?
Craig
March 29th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
[...] by Steve Boriss in Distribution, Structure, Competition. trackback Jeff Jarvis highlights the vulnerability of network TV’s local affiliates as the Internet decreases their value as media content [...]
March 29th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Local news has certainly exacerbated its own dilemma by outsourcing its campaign coverage to its advertisers. They’ve stopped covering politics in inverse proportion to the amount of political ads bought during their telecasts.
Maybe this will teach them to cover politics in a more meaningful, substantial way. Sorry to use the cliche, but “less cats-in-trees, please.”
March 29th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Yes political “ads” and messages will migrate to YouTube and other webtubes as well. But the mega-dollars will stay on TV, cable and radio for at least one more election cycle. Why? Because political advertising has its greatest impact on low involvement voters, people who feel it is their civic duty to vote, or vote out of habit, but don’t follow politics or the campaign. They don’t look for information about the candidates (ie: hitting the candidate, party and activist websites or reading about politics or watching political stories on TV and cable). The reason political ads work is they find the voter. True, true ratings are down especially in local TV newscasts that are the primo spot to place political ads. But for now this is still the best way to reach these low interest voters who try to avoid politics as much as possible.
March 29th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Hey Jeff,
Remember the Iraq War? You know, that little thing you championed but has turned into a death sentence for thousands of Americans?
What do you think about it now?
You can erase this if you want–call me a troll, I don’t care if that’s the price for calling out moral cowardice–but you can’t erase the past.
March 30th, 2007 at 7:58 am
YouTube the Craig’s List of Local Television?…
Jeff Jarvis reflects on a reader’s observation that the advent of viral online videos at YouTube and elsewhere may have the same impact on the bottom lines of local television affiliates as Craig’s List did for local newspapers. It’s…