BCFM: Real stories from companies making it work
Steve Safran September 13th, 2006
I had the pleasure on being on a very interesting panel this afternoon at BCFM. Dan Halyburton, the SVP Marketing Mgr. for Emmis NY started things off with a bangup presentation on how his group’s radio stations are using the web. Very impressive integration, original content, contests, texting features. Smart products all around. Then I gave my spiel, doing my best to scare the bejeezus out of people about how convergence cometh, and they best be prepared. Embarassingly, my PowerPoint presentation, prepared on my Mac, looked terrible when presented on a PC. Next up - Beth Higbee SVP of Interactive for Food Network (mmm… Food Network), Fine Living and GAC. We’ve written here before about our admiration for those sites. They’re clear to their mission and they’re great-looking. Beth talked about how her dedicated web sales staff (!) is having more success than the group was with a cross-platform sell. Speaking of sites LR admires, the CBS O/Os were represented by Jonathan Leess, President and GM for the CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group. Here’s the nugget: CBS O/O sites are getting a $41 CPM for video ads. Poor Bill Fitzsimmons, VP of Accounting & Financial Planning for Cox Communications had to wait until after a break because the rest of us were so verbose. (Imagine.) He presented the Cox “Premium Access Pass,” a monthly paid-subscription product for its broadband subs that offers a bundle of content.
12 Comments Add your own
1. Z | September 13th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Sorry, I’m still learning the sales side. CPM?
2. Safran | September 13th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Cost Per Thousand. (The “M” is from the roman numeral for thousand.) It’s the ad rate you pay per thousand impressions. A $40 CPM for video is very good - at least from a selling point of view.
3. Anonymous | September 13th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
You attend many conferences. That’s a lot of salmon or chicken lunches in chain hotel banquet halls I reckon.
4. Steve Safran | September 13th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Sandwich wraps today. Good cookies, too.
5. Dan Riley | September 13th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Why play your powerpoint on a PC?
Could you not play it from your Mac laptop?
Not have a DVI to VGA adapter for their
projector input?
What part of it looked bad?
All, or just the video parts?
Dan
6. Safran | September 13th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
The important thing to note about the PowerPoint issue is that it was all my fault it looked bad. They asked for my PPT ahead of time so they could have all of the presentations play in a row off the same computer. That way they avoid the problem of everyone plugging/unplugging their computers. They were organized. I was the dope.
The fonts didn\’t match, mostly. And the transitions were off because some of them were rendered in QT. Any TIFFs that I used didn\’t show up. My mistake. Next time, I\’ll do them on the WinXP side of my MacBook Pro.
I want to point out that the BCFM folks were *terrific*. They apologized. My piece was on disruption, and they thought some of the mismatched fonts were playing off the \”joke\” of disruption. Given my odd sense of humor, that\’s not hard to see. Seriously - I have nobody to blame but myself. They told me what they were going to do, they told me ahead of time there were some issues with the slides, I just should have given up and redone the thing on a PC.
God, I hate PowerPoint.
7. DaveNYC | September 13th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Interesting panel. The real issue is what you didn’t write. A $41 CPM is great, but what kind of traffic (Ms) does CBS have and is this their average or their high? How many subscribers does Cox have on their premium access? Belo might produce great traffic, but how’s the revenue? I’d like to hear from some companies that are actually monetizing the web, not just talking a big game.
8. Steve Safran | September 13th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
CBS said their O/Os were on track to turn a profit in Q1 of 2007. You’re right - Cox is private and did not disclose numbers.
9. Dan | September 13th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Don’t blame it all on yourself Steve. Powerpoint is very lame, even though it claims to be cross platform, this is a good example of how it really is not. It even has problems when done on one windows computer, then played back on another. Seems windows people have all kinds of different codecs and playback cards and issues that make running any presentation a big gamble..
Would have been cool to do it in Keynote, but you’d have to hook up your Macbook Pro. Oh well.
Now I’ll read your article, the important stuff that you
posted
Dan
10. Cory | September 14th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Belo sites have been profitable for quite some time now. Very profitable.
11. Anonymous | September 14th, 2006 at 4:46 am
CBS CEO Les Moonves talked about interactive on Tuesday and he mentioned CSTV, CBS.com, CBSNews.com and CBS Radio online initiatives and revenue, but not a word about local TV. You can hear his presentation on the CBS Corp website.
12. MOJO | January 18th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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