First off, Happy New Year. I hope you had a good holiday and are as eager to get back to work as I am.
Next, I wanted to suggest that you brace yourself for an onslaught of news from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The show will churn out a lot of hype about cool devices that deliver mobile video. I imagine local broadcast executives will be busy forwarding articles from the show to their editors and programmers with the notation, “What are we doing about this?”
An appropriate reply might be, “We’re watching what WRAL does with it.”
If anyone in the local broadcasting business wants to stay ahead of the curve, the easiest way is to watch and then copy WRAL-TV in Raleigh. If you think local TV is defined by its enormous broadcast towers, news choppers, remote satellite trucks and digital news broadcasts consider this: WRAL has the tallest tower east of the Mississippi, was the first station in the country to buy a news helicopter, the second to broadcast via satellite truck, and the first station to go digital. Live video on mobile phones? Old hat to WRAL, which has been doing it since 2007.
Its latest worth-copying venture is an aggressive foray into mobile digital television. City bus riders are already watching WRAL as they tool along the streets of Raleigh. How cool is that?
But is there enough money to support mobile DTV? “We’re looking five, 10 years down the road,” station vice president Jimmy Goodmon says in Monday’s Wall Street Journal.
In other words, not today, but certainly in the near future.
U.S. Mobile Advertising Spend 2005 - 2014
While everyone else is throwing out big numbers for mobile advertising, I continue to encourage broadcasters to pay close attention to two things: a) the “local” portion of the numbers, and b) the “video” portion. Yes, mobile advertising approached $2 billion last year and will probably hit $3 billion this year. But the amount spent by local advertisers is barely 20% of it, and the amount spent on local video is 12% of that….meaning local mobile video advertising won’t crack $100 million this year, or barely 2% of all mobile advertising. By 2014, we are forecasting that it will hit $1 billion, for a 10%share of all mobile advertising. (For more detail, you can download the free mobile advertising report we released last month.)
I’ve been to Raleigh a number of times over the past few years to meet with Goodmon and his staff. They are absolutely the most forward-thinking, positive-minded, innovative set of local TV operators I’ve ever run across. That’s why I’ve asked Goodmon to speak at our conference next month in New York. WRAL is definitely worth watching.
Does this mean local media companies should sit back and relax, or rush out and create agreements with city bus lines, local gas stations, or other outdoor venues? I’d say it’s definitely time to experiment for those in the Top 50 markets, mainly because of competitive issues. But I’d also warn that it’s best to get realistic about the advertising support that will undoubtedly lag the audience. The vast majority of local mobile advertising in the next few years will come from text-based applications, not video.
It’ll be great to hear what’s working and what’s not during our Feb. 8-9 conference in New York.
