Re: [videoblogging] Pricing Media (difficult question)

[robert a/k/a r]

Adam, correct, the time-shift thing is very true, I'm thinking the pricing of the forward commodity, the advert, are and time-shifting are both in that equation some where. In the past, when calculating CPM and such the time-shift was not as significant because the media was better controlled. And today, when you lose control of the media you can't control first-run vs re-run pricing in the same way, if at all.

Further, continuing with the RB example, they chose to sell a weeks worth, which bundles mondays, tuesdays, etc and makes a unit. They could have auctioned just next monday and separately next tuesday, but they didn't. They made a conscious decision to sell a strip, which homogenises the price. Is a friday worth more than a tuesday? Who knows. If you watch the RB episode manufactured on tuesday time-shifted to friday is it worth more? If you watch it a year from now what is that advert worth?

And they chose the length of the strip as a risk / reward decision. What if RB had sold a months worth of adverts as a block. If they had, RB would have had less risk, though they may have received a lower price. Risk/reward at work there too.

Seems like there's a lot of blending going on in new media pricing. This is not totally new science, however it is good to think about in the context of vlog economics.




On Feb 15, 2006, at 11:28 AM, Adam Quirk wrote:

On 2/15/06, robert a/k/a r <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Obviously such variable pricing works because the number of seats in
the theatre is limited and they have a half life. It's not dissimilar
to the freshness of vegetables on the shelf at the grocer which expire
or the freshness of media. If a seat in the theatre goes unsold it's
not recoverable. If a bunch of carrots go unsold they are not
recoverable.

What happens to the price for a "show" on the Internet once it is no
longer fresh, can it still be sold as "new"? Can a secondary market
develop and, if so, how will it work?

One of the things that internet distribution has going for it is the ability to time-shift the media, which cuts into this theory a little bit.  Although for shows like Rocketboom that deal with current events, or news shows, I guess the carrot analogy holds true. 
Most stuff I watch doesn't necessarily lose value as time goes by.

Sites like the NYtimes charge people for archive diving.  Maybe there's something there.  The latest week's worth of media is freely distributable by all the available means, but anything older than a week costs X, where X is a reasonable price for a short video that someone wants to watch.

AQ