YouTube is UCG

The most clearly defined form of user generated content is YouTube (and similar sites). Anyone can, and does, upload anything. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The advertising industry and UGC

Advertisers are simply terrified of UGC (User Generated Content). With no means of predicting exactly what kind of content their brands will become associated with on the page, it becomes tougher for agencies to have confidence in reaching the audience they must reach on behalf of their clients (remember, in the vast majority of international brand advertising, it is not the brands themselves who buy the advertisement space).

What advertising buyers are hunting for is trusted, “brand-safe” content with which to associate their products. They need the confidence that there will be no unpleasant surprises and that their clients’ brands will have their image both enhanced by the associated content, and that it will reach their defined target audience.

True UGC cannot guarantee either of those important criteria.

Aren’t podcasts UGC?

In that they are generated by “users”, they are, of course. But in the eyes of the advertising industry, podcasts have unfortunately become tarnished with the very same brush as true UGC. Whereas, in fact, the vast majority of niche podcast-distributed programming is very much brand-safe.

Serialised, audio and video programming maintains an audience primarily through loyalty. That audience comes to expect a certain style and structure of content. If the show consistently fails to provide what they expect, they will move on. Producers understand this and strive to provide what their audience wants. Thus the loyalty grows and the show becomes increasingly brand-safe.

Within each individual show’s audience, the programming is entirely brand safe in that it is predictable, consistent, and reaches the same eyes and ears over and over again – and important factor in converting an advertising message into audience action.

So why aren’t advertisers clamoring to write cheques to independent podcast producers?

Apart fro the image problem (as mentioned above), the vast majority of the productions out there have far too small an audience to be attractive to international brands who need to reach millions. Networks such as Mevio get around that issue by aggregating similar audiences together across multiple smaller show properties. And it is working.

But whether any company can become strong enough to truly wipe the memories and associations podcasts have within the advertising industry remains to be seen. I do not believe that will happen – advertisers like to be in control, and no-one has broken them in the past four years (since podcasting first appeared).

This lingering, troublesome association is, as I see it, the reason for PodShow re-branding to Mevio.

The story has not changed

Since the dawn of podcast content, the key players have been preaching that the programming’s strength is its unique and intimate relationship with its audience, and that relation must, therefore, be attractive to advertisers. I have not seen this view change.

Along came the tsunami of UGC (YouTube, etc.) and what should have been a tall, razor-wire topped wall between the independent content productions and true UGC, became a fuzzy blurr of confused notions about the differences between professional, independent, and amateur produced content.

I believe this is one of the primary reasons why so many quality podcast producers did not see the returns they believed were possible from their content..

Disclaimer: I work for Mevio. The opinions in this article are wholly personal and in no way prompted, endorsed, or motivated by Mevio.

Photo credit: Bulent Fahri Ince

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The most disappointing aspect of this slice of Americana which will always be out of our reach in the UK, is the imagination – if not necessarily the required creative and practical skills to do a decent job – with which some of them have applied to their mailboxes. First you need a demonstration of what I mean, right here. It’s a shame because the classic British eccentricity might be able to generate a greater level of weirdness to which even the wackiest American can’t rise – OK, well, maybe just an altogether different kind of weirdness.

The reason we cannot have these glorious projections of self expression, is down to a couple of factors:

1. We just don’t have the space
Mailboxes need room to breath, space in which to sit there in their eternally expectant state waiting for the day’s mail to arrive. There’s something magical about their sentry-like stations at the front of the house. You know, I think I would end up talking to mine, offering a thank you for work well done, or wishing it a good day in passing.

2. They just would not survive more than ten minutes
It is difficult enough in the UK to plant a tree in a public space and have it survive beyond the sapling stage. Anything sticking out of the ground is a magnet for the passing vandal. Now I am sure the American mailboxes suffer a little from the drive-by baseball bat, and I guarantee some have the odd bullet hole in them. Take your typical road in the UK, if fitted with residential mailboxes, and they will be repositioned overnight to a new location disturbingly resembling your car windscreen. They little beggars cannot leave real estate signs in an upright position, so mailboxes, with the clear understanding of the additional level of inconvenience meddling would create, don’t stand a chance.

One perfect fit, however, would be with the postmen. For the most part the last thing your average postman wants is to actually walk up to your front door and mash your fragile, unfoldable mail through your letterbox – I’m sure they see it as fitting retribution for making them walk so far.

If you are in the UK, would you have one of these mailboxes out the front of your hose?

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