Yesterday various outlets published a story indicating that MSNBC.com, in its new redesign would be eliminating banner ads. While banner ads will still remain on the site, there won’t be as much inventory. In a quote from MediaWeek.com:
“We looked at all the stuff we have,” said Ashley Wells, the site’s creative director. “Video, photos, comments, that stuff was all disparate. When you bring it all together on the page, you need to load things dynamically, it’s no longer about page views. But page views were always a proxy for ad impressions. So you have to figure something else out.”
A lot of digital media pioneers have maintained the same stance for the past few months. While it will take a long time for pageviews to transition out of the digital ad culture, the trend is definitely starting. For example: comScore released its May 2010 U.S online video report last week. YouTube still dominates in amount of content and audience. However, Hulu is a close second — only in number of streams. When it comes to total audience size, it is at # 6. Interestingly, that is lower than Fox Interactive Media, which is owned by NewsCorp, which has a stake in Hulu. On average, Hulu viewers watch 27 streams a month compared to Fox’s 7.4 and YouTube’s 101.2.
In this scenario — should Fox charge a higher ad rate because it reaches more people or should Hulu charge more because it delivers more videos?
The online video space has long struggled with selling ads because many agencies still expect to see high-pageviews while purchasing media. Hopefully this trend will help content creators and advertisers alike.
