Instead of autorefreshing, innovate
In this guest post, Mediacom’s Nic Hodges argues that Australia’s online publishers need to start putting their readers first
I feel like I’m stuck in an auto-refreshed argument on autoplay this year. If the energy that has gone into these topics alone could have gone into actually providing innovation for advertisers and users, who knows where we could have been?
And I can’t help but feel that the argument is a reflection of the larger issue facing major publishers and broadcasters. These institutions suffer from a crushing organisational inability to innovate.
All that needs to happen is for publishers to say “OK, we made a mistake, let’s move on.”
It’s as if failure is not an option.
Yet in the digital age, failure is actually a viable and valuable option. The winners of the first true digital decade have not been those that outthink, but those that outfail. The innovators of the online world fail. They fail fast. And they keep on innovating because of it.
And rather than admit auto refresh and autoplay is a bad experience for users and a bad deal for advertisers, some media owners insist on sticking to their guns. “It’s about the readers” is the line I hear ad nauseam, yet the readers don’t need or want either of these things. The suggestion that in 2010 a user doesn’t know where the refresh button is for a news site or where the play button is on a video is bewildering.
The current innovation I see from some publishers reminds me of the Henry Ford quote, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’”.
While Australian publishers seem to be focused on making their digital presence ‘like a newspaper, but better’, the Washington Post is embracing interactive and social news. Meanwhile services like Flipboard and Apollo News are completely sidestepping traditional content delivery altogether.
Australian publishers still seemed focused on competing with other publishers, when in reality the entire category is competing with the entire online space. In a world of autoplay and auto refresh and paywalls, the organisations formerly known as our newspapers are offering readers nothing more than another transformed alternative of what they have provided for decades – mainstream news curated by a chosen few.
The reality is that all content – news, entertainment, communications and commerce – is now commoditised. And the way to stand out amidst this commoditisation is not by delivering more ‘impressions’, but by delivering more engaged consumers. And the way publishers must do that is not by being better than each other, but by being better than every other online experience.
And this is why the massive amount of energy I see going into the debate around auto refresh and autoplay disappoints me. If publishers want to remain relevant to advertisers and consumers alike, they need to stop focusing on creating a faster horse.
I can guarantee that in five years, the top five media owners in the digital space will look nothing like the current top five. And the winners of this next phase of digital will be the ones that can innovate the fastest, not autoplay the most videos.
- Nic Hodges is head of innovation and technology at Mediacom
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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News Ltd’s latest play with the iPad app. is another example of what is going wrong with innovation in this country. Innovation is increasingly prioritised based on the immediacy of the ability to monetise. If you can make money out of it tomorrow then they’ll throw a ‘crack team’ at it. If the monetisation opportunity is longer term and the immediate opportunity is more about building consumer value then it can probably wait…
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Excellent, well said Nic.
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This seems like three separate arguments – good ones – awkwardly rolled into one.
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HELLO NIC.
GOOD ARTICLE M8
CHEERS,
DUNCS
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Couldn’t agree more, well said Nic.
However I am disappointed that I had to press play on the two videos in this article, how about making them autoplay?
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You’re wrong, Nic. In new media management failure most certainly IS an option. It’s just that TAKING THE BLAME for failure is not an option.
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Maybe. The top publishers will probably be less profitable but saying they wont be the top publishers is a stretch.
When you explore innovation what you quote is international. The local publishers are terrible at innovating. As are the local agencies and advertisers.
This is a conservative business community we have in Australia.
Publishers do not own innovation. Anybody can do that.
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NICS
M8!!!!!!
AN EVEN BETTER READ THE SECOND TIME.
GR8 STUFF!!!!!
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Hear hear.
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Nice one Nick. Great article.
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How refreshing….i had the very same conversation with a programmer of 20 years in the biz yesterday: we we’re talking primarily about how fast ”the horse” needs to be and why its needs to slow down (quality content), i mentioned i got bookmarks up the warzoo, but can i remember what i saw 24 hours ago.? NO, i can’t act on what i can’t remember; So whats the point of speed and convenience when what i see fades as fast as it flashes by me.? (dodgy content) eg; when was the last time i mentioned to anybody how great any website or magazine was.? I want information be-it print or online i can get truly excited by I’m totally over the game out there.! content content content, where is that hiding.? i want to engage I’m desperate to do so, lately thats been an epic fail.
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Not everyone grew up with the intenet, so assuming that a user of a News site knows they need to refresh a for the content to update doesn’t smack of someone looking at all audiences, just the audience of which he’s a peer.
That said, on content that doesn’t need to be updated (News, Sports Scores etc.) it’s unacceptable.
I look forward to teh day an Agency trusts publishers with the fact that we know how to engage an audience, rather than trying to “Own the Idea” themselves.
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anonymous – explain why AU is probably the only market in the world where auto refresh is considered acceptable.
the best mastheads in the world don’t do it – and they have the same ‘real time’ pressures.
just makes the industry look amateur. No wonder agencies are clamping down on it – trying to drag publishers kicking and screaming into a more equitable situation for advertisers.
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