Breathe Deep, All That Digital Disruption Is Rather Cleansing

Michael Hedges December 5, 2013 Follow on Twitter

As year’s end approaches media watchers will wax metaphorical, gripping the larger zeitgeist. There is much to ponder. The waves, mostly new, and tides, often scary, inundate or, sometimes, cleanse. The words fly off the screen like bats shrieking in the dark.

Two contributions from stalwart observers of the media world offered this week, in slightly different contexts, the term “digital tsunami”. Both write of things that “overwhelm” and “disrupt.” Neither are apocalyptic, describing the winds of change as a release from fear. One describes the new world of media content, the other advertising.

A review of Nicolas Clasen’s book The Digital Tsunami by Tatjana Rauth in Der Standard (December 2), which looks at German advertising and media, notes that many media managers believe, unrealistically, “the worst is already over.” Digital initiatives, well documented, have done little more than perpetuate traditional models like cost-per-thousand ad sales. Exclusivity is dead, replaced by “everybody can have everything” because “the internet is easy to use and accessible to everybody.”

Clasen, founder of the Real-Time Advertising Lab, criticizes line-extension development common among broadcasters and publishers as trying to ”compensate for the low online (advertising) prices through a wider range in traditional areas again.” This over-supply, in turn, drives prices lower, which, he says, “creates a vacuum that new services can fill.”

The book borrows heavily from Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation (1997). The “feedback channel” of Google AdWords “illuminates” disruptive innovation by focusing on “actual interactions rather than visibility.” Advertisers can modify the message quickly, both buyers and sellers benefiting. Content producers not embracing the AdWords model have, as the digital tsunami sweeps through the land, missed the boat.

“The digital tsunami that overwhelms the media ecosystem is reversing the balance of power in favor users,” penned Les Echos hi-tech business editor David Barroux (December 3). Those who “claim to be victims of the earthquake in digital land had better stop whining.” These are exciting times, he said, ”but also terrifying.”

Old-guard media operators “were weakened” as the tide moved in by the “high cost of failure.” Now, anybody can be on the web; the cost of a digital TV channel is negligible. “Digitization changed everything, starting with removing the barriers to entry.” The sky, literally and figuratively, is no limit. “Anything with turnover and profitability are the special envy of dinosaurs.”

Journalists and other content producers felt the pain of weakened traditional outlets, he notes. “Expertise is questioned” unlike the days of two newspapers and two TV channels. “A site full of videos can attract more viewers than a TV show. In the new digital era, experts don’t disappear; they lose the monopoly of speech and relevance.”

After the digital tsunami receeded, initially, what is left is a loss of time and place, he continued. Media operators no longer set agendas, arguably their brand strength in the age of simplicity. “Catch-up TV, which allows viewers to watch what they want when they want, grows exponentially.”

“The market is instantly global,” he offered. “For some, it’s an opportunity. The Guardian is a hit in all Anglo-Saxon countries. The Spainish press assaults the Hispanic world. But for others, erasing geographic boundaries is a challenge.” There’s Amazon, tax issues noted. There’s Netflix.

“We may be entering an era of one-man media,” he concludes, tipping to the post-modern idea of disintermediation. It could be “one where we no longer feed a relatively passive consumer, but one where the consumer becomes an unfaithful participant in choice nearly infinite.”

Thankfully, the eating season has begun.

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