TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2018/1/15/tv-retail-advertising-and-cascading-collapses

by kawera • 9 years ago

124 68 9 years ago

walterbell• 9 years ago

Amazon reviews allow consumer brands (e.g. Anker) to be built without Procter & Gamble's style of packaged goods advertising.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/technology/cheap-consumer...

petepete3• 9 years ago

It's unsurprising that TV's being hit where it hurts. Even when I (rarely) watch things with ads I go out of my way to be able to fast-forward them.

The last thing I watched 'weekly' was Game of Thrones which in the UK is broadcast on Sky Atlantic. I just record the show when it's aired overnight (simultaneously with the US) and fast forward them at ×30.

If I decide ad hoc to watch a programme now on a commercial channel I just pause it while I make a cup of tea or whatever, giving me enough time to skip the ads. It's a no-brainer.

It was funny when Pru Leith suggested her viewers should do the same[0]

[0] http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-08-22/worried-about-the-...

RodgerTheGreat• 9 years ago

The radio times has an anti-adblocker modal over this article. The irony is palpable.

lakechfoma2• 9 years ago

I'm not getting that, what are you using? I'm using uBlock Origin. I wonder how those work, if they detect extensions or what

petepete3• 9 years ago

I didn't see anything, using uBlock Origin.

post_break• 9 years ago

I watched Game of Thrones using HBO Go. I was able to watch it as soon as it aired for like $20 for the season. Money well spent.

at-fates-hands• 9 years ago

I just record the show when it's aired overnight (simultaneously with the US) and fast forward them at ×30

I'm in the same boat and do something similar. The only thing I really watch "live" are sports. English Football on the weekends, Hockey during the week. Any show I want to watch, I'll record it so I can focus on the substance of the show and fast forward through the commercials. This allows me to watch an hour show in roughly 40 minutes.

petepete3• 9 years ago

Yes, same. My subscription is mainly for Football, and when it's half time it's usually an excuse to go for a wander, take the bins out or put the kettle on.

FussyZeus3• 9 years ago

I've de-aded my media consumption to such a degree that ads are now actually weird to me. They get my attention solely because I'm so used to not seeing them.

One thing that sticks out: A ton of TV advertising is the same ads that were running when I was a kid. Not all of it, but a lot more than I'd expect. Anyone else notice this?

jerf2• 9 years ago

When is "when you were a kid?"

For me, seeing a 1980s ad is pretty funny. At least I had the excuse that I was a kid.

(Though I recall even in the 90s thinking the whole "EXTREME!" thing was stupid. I think that may have been a pretty egregious case of geographic parochialness; surfer culture may seem totally radical when you're in Hollywood, with easy access to the beach almost year-round, but for anywhere else in the country who either doesn't live so far south, doesn't live near a surfable beach, or doesn't have the cash to fund such an expensive hobby, it was much less compelling.)

ghaff6• 9 years ago

With TV, I suspect we're seeing inertia or path dependence starting to break down in large numbers.

A lot of people did/do watch TV linearly out of habit. Plop themselves down on the couch and watch.

Would they have started doing that if they had a lot of other options? Maybe in some cases. (Don't underestimate the desire of some people to have something on in the background.) But probably a lot fewer.

Something similar applies to a cable bundle. I lot of people have it. It's probably the easiest way to watch live sports. It may also be bundled in with other services they use. Etc. Canceling probably means changing some habits and losing access to at least some content. But they wouldn't necessarily have called up Comcast or DirecTV and initiated a subscription if they didn't already have one.

koolba2• 9 years ago

A lot of people did/do watch TV linearly out of habit. Plop themselves down on the couch and watch.

I'm in this category. I've got a bunch of streaming subscriptions yet I usually end up channel surfing regular TV.

Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it's laziness (i.e. let them decide what I watch, I don't want to pick). Maybe it's the convenience of the interface (it just works, no connecting, changing channels is near instant, etc). Maybe a combo of all of those.

ghaff6• 9 years ago

Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it's laziness (i.e. let them decide what I watch, I don't want to pick). Maybe it's the convenience of the interface (it just works, no connecting, changing channels is near instant, etc). Maybe a combo of all of those.

That's all likely true to some degree. Personally, I've probably become more and more a very intentional (and occasional) TV watcher and I've never been one to flip the TV on in, say, a hotel room for background when I walk in the door. I still have a cable bundle but I rarely use it.

freehunter2• 9 years ago

I've never found value in TV (cable or otherwise) because it seems to be mostly ads these days, but I do a very similar thing in the car. I subscribe to SiriusXM radio (because most channels are commercial-free while FM radio around me is loaded with more ads than music). I have a music streaming service and music on my phone I can pick from, but more often than not I don't want to pick my music. Especially while I'm driving. So I turn on a station I like and can listen ad-free. And if I flip to another station, it's highly likely I'm flipping to another song being played, not to another ad being played like FM radio or TV.

If cable TV could be commercial-free like satellite radio, I might be a subscriber. It's the same reason I cancelled my NYT.com subscription: I don't like paying for the privilege of watching advertisements. If I'm paying you money, I'd better get an ad-free experience. If my monthly fee doesn't cover the cost of replacing ads, then you're not charging me enough.

Maybe Netflix should set up channels where they just play shows back to back like cable TV does.

SanFranManDan• 9 years ago

One problem I found is that streaming services have too much mental overhead. It sounds funny, but look at Netflix original content; Most of the story writing is "too good" and too dark (like most of their content seems to be about murderers or spooky stuff or substance abuse). I have to remember what happened in the previous episode and pay attention so I know whats happening in the next episode

Things on cable are more focused on self contained episodes. Black mirror accomplished this but again, it was too emotionally heavy. Netflix is too focused on binge watchers.

I haven't really found content (except old series from cable) that I can just "zone out" and be entertained like Futurama, cooking or auto shows and not worry if i didnt watch all of it.

I'm overseas and so I dont have a lot of the series from cable on Netflix. The content it has is good. But its not something I want to unwind with in the background.

brndnmtthws2• 9 years ago

I hope this also means the end of shitty, wasteful blister/clamshell packaging. It's about time we use materials that decompose, occupy less volume, and don't damage my hands when opening them.

lakechfoma2• 9 years ago

I haven't opened one of those in literal years. I've been buying most durable goods online and probably anything that historically would have come in one of those demons now comes in easy to open/recycle boxes from Amazon.

djsumdog2• 9 years ago

Now we get everything is a huge, wasteful, cardboard box. My flatmate recently ordered sponges from Amazon. A fucking cardboard box for something that you could buy at Wal-Greens for the same price, and where hundreds of them are shipped per box.

brndnmtthws2• 9 years ago

At least cardboard decomposes, whereas plastic remains in a landfill for eternity.

raisedbyninjas• 9 years ago

Waste is waste but at least cardboard is sourced from renewable tree farms and when it's dumped in a landfill it is sequestering carbon.

djsumdog2• 9 years ago

The thing that bothers me, about the retail space at least, is the increasing amount of waste and the increasing amount of consumerism.

Many people buy PC components from Newegg or household goods from Amazon when they might be an entire $5 more at a retail store. The retails store version you can actually see and touch (more important for a bathmat, less important for a video card) and they're shipping in packages of 100 or 500. Stores typically do recycle all their cardboard.

You buy it on-line, and it comes in a box. And those boxes add up, and many of them don't get reused or recycled depending on what part of the world you live in.

Amazon pushes people to buy more through their ecosystem. We're buying more stuff we don't need than ever, and generating more waste than ever. Their dash button felt like the ultimate consumption waste tool. Amazon is pushing us into a world where we are continually buying.

I'd rather we live in a world where we buy more are, fewer goods (with what we do buy being more expensive but durable). What a great world if our cellphones and devices lasted 8 years instead of 2. A world where we could buy independent games and media and know the creators got a full 85%~90% like with Bandcamp instead of the current bullshit 66% they get from Apple/Google/Amazon/Steam/Gog.

A world where we spend less on goods and the goods last longer; a world that lets us spend more on art, could greatly reduce our overall pollution (not just the symbolic and useless measure of carbon) and could help create a more Army of Davids type world where people can legitimately live off their art.

rossdavidh• 9 years ago

I share your concern about excess consumerism, but it's hard to say that the old advertising-driven model was better. The very essence of broadcast media was trying to expose viewers to propaganda aimed at encouraging purchases. Malls are (or were) large spaces devoted to almost nothing else but shopping, and we built ridiculous numbers of them.

mprovost• 9 years ago

Even if the stores are more efficient with packaging/recycling, consumers still have to go to the store. What is the carbon footprint of 500 people driving to the store and back vs a UPS truck delivering 500 individual cardboard boxes? I don't know but I suspect that UPS is going to be smaller.

twobyfour2• 9 years ago

If you're walking to the store because you live in a walkable neighborhood, it's zero. If you're going to the mall and buying a dozen things from a dozen stores, the carbon footprint per purchase is probably lower than if you're buying a dozen things in a half dozen separate transactions online. Not to mention all the boxes and the energy and/or trees needed to produce/recycle them.

rhizome• 9 years ago

I'm going to guess "about $5," or however much you save by using Amazon. Bezos isn't dumb.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

That's, IMO, a very strong argument.

A lot of this waste is a function of population density. With a super-dense city, where almost every conceivable product is within walking range (and, as a bonus, it's expensive to move around in cars) and prices are normalized, retail stores make sense. As the density drops down, people get into cars and often ignore their local stores, driving far out chasing rare items or discounts. Which is stupid (gas costs too) and wasteful in aggregate at the same time.

vm• 9 years ago

In addition, building construction has a massive carbon footprint. Concrete creates 5% of the world's CO2 [1], not even counting the energy used in construction. Home delivery from a distribution center eliminates stores. Seems like that will bring massive energy savings.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_concre...

mattnewton• 9 years ago

After having stepped into a Best Buy for the first time in a while, And living in walking distance from a former RadioShack, it’s not that these things are $5 cheaper, it’s that they either just don’t exist in person or they are like 1.5x as expensive if you do find them. Couple that with the fact that I can shop online while waiting for the bus, and we’ve got an unbeatable advantage for online shopping

gknoy• 9 years ago

Exactly!

I recently needed an HDMI cable. At Amazon, it's like $7. The ones that Best Buy/Target/etc have are around $12-$15. For surge protectors, it's been a toss-up as to whether they have something that I think I'd trust, or something that is Barely Adequate. For finding an X-to-Y (e.g. HDMI to DVI-D) cable or adapter, good luck -- they often list it and then say, "Oh that's not an in-store item".

It's especially egregious with books! Every time I am in a bookstore and see something I might like, I nearly always can find it on Amazon for about 2/3 of the price (or less if I buy used). If I'm browsing fiction for something to read, but am not desperate for a particular resource, what am I paying for?

I hate boxes, but it's rare that my "Must have it now" impulse outweighs the knowledge that I could get the item for much cheaper. I do hate cutting down boxes, though. =/

bunderbunder2• 9 years ago

Lack of availability is the real killer for me. Walk into a Best Buy, and you'll be able to take your pick of a zillion different car chargers, and they must have something like 200 square feet devoted to cell phone cases. But all of that is stuff I'm not going to bother hauling myself all the way to Best Buy for, because Walgreens is just around the corner and has that stuff, too. Things that you'd actually go out of your way to try and find, like, say, a decent-quality tablet stylus that isn't the Apple Pencil, just aren't to be found. Even the selection of things like keyboards and mice is weirdly spotty.

gwbas1c3• 9 years ago

Most of my shipments come in standard-size boxes with air-filled pouches.

What if these were rented from USPS, re-usable, and highly durable? What if the mailman picked up my empty shipping containers for re-use? What if the shipping containers had inflatable bladders to hold the contents steady and absorb shocks?

nabla9• 9 years ago

The solution for box waste is recycling or reuse.

In Finland there is RePack https://www.originalrepack.com/ UPS has Express Envelopes. Amazon has Ships in Own Container.

Industry can solve the problem with reusable containers. If you pay small deposit for packaging the first time and you can easily return them it's problem solved. RePack can be returned by dropping it into mailbox.

InclinedPlane• 9 years ago

I suspect you're not estimating the overhead of a retail store correctly. There's a lot of packaging and shipping and overhead that you don't see, but it's still there.

Additionally, you're ignoring the very real cost of failed purchases. You go to the retail store, they don't have what you want so you go to the next store, they don't have it either, you go to the next. They have something that's close enough so you buy it but then you end up replacing it after 5 months with what you really wanted. Meanwhile, with the online store the experience is very different, you find what you want, you research different options, you buy it and you're done. A lot of times being able to "put your hands on a product" isn't helpful. Many times you can't even do that in a retail store, you can see the box, that tells you nothing more than the online experience. When you shop online you can take the time to shop around, look at reviews, look at professional recommendations, etc.

topspin• 9 years ago

I seek things online often because I can find better products from specialty online retailers and I'm willing to pay a premium to get them. Traditional retail stores sell almost exclusively from the low end of the catalog; the low price, disposable SKUs. If it were possible to find Engineer brand tools at Home Depot or Keysight instruments at RadioShack or professional grade Addonics peripherals at Best Buy (the very sort of durable, non-disposable products you have prescribed for us all) I'd shop there, but they can't afford to stock their shelves with such things.

I don't believe the caricatures you've populated your mind with -- thoughtless consumers obliviously smashing the "Buy Now" button -- represent reality. There certainly are reckless people pissing away excessive disposable income, but most people put a lot of thought into their purchases and are not in need of your high wisdom and discipline.

jdblair• 9 years ago

I'm going to offer a counter-argument to your characterization of the dash button as the "ultimate consumption tool." Dash doesn't work that way. Its like a to-do list. You press Dash, and the item is queued up to ship. People don't press "Tide" over an over, people press it when they run low on Tide. No extra Tide is purchased in the economy.

There's a case to be made that its a lock-in button. I might buy some other brand if its on sale at Safeway, but that other brand doesn't have a dash button next to my washing machine.

Btw, my wife got our son a Kraft Mac-n-cheese dash button when he went to college, at considerable risk he would just go into the mac-n-cheese business.

Btw btw, we're a "Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder" household (no dye! no scent!).

slededit• 9 years ago

I seem to have terrible luck with opened packages at retail stores. I don't know if its the employees or customers that are doing it but nothing is worse than taking your expensive electronics home only to find out you weren't the first one to open the box.

tarr11• 9 years ago

Really, whenever you change the channel, buying patterns change - people do not buy the same in malls as in department stores, nor in department stores as in small shops, and so people do not buy exactly the same things online as they do in supermarkets or malls. The channel shapes what is bought.

Most shopping online still has an implicit power-law dynamic because of its two-dimensional layout, where being "above-the-fold" or "top of the list" garners the majority of customer attention (and therefore sales).

gwbas1c3• 9 years ago

Regarding what people spend money on, I notice that with clothes. I saw a 1980s Mr. Roger's show yesterday and noticed that a middle-aged man wore a full suit to take his kids to a museum. Today most men don't spend that kind of money on clothes, but we all buy phones and telecom services. Most days I wear cheap jeans and t-shirts, but in another era I'd spend a lot more money on my clothes.

I suspect that advertising will get stronger and stronger pushback. With so many options for entertainment and news delivery, I just don't consume anything that mandates ads. (IE, if the BBC or CNN force me to watch a 30 second ad I just ignore the video, if a website blocks my ad blocker I don't read the site.)

soared2• 9 years ago

So you don't use broadcast tv, radio, most free apps, any road with signs/billboards, etc.? Advertising is in more places than you think.

wincy• 9 years ago

Not OP, but I sold my TV, stopped listening to all radio (including NPR), deleted Facebook, and the city I live in banned billboards from the main highway. So it is possible, just takes being willing to really go against the grain. I send friends emails or text messages and connect with new people via Meetup, which I pay for.

A bad side effect of this is that when I do hear ads or see a TV it's really, really difficult to filter it out.

ACow_Adonis• 9 years ago

Where I live, broadcast TV has just become a waste of time. If you don't have a car, there's no time/need to listen to a radio.

As for billboards and other "in your face" advertising, i'd love to see it disappear, but there is one important factor that differentiates it from explicit tv, youtube, and radio ads: there isn't an explicit opportunity cost between their presence and the activity you're usually partaking in. So if you have you're attention elsewhere, they won't capture it and stop you partaking in the activity you're actually doing.

Indeed, my mind has gotten so good at unconsciously filtering out those ads, I can't honestly say I see them. But then, I'm the kind of guy who will walk past a new store I'm not interested in for 6 months before someone else has to inform me it exists.

Now, i'm not naive, I know that there's bloggers and newspaper articles and product placement (and all the more reason to stop reading the ones that deliberately do it), but its like junk food.

Ok, maybe you can't get it down to zero. But you sure as hell can try to cut it back to a minimum, and its good to do so...

gwbas1c3• 9 years ago

"Mandates ads," as in I have to turn off my ad blocker; or forces me to sit through an ad.

Broadcast TV: I skip ads with a DVR

Aps: As long as the ad is a tiny banner that doesn't pop in front of the screen, it's okay.

soared2• 9 years ago

So what is the author trying to say? This post seems pretty incoherent. I don't understand the point, and he just flip flops through topics without connecting the dots. Also not a fan of this writing style..

This ought probably to mean
Meanwhile, the same applies somewhat even
accelerating and interlocking ... discontinuous and cascading

jacksmith21006• 9 years ago

Google reported that there is over 1.5 billion hours consumed on average per day on YouTube. That is about 10 minutes per person on the planet.

Now that is a crazy amount but what is more amazing is how fast it is growing as it is growing at over 50% per year. That is more hours than all of linear TV in the US combined. But then Google has the ability to target ads and therefore have less than linear TV. It is just hard to see how linear TV will be able to compete if they are going g to continue to have 14 minutes of ads per hour of TV.

My kids are growing up without ads or far less than I did and there is little chance they would except 1/4 of viewing time being ads.

TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses

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