65 OPINION Over The Top
say that among those competing things is sleep, “and we’re winning!” “Binge watching is great,” Hastings said, apparently unironically, “because it puts you in complete control.” I want to make it clear that FEED is delighted at the technological and content innovation that new online platforms have spawn. It’s our business after all. And some of my best life’s best moments are, for good or bad, moments that have occurred onscreen. But working so closely with it, and being such a regular user of it, it’s easy to forget how subtly disruptive ubiquitously available streaming is. Viewers are sensing, quite rightly, that they are not in the position of being sold to anymore, but that they themselves are the thing for sale. They are beginning to sense that some content providers they engage with may not have their best interests at heart – or may be stuck in business models that are incapable of having their best interests at heart. We as an industry are going to have to, sooner rather than later, address the issue of using viewers as a resource to be mined.
VIEWER ATTENTION AND DATA IS THE NEW PETROLEUM OF OUR AGE If we don’t, the whole issue is going to turn around and bite us in the digital ass – and the recent Facebook scandal is going to be just the first of many falling dominoes. Viewer attention and data is the new petroleum of our age and unless the industry finds a smarter, more customer-centric strategy for leveraging this resource, we are going to find ourselves in the same position as the extractors of real petroleum – despised and spending a lot of money on legal fees. But fear not, a switch to more viewer- nurturing service may be just the spur we needs to boost things to the next level. We have so many powerful tools at our disposal – data analytics, AI, VR, not to mention brilliant content creators of every kind – the
types of services we could provide are endless. Imagine using an AI not to lure a customer into spending more time on your platform, but to help them find the content that is actually going to make their offline life better. Imagine a national broadcaster using networks of carefully verified grassroots and local media sources to provide accurate on-the-ground information around a major national decision. AI’s could quickly and easily ferret out bots, fake news, and foreign psy- ops but still highlight divergent or provocative opinions. Imagine AI’s offering a viewer ads at the time and place of her choosing, and which offer products fine tuned for her actual needs – with surprise options included, which would services and value – and respect – we give customers, we will unlock new opportunities for commerce, community and content. Or we could just stick with mining and selling data – but what a waste of our amazing tech and our amazing talent. improve her life in unexpected ways. If we up our game in terms of the
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