While Bog Iger has aggressively brought Disney to the Internet, he's expressing disappointment in the advertising agencies and companies that are not taking advantage of the opportunities there.
"I'm a little disappointed," he says. "Most of the dialogue we have with advertisers is trying to get them more modern in the advertising messages they create. The advertising industry is behind where they need to be. There is a lot more that can happen."
With Disney being in the forefront of the traditional media companies providing online content, he's obviously frustrated over the slowness in monetizing that content, which he was hoping would happen from their quick actions to enter the Internet space.
Since Disney relaunched their Disney.com four weeks ago, they're already streaming 100 million videos a week, according to Iger. That's part of what's got him up in arms as there is plenty of content, but not much quality advertising to go with it. That's somewhat odd to me when you consider that most studies show that marketers are trying hard to find content to put their offerings beside or within, and the problem has been the lack of online content in their estimation.
I think part of this is the usual looking at "mass" audiences, rather then highly targeted, segmented markets, which is more what the Internet represents.
With less than a third of Disney's revenue coming from advertising, this is one of their weaknesses, and evidently it's showing in its online disappointments, in spite of being pretty far ahead of their competitors in this area.
With the predictability of Disney, which offers online marketers safe opportunities to offer their products, I think it will only be a matter of time before this takes off for the mouse. Iger seems to be calling upon the advertising industry to get their act together in the digital arena.
Comment Preview