Joe Talcott vs Joe Pollard: Is the internet a medium?
Joe Talcott News Limited’s group marketing director and AANA chairman, says he stands by his view that the internet is not a media platform, following remarks made by Ninesmsn CEO Joe Pollard disputing Talcott’s stance.
Talcott made the comment during a panel discussion at a AANA conference on Friday and was published in the News Ltd-owned The Australian newspaper. He said: “The internet is not a medium,” adding that it’s “a place where people do stuff”.
He argued that research measuring time spent online needs to exclude activities such as online shopping, banking, emailing and the use of social networking sites.
But in a blog post, Pollard promptly hit back, listing Roy Morgan and Nielsen statistics to support the stance that Australians are increasingly turning to the internet for general use and for media and entertainment purposes.
It includes Roy Morgan Single Source data which shows that in the 12 months to September last year the average weekly time spent on the internet increased 13 per cent, while time spent on traditional media fell – weekly time spent on TV declined 4 per cent, radio was down 5 per cent, newspapers was down 6 per cent and magazines was similarly down 6 per cent.
She also pointed to Morgan Research which found that 23 per cent of Australian’s weekly media time is spent using the internet.
Pollard added that Nielsen data shows half of Australians’ time spent on the internet is on content sites including entertainment, news and lifestyle sites, while the other half of internet time is spent on activities such as social networking, communication, shopping, classifieds, banking and search.
And it is this other half of internet usage where Pollard and Talcott fundamentally disagree.
Pollard said in her post:
It’s hard to argue with such telling statistics! Online is most certainly a medium for consumers to be entertained and informed – it just happens to be interactive and the consumer is in control. If no one is “sitting down to watch the internet” then why are 11 million people consuming ninemsn’s short form video every month?”
Claiming the internet is not a medium because “it’s a place where people do stuff” presumably means advertising anywhere other than in infomercials, classified newspapers or the Super Bowl is fruitless? It’s the same as saying Out Of Home is not a viable advertising channel because people are really there to catch a bus. Come on!”
Talcott today hit back at Pollard’s post, telling Mumbrella that the total time spent online should not be compared with the total time spent watching TV, listening to the radio or reading a newspaper.
I don’t believe it is a valid comparison. To re-visit Joe Pollard’s analogy, that would be like outdoor advertising using total time spend out doors as their comparison to time spent on other media.
My ‘eyebrow raising remarks were not a criticism of the Internet, nor of digital media; I am incredibly bullish on both. And that is my point, that they are two different things. We do things on the Internet, including enjoying some superb digital media. But comparing the Internet (or the time spent on it) with other media undervalues the Internet and the profound impact it is having on communication, human interaction and life itself. It is much more than a media.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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outdoor is a great analogy – the concept of out-of-home itself is not a media platform, but there are media platforms in the out-of-home environment.
so in that sense – online is an environment / a place with media platforms within it rather than a medium itself? i dig it
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LOL
The online revenue share must be starting to hurt to have a go on time spent.
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jerrys – the online revenue share was 14.5% as at June 2009. It had been growing about 2% points per year however it grew 2% points in the 6 mths to June 2009. I suspect when the full carnage of the industry is counted and published by CEASA in March, the share will have gone up to 16.5%, doubling the previous rate of growth from 2 points per annum to 4 points in 2009. At this rate, it will exceed $3billion annually and overtake TV and print in 2013-2014, as it did in the UK last year.
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I’m looking forward to the next debates in this series:
“Beer Mats – print media or outdoor media?”
and
“Novelty T-shirts – are they a medium … or an extra large?”
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““The internet is not a medium,”
Time to step down Joe. Sorry.
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The old “because Nielsen data says so” argument. A meek defence of a something that wasn’t actually being attacked, just more accurately defined.
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@Adam Joseph – Holy crap, I almost shot drink out of my nostrils at your novelty t-shirts comment. PURE GOLD.
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@Damian Damjanovski – many apologies, please send me the dry cleaning bill 🙂
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The internet (lower case “i”) is whatever those using it want it to be. It’s an engine. It enables.
It’s neither, but both.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
That said, I agree with Joe Talcott that to compare time online with time offline and use that as an argument for what’s better. The overlap is too broad to validate any argument with that at its core. It’s way more complex than that and the leverage of one off of the other is almost limitless.
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@David@luvyawork – So what you’re saying is, “there is no spoon” ?
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Paul,
The direct comparison today is better expressed as display only whether or not you believe all advertising dollars will eventually belong to us. All that google search love will have it’s yellowpages moment one day.
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Naughty (or just plain dumb) Joe Pollard – 11m per month on the MSN short video. What utter piffle, what complete poppycock. Ever considered Joe that some folk are visiting more than once! This raises another, unrelated issue – supposedly senior media folk not knowing what the ferck they’re talking about! Half the country don’t go to MSN.
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i think joe talcott was bang on the money … for those so opposed to his view, take his comments for what they are and stop trying to defend your own agendas for a minute.
the time spent online thing has been used by online sales teams for ages but never has there been much transparency with the data when using it to try and persuade dollars to go online.
If people did these things on the TV – shopping, banking, weather, admin etc – would it be categorised as “TV viewing”. NO CHANCE.
What these comments and the debate around auto-refresh are clearly saying is there is some skepticism around the numbers digital is serving up. No one is questioning the medium nor its potential effectiveness, they are questioning the actions of some of the players involved.
@Damian.
Nope, not saying that. Of course there’s a spoon.
What I’m saying though is that arguing over whether it’s a medium or not is irrelevant because it’s a matter of perspective and what it’s enabling the user to do.
That and that I honestly believe using time spent online versus offline to state a case for which one is more valid is narrow-minded at best.
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Talcott’s counter-argument on outdoor misses Pollard’s point. Talcott claimed online is not a medium because it’s where people do stuff, ie there’s too much multi-tasking going on. Pollard was trying to point out that most mediums have an element of multi-tasking going on, ie outdoor and “catching a bus”.
If you can catch a bus in the medium of outdoor, you can bank on the internet in the medium of online. The difference is you can actually measure what the consumer is doing online.
As for the time spent argument, I’m off to do the ironing with the TV on in the background.
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one thing that hasn’t been talked about too much here is the amount of multi-tasking that goes on online.
ie – having 4 browsers/tabs open at one time … all 4 of the sites are claiming ‘engagement’ … many of which are practicing auto-refresh and generating huge number inflation.
how does this impact on the relevance of time spent … 1 hr of time online is all well and good but if the person has 6 tabs open and visits 100 websites in the hour then is there a media value? It’s a lot different to 1 hour watching a TV show. How much cu through can an advertiser get on an article that people are looking at for 20 seconds, and an article page that has 8 ads on it?
No … I’m not saying TV is great … I am saying the argument that ‘online occupies x% of media consumption time thus should be getting a higher share so it’s rev. share is in line with consumption’ is such a ridiculous one.
Maybe we need to stop throwing around this wow massive total online consumption stat and start looking at deeper numbers – ie how long is a user spending on ninemsn video, how long is the average reader of a story on SMH spending on a page, how long is a reader looking at a review on Gizmodo? Personally I don’t think advertisers give two hoots on how long people are spending on the MEDIUM … they want to know how long they’re spending in environments they feel are a good fit for their products.
I suppose what you’re saying Ben, is that size isn’t everything?
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Too much over-intellectualising (and maybe poor spelling!). T-Bone’s comment is spot on. There is a lot of semantics being debated, but really it’s about getting the fundamentals right – definitions….what is the environment and what is the medium.
Is watching youtube.com the same as watching TV (a medium) in a different environment?
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@Ben – You’re spot on amigo.
@David@luvyawork – I was just kidding about the spoon. I just wanted to make a Matrix reference really.
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Pretty sure TV has a multi-tasking issue as well.
Cooking, reading, ironing, playing with the dog, etc, etc…
I’m reluctant to mention people using the internet whilst watching tv. Don’t want to give the guys at Nielsen nightmares.
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absolutely chris, just took me 4 paragraphs heh 😉
scott – TV does have multi-tasking … but not to the same levels. You can’t watch 6 shows at once … and the ratings system means someone who watches a show for 10 seconds isn’t counted.
need john grono in this thread to clarify the measurement.
@ Scott Taylor In 2009, 61% of Australian Internet users had watched TV and used the Internet at the same time. Source; Nielsen Online The Australian Internet and Technology Report 2009
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@Ben – I agree. Digital/online is a platform for a lot of things. Time spent is
The focus needs to shift to an engagement model, but will need to be defined a whole lot further before it becomes a standard metric.
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Oops – should have finished that. Time spent should be used to compare with other platforms/mediums as more of an industry metric rater than as a site level one
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@ben Agree, but my point was probably more to the attention a tv show gets rather than the ability (or lack thereof) to watch more than one show at a time.
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I think that usage in terms of contribution or UGC would be a good point to throw in. On-line is an iterative and intereactive environment and as such is pretty unique to all other mediums.
The active nature of the medium is what makes it special.
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@Don said all that needed to be said.
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I think you’re all burying the lead here. The most controversial comment that was quoted in the article in The Australian was:
“To some degree, banner ads are like pub coasters – they’re ads that appear when you’re socialising and I reckon they get about the same amount of attention”
Two counters to this:
1. Accountability
When was the last time a beer mat/pub coaster told you how many people had looked at it, picked it up and subsequently acted on it? Banners, med recs etc offer far more measurability than beer mats. Although I’m sure some smart arse will contradict me by pointing out there are robotic beer mats in Japan that do.
2. Brand building
When was the last time you heard a marketing director talking about great return on marketing investment from his/her integrated beer mat campaign? Online ad formats are proven as a brand-building tool (see the IAB website) so judging purely on click-throughs negates the campaign effects on brand equity.
As to whether the internet is a place you do stuff or a medium?! It’s both and I think it always has been.
Now let’s get back to the juicier debate I suggested in my earlier comment:
Beer Mats: Print media or Outdoor media?!
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I reckon the beer coaster sector must be bigger than I thought then. Who knew it was a two billion dollar business?
How much is that per coaster?
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C’mon, everybody knows the internet is a series of tubes.
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