Semi-OT: Do You Prefer Written or Video Content Online?
This tweet just came across the transom, and it is morbidly fascinating to me.
SCOOP: Fox Sports is cutting its online writing staff to invest those resources in video. Story on the terminal. Link TK.
— Lucas Shaw (@Lucas_Shaw) June 26, 2017
I suspect that the audience of a writing-heavy blog will not be representative of the larger population, but still, it's worth asking here. Whether it be news, politics, sports, or more niche topics, there seems to be a trend amongst many content providers to increase their quantity of video content. This often comes at the expense of written articles.
How do you prefer to consume content? How do you ACTUALLY consume it, regardless of preferences? Do you prefer articles and columns, or videos?
but the money is in video...video advertising dollars are significantly higher and in greater demand. I suspect the move is to try to tap into those budgets...not necessarily due to audience preference.
Our slack conversations on this topic look precisely like this thread. Video has high CPMs and since the kind of people who run major media companies don't know anything about people who consume media they trust far too much in an inflated number.
Written. I have trouble maintaining focus when listening to someone talk. It's why I wasn't a better student.
auto-play videos shoud die a painful death. i greatly prefer written content, but occasionally i'll watch a video. not if it's auto-play. i won't go to an auto-play website more than once.
Definitely written.
If I'm at work, it's a lot easier for me to have an article open and casually read it on one of my screens than it is for me to have a video playing.
If I'm listening to music, I don't want to have to pause my music just to be able to hear an annoying video. Same thing if I'm home watching tv and reading the news on my laptop.
This will be a fascinating case study in market economics. If consumers heavily favor written content (as the insanely biased sample here would indicate), you would expect competition among media outlets to provide it, unless it's so hard to monetize written content relative to video content that video content provides more profitability, even at much lower rates customer satisfaction/engagement. Of course, one format doesn't have to completely dominate the other: a major media focus shift to video content might actually encourage more written content among smaller or more niche outlets, who might be able to use different monetization models than larger corporations. Should be fascinating.
I need time to process information. I like to write quotes on paper. I always have a notepad beside me.
I can't find the analysis of the readership of the blog but given the heavy skews we know the Michigan fanbase has and then the even heavier written content skew this blog has... We're probably the extreme outlier.
Anyways my personal theory on why they're going towards stupid video content is 1. Autoplays and 2. Facebook shares.
1.Autoplays count as plays regardless of if I mute the tab, close the page immediately etc. Gotta chase those views even if they're worthless.
2. My facebook feed is now dominated by autoplay videos of how to make some sort of 8000 calorie brownie or about how a cop rescues a dog who fell into the water etc. I assume this is what they're going after.
Only written. Even when I have time to watch, or am researching something I want to learn about, I bypass video. Video is for the vapid - there is no detail, no discussion, no background, no context.
Unless its porn. Porn can only be video...
Here is a video where I express the same opinion but requires five times as long to do so.
I know this is a "Get Off My Lawn" kind of answer but the art and craft of writing is sadly dying. I blame screens and the lack of grammar instruction in school. When I was in school, grades 1-5 were heavy on the grammar and punctuation. Even handwriting was taught seriously. When I read my son's papers (he'll be a senior in high school), his use of commas is baffling. I think they just glossed over it somewhere along the way.
I think we are becoming a much more visual society, which wouldn't be bad if only the written word wasn't losing ground because of it. My kids don't read for pleasure at all whereas I used to read all the time at their ages. My husband is a huge reader, and we used to read to the kids every day when they were young, but the screen is just way more enticing now.
Written. Rarely watch video, and when I do, usually with captions. Written is so much easier -- you can linger over a point, go back and compare to earlier sections, etc. There's rarely much structure to sports video that I find insightful or informative.
My 9th grade social studies teacher in 1988 held up a copy of the Wall Street Journal. He unfolded the paper along the middle fold up so you could see the full length of a column from the top to bottom. He said something to the extent: "You may find it easier to watch the evening news, but keep the following in mind. All of the dialogue for the full 30 minutes of the evening news would fit in one column of this paper. If you want to understand a story or a topic, you need to read about it."
The era was different, but the lesson is the same.
I'm a .gif man myself.
I get all my news from .gifs.
But media companies do not care. Their goal is to keep us on-site for as long as possible. And if, collectively, media companies only provide content we desire by video, we're pretty much SOL until new companies arrive, presupposing these new entrants feel they can survive and compete within the space in the first place. It's never about us, it's about them and their revenue.
I used to like Grantland's in depth content.
Written, written, written.
Explaining/showing topics related to science
Pets and animals doing weird or funny stuff
Actual sports action
Humans without clothes doing naughty things
Anything else that's worthwhile requires reading words.
Certain things, obviously - C. Woodson's MSU pick - have to be seen to be thoroughly enjoyed. However, if it's basically just content, sans once in a decade play, etc., I enjoy reading because it allows the reader to move at their own pace. I read much faster than the majority and when there is written content, together with the video, like most I assume, I am normally done reading the article while the video is at about the half way point. Inasmuch as videos are basically just a live reading of the words I am reading for myself, I prefer to move at my own pace.
I prefer written, but video is where the money is at.
$4 minimum CPM for a video pre-roll (autoplay no sound) up to $15. $25 to $40 if it is a health or finance video.
~$1 CPM for a display ad. Can be higher specialized ads as well, but not as much. People are blind to display ads.
Video is also better for mobile. You can get a higher video CPM on mobile, and people have to watch it, but you can't really cram in display ads on mobile. Big websites are hurting as users move to their phones.
Video is cheap to produce. Sites like Wochit give you the articles to base your clip on (from the AP and other sources), the video editing tools and even photos and video clips to pan accross. Companies like Newsy (Scripps) and Buzz60 don't use Wochit, but employ similar techniques. They have a talking head (or not) basically summarize someone else's article with a few pans on the pictures. Ever see a pan of a written article web page in a video?
Videos also have more emotional impact and I believe are shared more often (I made this one up. )
no one sells pre roll at a $4 CPM. You only see CPMs that low on exchange based display inventory. the average CPM for pre roll is on the low end $18 if you're doing through a DSP,.
only vertical video is good on mobile, horizontal video is still a bad consumer experience, and with most advertisers sites not mobile ready preroll often performs better in the desktop experience.
Than those fucking videos that automatically start. Second to that are animated ads. I heavily use ad block and click to play. Written content is so much better and it is becoming rare on the internet these days. Perhaps demand will go up for news papers and magazines again. We can only hope.