Blair Currie is the CEO of Snibble, a next-generation social video platform where content plus conversation rule the entertainment world.

“Big Digital” — like Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma before it — has become exploitive and no longer serves those it was originally designed to serve. It has stopped being a place of “fair trade” for viewers, advertisers and content providers alike.

When the digital giants started out, they were innovative and provided good value for viewers. Before them, consumers were not really able to share videos, photos and memories, nor were they able to “broadcast themselves.”

Advertising was introduced to fund these platforms, and users initially accepted the ads. The system worked because there was a balance between the value of the service provided and what was asked of the user. Over time, however, the value proposition changed. Big Digital’s shareholders wanted higher returns, so advertising loads increased. These ads also became more interruptive, cutting into videos and disrupting the viewer experience with annoying “pop-ups.”

Data trails of consumers then became valuable byproducts of interactions with these platforms. In turn, these platforms sold this data to advertisers and other third parties, often without consent or payment to users.

The treatment of content providers wasn’t much better. In many cases, Big Digital took news feeds at will and refused to pay its producers. Some social media companies even temporarily blocked news from their platforms after regulators proposed legislation to make them pay for it.

While Big Digital is protected by Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, giving it immunity from lawsuits related to third-party content, many consumers would end up blaming advertisers for placement mistakes regarding fake news, foreign propaganda or unsavory content on these platforms.

If that wasn’t enough, a PwC study found that around 50% of an advertiser’s investment is siphoned off by intermediaries within the digital media supply chain. Some of these funds went directly to Big Digital because they controlled parts of this supply chain, but more of this money went to other intermediaries of Big Digital.

Where are we?

When industries grow too large — as in the case of Big Oil and Big Pharma — disruption usually follows. In the case of oil, conservation and alternative and renewable energies grew. With Big Pharma, Americans started importing generic drugs from abroad to get a better deal. Clearly, it’s time for a change.

However, change will not come easily from Big Digital. It has too much at stake to change. When it does change, it tends to copy offerings from larger competitors or buy out smaller players rather than pioneer new products and features.

As the demand for short-form video and social media keeps increasing, new players will enter the field with new solutions. To succeed, they will need to provide tripartite advantages to consumers, advertisers and content providers alike.

The following lists some of the steps new players will have to take to compete with Big Digital:

• Provide more value to consumers. New platforms will have to reward viewers for their attention. Payment, in the form of rewards and potential cash, could be given for watching videos and ads. Revenue could also be shared from the sale of data and in reducing the costs of enduring high subscription costs, too many ads and interruptive ads.

The new platforms should also provide features that consumers find more valuable and don’t necessarily fit with the business models of Big Digital. One area that the gaming companies have pioneered is to make their products more social. Moving forward, platforms must look to make content more social and shareable — especially in the area of videos but also with audio.

• Provide more value to advertisers. For advertisers, new platforms will increasingly need to be brand-safe, brand-suitable and provide an environment where advertising is most effective. User-generated content (UGC) is almost impossible to control at scale, so new platforms will have to feature more professionally produced and/or well-vetted content.

This premium content will also have to provide more value to consumers because of a growing preference for quality. Consumers increasingly want the best videos as they realize their time is more valuable and the novelty of frivolous videos declines.

Premium platforms will have to accept fewer, more strategically placed ads that are short-form (less than 10 seconds in length) and don’t interrupt the viewer. The ads must always represent a “fair trade” for viewer attention.

Finally, platforms will need to work collaboratively with advertisers/brands to create and/or feature branded content that is entertaining. A group of advertisers could also band together to support these platforms if only to break the stranglehold of Big Digital over advertising investment.

• Provide more value to content providers. Content providers will want to secure a greater return on the investment they made to produce their products. Platforms will need to give a higher share of revenue to them than the current providers remit.

It will also mean reducing the intermediaries in the supply chain potentially through technology (e.g., blockchain) and the consolidation of the players in the digital media supply chain.

The effects of regulation.

Finally, it feels like Big Digital is soon to be bound by more regulation, which can create constraints and opportunities for new players. There are already privacy laws in place in many states, including California and the CCPA, and the will of the voting consumers should eventually work to cause regulatory changes.

New players can get ahead of this regulation by being more compliant with regulations and providing users with a Bill of Rights for their data.

Keeping ahead through innovation.

Big Digital has copied innovation in the past, so emerging players will need a road map of innovation and may potentially need to be prepared to legally fight for their intellectual property. That said, the best defense for a young company is to build better products and services because Big Digital has deep pockets.


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