Fairfax Digital COO: Autoplay video is a commercial reality – for now
Fairfax Digital’s COO Nic Cola has responded to yesterday’s heated debate around the company’s policy of autoplay videos, saying that for now the policy is a “commercial reality”.
Cola’s comments follow yesterday’s Mumbo Report interview with Fairfax’s Digital’s MD – media, Pippa Leary – who is now on maternity leave – in which she said that the company believed that users preferred autoplay.
Cola said that the company was investing in providing free content and that it needed to find ways of getting revenue against that, and he added that he felt some of the more “personal” comments about Leary were poor form.
In a statement he told Mumbrella:
“We juggle our commercial needs with the needs of our users every day, as you would expect given that we provide the content for free online. We believe that video content online is critical not only for the news reporting that we do, but also to drive the online advertising industry forward. We continue to invest significantly in staff and content to fuel that growth and we do push it on our sites.
“We’re always evolving what we do and how we do it. Will auto-play be on our sites permanently? Maybe not, but for now, they are a commercial reality of our current approach. We make changes to our approach based heavily on user feedback and take care to balance that with industry interests as well. Six months ago, we walked away from a substantial revenue stream in FDTV (pop-up video ads) despite the fact it is still being sold by other publishers.
“Let me finish by saying that I am disappointed with several of the comments posted here. Pippa, as you know, has been in the industry for well over 10 years and is widely admired and respected. We’re always open to a healthy debate, but some of these comments have appeared to be simply personal attacks on Pippa which I consider to be poor form.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
Linkedin
For what it’s worth, I did miss a particularly personal comment yesterday which has now been moderated. Our moderation policy is that it’s okay to attack ideas and executions, robustly if you wish. But not the person themselves.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Yesterday autoplaying videos were “what users wanted”, today its a “commercial reality”. Sound like the real reasoning wasn’t told from the outset.
User ID not verified.
Can someone explain to me what the phrase “they are a commercial reality of our current approach” actually means? As I read it, it’s nothing but a tautology. “We are doing it because we are doing it.” That is, it’s a choice. Calling it “a commercial reality” seems to be an attempt to make it sound like it’s all someone else’s doing.
User ID not verified.
Typical response from clueless old media, particularly this notion that they give away their content for free.
They don’t: the cost of viewing their content is exposure to their ads…or as is often the case with Fairfax web content, the content is on occasion an ad in itself.
They could only give away their product for free if they weren’t showing ads.
User ID not verified.
What a 180 backflip if I’ve ever seen one.
Nic Cola, maybe you should’ve been interviewed in the first place.. Not Pippa.
As a COO of Fairfax digital, surely you’d be aware of Mumbrella’s comment stream?
Why put someone on mat leave in that position to be torn to shreds like that?
With such negative sentiment surrounding auto-play EVERYWHERE (not just a bunch of industry wankers like us, even Laurie Oakes thinks you guys are idiots), surely you’d know that putting up poor Pippa as the martyr would’ve had a such a massive backlash. Especially considering the absoute bullshit she was trying to peddle to us?
Your time at Fairfax will be judged as how you handle the auto-play mess you created. Lets be honest, it won’t last. There’s too much hatred towards it.
So I guess you’ve got one decision to make as COO. Do you take it down, say it was a mistake, and thank users for thier patience? Or do you continue to lie to your consumers with total arrogance (like your response in this article), therefore turning this into an even bigger mess, with your name on it.
Good luck living this down in 5 years if you don’t stand up, have some balls, and remove it. For some reason though, I have a feeling you’ll be going down with the ship.
User ID not verified.
I should also point out the logical flaw in Fairfax’s earlier “explanation”. Even if you take at face value their claim that most of their website users like the auto-play videos, that could well be because the people who don’t like them are not coming to Fairfax’s sites to be surveyed about it.
While the plural of “anecdote” is not “data” — and this isn’t even a plural but just one anecdote about me — those goddam auto-play videos are one of the two key reasons that smh.com.au is not on the list of sites that I routinely visit.
User ID not verified.
Pretty honest response – I like the line about “walking away” from “FDTV” … which was uninitiated TVC popups on every page (which were super annoying) … but replacing this with basically the same thing (Uninitiated TVCs that are super annoying).
Anyway, he’s right. Doesn’t seem to be a shortage of advertisers wanting the spots so for FFX it’s a pretty good commercial reality to be guided by.
User ID not verified.
Is auto-refresh a ‘commercial reality’ too?
User ID not verified.
Doesn’t make autoplay more palatable but at least the response was a more honest one
User ID not verified.
@Stilgherian, I can happily translate ““they are a commercial reality of our current approach” for you. If they auto-play ad-funded content, they can make money from selling the ads. If they don’t auto-play the content, I would guess that the amount of pre-rolls served would drop to about 5%-10% of the previous figure. That’s a much harder sell despite how much more you’ll argue that the customer is “engaged”.
Which would lead me to @NotBuyingIt – absolutely auto-refresh is a commercial reality. That also leads to more impressions for the ads. So what if they’re impressions on a page that’s in a non-active tab, or is loading all night on someone’s desktop PC they’ve left on while they sleep through the night. Those are all good solid numbers to sell to advertisers!
Does it devalue the entire concept of advertising? Yeah, sure – but it’s really up to the advertisers to decided whether or not the care about it. Probably at this point the majority of advertisers are barely aware of it. From their perspective, as long as they’re buying the ad space and their sales are going up as a result, it’s a success, right?
But the fact is, these ads are providing the revenue that FD needs to stay in a position where they can innovate and have a chance at competing in the new digital space. There are going to be a lot of mistakes make as the new boundaries get drawn up, and mistakes cost money.
And that, is the commercial reality.
User ID not verified.
Seconding what @#Stilgherrian said.
I simply don’t use my local Fairfax website.
Luckily for Fairfax, they can more than adequately make up for every user like me voting with their feet. All they have to do is crank up their auto-refresh for remaining users.
To get an idea of what the last Fairfax viewer will see in a few years time, press and hold F11.
User ID not verified.
@Tom, Problem is that the innovation seems to be focussed on how to make even more money and all at the expense of the user’s experience.
That’s not a ‘commercial reality’, it’s ‘commercial suicide’!
User ID not verified.
I thought “Fairfax Boss” comment on the original post yesterday sums it up perfectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN1AaHaqj4Q
User ID not verified.
When your advertisers finally wise up to the fact that no one is actually eyeballing their ads – most likely they’re playing silently in a background tab – you may think twice about the “commercial” reality.
Because the only way I have now been able to block these atrociously intrusive videos is to install a Chrome AdBlock plug-in – which means not only do I no longer see videos on your site, but neither do I see ANY OTHER ADS across the rest of your content.
User ID not verified.
Just opened a story on The Age: Wild weather to strike Victoria.
Forgot to press Stop on the video before it started. What does it give me? “Rails Run: Sandown tips — Our racing experts look ahead to all the action on the track at Sandown on Saturday”
Annoying and irrelevant.
User ID not verified.
Yep Nic, personal attacks on Pippa are poor form. Agreed. She’s a smart professional who’s done a lot for the digital media industry and people should be smart enough to recognise that these aren’t necessarily Pippa’s personal views.
She’s been asked to go out there and advocate something that is pretty indefensible both as a:
– consumer experience, and
– as a “commercial reality” (unless agencies are happy to report back on “number of ads viewed” and ignore “number of ads clicked on” or other measures of effectiveness)
But what does appear like poor form is having her do it just before she goes on maternity leave. That’s very ordinary.
Don’t you have a video platform person who could have done this and then stuck around to answer the flak – and you must’ve known there would be heaps – and offer a bit substance to the numbers?
User ID not verified.
there is advertiser demand for autoplay because for every one of you geek whingers with your fancy ad-blockers there’s 1000 regular schmos who don’t react indignantly to 15 seconds of intrusion because for the last 50 years they’ve been force-fed 20,000 TV commercials each year. you are a vocal minority!
User ID not verified.
@sven – wrong champ. I am not a geek whinger, just a ‘regular schmo’ as you so eloquently put it, who doesn’t work in the industry. The autoplay function is enough for me to not use Fairfax sites anymore and I will source my news elsewhere. If you think that us ‘regular schmos’ are going to all continue to put up with this kind of crap (same for paywalls – good luck with that one too) when there are so many other options out there to source news and information, then you are indeed dumber than your original post first indicates.
So whilst the advertisers may think they are getting the views, in real terms they are doing their brand a bigger disservice, as their brand will be associated with those terrible autoplay runs, and for me, I personally would choose to not use a brand purely based on them using this format. This is not a minority decision, its a growing public voice.
You see sven, us schmo’s are savvier than you think. We tape TV so we can fast forward through the ad breaks, or we stream instead for the same reasons. FTA TV is dying, and advertising is easier to avoid nowadays.
User ID not verified.
Again, no Fairfax interaction in the comment stream ? INSANE – if you bloody well believe it, then be prepared to explain to actively interested people in the industry !
PS Sven … not sure thats entirely accurate … no advertiser wants to be exposed to resentment by association. Furthermore, commercial TV has always been just that, from the first minute it was broadcast til now … this autoplay bollocks is a recent intrusion.
User ID not verified.
Marto, FTA TV is not dying. What a load of utter rubbish. Please check your facts.
In the 6 months from Jan – June the networks pulled down nearly 2BN in advertisng revenue. That’s a 17.8 % jump compared to the same period last year.
Your post was quite good up until that comment. What shame you now look like you have absolutely no idea about the real world media landscape at all.
User ID not verified.
@ANON333, s it valid to compare the TV advertising revenue in those two periods without further historical context? After all, Jan-Jun 2009 was deep GFC territory. I for one would expect there to have be a rise again after that dip. Longer-term trends would be the more interesting ones.
User ID not verified.
TV IS NOT DYING PLEASE BAN THIS TOPIC EVER BEING DISCUSSED AGAIN
User ID not verified.
So, clever people, how should SMH make money while growing online video content without autoplay? What is a viable alternative commercial strategy?
User ID not verified.
Fairfax own the site. They can do whatever they like.
Nothing is for free..and if you’re too busy to wait for the autoplay simply move on. Usage will dictate the “commercial reality”.
Why all the anger?
User ID not verified.
@Leona
How should the music industry make more money when faced with rampant piracy, growing consumer resentment against their methods and an uncontrollable distribution platform that they previously controlled for decades?
The answer certainly isn’t adding (intrusive) ads into the content they create. Or forcing more music to appear in front of people when they’re doing something else.
You innovate, you try new platforms, new business models, but not to the detriment of the reason why people use your product/service. You could but it will lead to short term gain, long term fail.
My take on the crux of the conversation here was the annoying user experience and methods employed by a company that appears to some as not listening to their feedback?
User ID not verified.
Greg, People are angry because advertisers pay for these pre-roll ads, even when people aren’t watching them.
User ID not verified.
Advertisers pay for auto-refresh ads on Fairfax sites that no-one sees so why is anyone surprised that Fairfax also shows pre-roll ads that no-one watches?
User ID not verified.
Why would advertisers pay for ads when no one is watching?
Perhaps an advertiser should be asked if they believe advertising on the Fairfax site is worthwhile.
God forbid a media agency recommend something that wasn’t effective simply because the commission is higher.
As for anyone who is interrupted in their viewing …bad luck.
User ID not verified.
@Leona
Publishing, regardless of the medium, hinges on one basic principal…
Compelling content attracts people. People in turn attract advertisers.
Autoplay does not attract people and can potentially deceive advertisers.
It’s simply wrong!
User ID not verified.
THis reminds me of the Simpsons when Milhouse is at Homer’s backyard amusement park and goes through the urine smelling mattress tunnel.
He says “it smells funny in here”.
Homer responds straight as a die “no it doesn’t”
Homer is FFX. Milhouse is the user.
User ID not verified.
Where is the deception?
Are advertisers too silly to know if their ads on Fairfax are effective or not?
If the ads don’t work the advertiser looks elswhere and Fairfax is forced to amend it policy to entice them back.
Surely this is the “commercial reality”?
User ID not verified.
There’s a strange dynamic occuring here – all commenters show their passion anonymously?
Lack of courage in the advertising business these days?
User ID not verified.
@ greg
Online is not sold as a hit & miss medium. Advertisers buy online on the basis that a video play or page impression has been requested by a human.
There is no reason to automate this stuff other than to artificially inflate their numbers.
If these threads prove anything its that it’s clearly not about the user’s experience.
User ID not verified.
@notbuyingit Fairfax online is doing much better than Fairfax newspapers at the moment, so the content is attracting people.. whether or not that content is high-quality or presented in the best fashion is another thing.
I have noticed that the videos now have a 5 minute countdown so you have extra time to press pause before an ad starts playing. It is also clear from the homepage which articles have video by a small icon, so there’s another warning.
The auto refresh needs to go.
User ID not verified.
Are other media really sold as “hit or miss”?
Surely advertisers are not that silly?
User ID not verified.
@ Greg
Don’t underestimate the value of trust in the media buying and selling process.
Autoplay, auto refresh or any other auto activity undermines that trust, not just for FFX but for all online media.
You are right, advertisers are not silly and they will react eventually. Some of us have done so already!
User ID not verified.
Would you happily buy a train ticket from Sydney to Newcastle that ‘sometimes’ got to Newcastle, however often didn’t and frequently didn’t even make it out of the station?
If so, then continue buying video space with Fairfax Digital – this is the reality for the clients featured with video ad’s on FD sites.
Then there is the train that makes it to Newcastle, but nobody saw it (the ghost train)
(The Video is about to play – user scrolls down – does not have sound on – user does not view the ad…)
Blah blah blah; Old media online is what FD video ad’s are = hit and miss, scatter gun = mass wastage.
Clients – please take note!!
User ID not verified.
@ Leona – How should fairfax make money while continuing to grow online video without autoplay ? Simple – take a leaf out of msn’n book and have user initiated video, with prerolls capped to one preroll every three minutes, plus midrolls and postrolls on long form, and the ability for agencies to supply their own TPS tracking to measure true browser engagement. Seemed to be working fine for msn last time I checked …
User ID not verified.
… and it’s not like Fairfax could exactly be accused of ‘growing’ online video in the Australian market in the first place, could they ? Fixplay FTW hehe …
User ID not verified.
With all these dirty secrets it’s confusing why so many clients continue to turn a blind eye to where their money is being spent online.
From auto refresh to videos not watched by people, to network buys where you don’t know where your ad appears, to dubious post view attribution, last cookie etc … if i was the MPA or FreeTV Australia I’d be having a field day with all these delicate elements of the digital world.
User ID not verified.
Leona: It’s not a 5 minute countdown, its 5 seconds. Get your facts straight.
And a lot of the time, the video player doen’t even load right away. Why does this matter? You’re there waiting up the top of the page instead of scrolling down and getting on with the story because you need to WAIT for the f**king thing to ask you if you want to STOP IT.
User ID not verified.
@ANON333 Perhaps Fairfax has found enough users are prepared to wait.
If you find the wait so annoying that you feel the need to swear about the situation, what is preventing you from going to another site?
Why become so angry about such a minor inconvenience? Move on.
User ID not verified.
>@Leona So, clever people, how should SMH make money while growing online video content without autoplay? What is a viable alternative commercial strategy?
Firstly, figuring out if people actually want video on the SMH, if there is even an audience for it.
Secondly, finding out what they actually want. Which probably can’t be measured accurately with the currently autoplay fiasco. Dump it, and then see which videos are clicked, and which aren’t.
Thirdly, having a dedicated video area rather than infesting text news stories with videos. People clicking on a text story generally want to read, not watch. Those that want video will go straight to YouTube.
Fourthly, realising that there is no point in video just for the sake of it. Unless you have amazing and unique pictures, footage of someone incredibly famous, shots of something incredibly appealing or shocking or funny or “sticky”, is there any need for people to see a video version? A third rate version of a fourth rate local news story is a waste of bytes.
Ultimately: don’t create a video story solely for the purpose of playing an ad at the front.
User ID not verified.
No money in those ideas anon1
User ID not verified.
Greg thompson: I have moved on. Don’t worry about that.
Fairfax treats its users like idiots.
User ID not verified.
Old media brains; overseeing new media = mass stuff up(.)
– Say – no – more…
Nic who?
User ID not verified.
@wolf “No money in those ideas anon1”
And that’s my point. If YouTube struggles to monetise its 100% user submitted content, I don’t see how Fairfax has a snowflake’s chance in hell. See here: http://mashable.com/2010/03/05.....enue-2010/
There will increasingly be money in online video. But not yet for most sites, and not like this.
User ID not verified.
Marto – the facts. Calendar year 2010 increase in both FTA and Total television is +2.5% on 2009.
Either you have a funny idea that growth equates to dying, or you’re not talking about Australian FTA TV, or you’re just plain wrong.
P.S. have you heard that the sky is falling … pass it on.
User ID not verified.
when people realise that online video is basically the same as TV, it will be interesting to see if the premiums and the operating terms stay the same.
this sort of carry on from FFX shows right now the money’s decent as it’s new and exciting and there’s not much diligence around buying video online. this will change.
User ID not verified.
I feel for Nic on this one. Having been at Fairfax Digital I have had a first hand view on how difficult balancing editorial integrity and commercial growth is. The editorial team are TOUGH to please and third party content is incredibly expensive. Not moving forward and getting broadband communication right is a no-win path for Fairfax. To not innovate will leave them with a narrowband product in a broadband world.
The issue is that it has to be paid for and Fairfax’s rivers of gold are looking a lot like the Murray/Darling river scheme. The long term view is not good. The money to support the transition has to come from somewhere however I also agree that the implementation is clumsy so far – but we have all made similar mistakes as we have learnt to adapt to this changing media. It drives me mad to sit through a 30 second ad for 25 seconds of content. However the alternative not having it, and clearly we are all passionate about Fairfax or we wouldn’t be on this post.
For those who are quick to criticise Fairfax it is worth picking up the print edition and comparing the content, depth and personality of the two. They don’t look anything like each other, especially after 11am as the site changes on continual live feeds and through the 24 hour news desk (also expensive to run and fund).
The one thing about Fairfax Digital managers that I love is that they are passionate about Fairfax (unreasonably so sometimes) and care about the user experience as their top priority.
Oh, and @Cornington Pleasant, Nic Cola has been in the digital market longer than all of us have been on the internet. He has been instrumental in Fairfax Digital now generating more profit than the print editions of the SMH, AGE and AFR put together.
User ID not verified.
@Lee Stephens. Still no reason to autoplay video’s.
If ad’s show in front of a video I have selected to watch, I will sit through and happily watch the ad. I watch ad’s on YouTube and it doesn’t bother me; because I have requested to view that video.
Lee, please understand what the argument is about: People are using say SMH to read written content. A user will open an article (ready to READ away) and a video will automatically play; they did not request to watch a video and generally do not watch it: They will scroll down, with mute on and read the article, whilst the video plays, without making a sound and without being seen. An advertisement also plays, which does not get seen, nor heard.
Lee, you seem to miss what 99% of the people who have made comments are getting at. (No disrespect to your good self at all.)
Engagement has always and will always be key in media. Autpplay is stuffing up engagement in this scenario on FD sites(.)
User ID not verified.
Firefox with Ad block Plus fixes the annoying auto play videos on fairfax sites, along with all the other advertising on the web. But somehow I doubt that a web blog devoted to media will want people to know how to block ads……………
User ID not verified.