So it turns out that the world of television is ruled by advertising. The more ads you can sell, the more money you make and the more TV shows you can make and broadcast. In the past, television product managers ruled the world. No one else could compete with the number of potential customers he could reach. However, things have changed the terms of your definition of product development. Now, the advent of ubiquitous high-speed internet connections means that potential customers can view content from other sources, and television may no longer be necessary …
What makes the Internet so attractive?
Damn, but the internet seems to have just about everything going for it. Smart people who spend their time working with computer code running on the Internet have found that they can tell a lot about each and every person who visits a website. What this means is that when they post video content to a website, they can tell advertisers exactly who will see the video (“white women who have two children and drive a Lexus”) and this helps advertisers who want to reach a specific audience.
It is this laser-like approach that ISPs can offer advertisers that sets them apart from what TV product managers have to offer. The argument for spending more money on Internet advertisements rather than television commercials is bolstered by the simple fact that many people are “cutting the cord” and changing their viewing habits from watching television programs to watching their own. favorite shows online. It surely sounds like this would be a great thing to add to a product manager’s resume.
One of the great advantages of watching video content online is that the viewer always has it under control: they can stop and start it whenever they want. This is in contrast to television broadcasts where, during commercials, the viewer can often leave the room and not see the advertisement. Add to that the fact that TV broadcasters have traditionally only been able to tell advertisers the age and gender of their audience, you can see that Internet video providers have a clear advantage.
How TV Product Managers Fight Back
Television product managers realize they have a problem on their hands and they are not taking it lightly. Instead, they are getting creative. They realize that now that advertisers have tested the detailed audience details that internet video providers can collect and share, they will have to step up their game. This means that they will have to start providing new data and analysis tools.
What these product managers are doing is starting to access very large external databases to get more information about their viewers. Using the viewing habits data they can get from cable boxes, they combine this data with various forms of loyalty card data. This means that they can tell advertisers which products viewers of various shows buy on a regular basis.
Television product managers are also doing their best to show advertisers that their data can be more accurate than the data they get from Internet content providers. TV product managers point out to advertisers that online websites have problems with fake traffic generated by automated “bots” and that, in some cases, the ads shown to users are so small that they are not visible naked eye.
What does all this mean to you?
Partly because the world is currently in love with everything to do with the Internet, television product managers really have a lot of work ahead of them. There is no product manager job description that tells us how to deal with this situation. To stay in business, they need to find ways to get advertisers to be willing to spend money on streaming video ads rather than transferring it all to Internet video sites.
Traditionally, television has been able to tell advertisers very little about who watches their shows, just age and gender. ISPs have been able to get much more information about past searches and other data items and have been able to paint a much more complete picture of their audience. However, television product managers are beginning to access large databases to provide more detailed information about their audience.
The only thing that television has going for it is that its audiences are huge. These product managers have some time to work, they still have a very large audience. However, Internet providers are increasing their audience. This means that television product managers must move quickly. We will have to watch and see if using more data will allow them to attract and retain the advertisers they need.
