Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stream Wars, our thought leader series, where we learn from industry experts about the latest trends and challenges from across the convergent TV space. 0:16 Hosted by Michael Beach. Today, I'm joined by Mike Shields. Mike is currently the CEO at Shields Strategic Consulting. And Mike's always been one of my must-reads, uh, back to his time at The Wall Street Journal. 0:28 Um, you know, he's really unique, um, 'cause before being a journalist, he actually worked in the business as a media planner. 0:34 Um, it's his combination of experience and the ability to frame an issue, um, that makes Mike a must-read, not only for me, but um, any, any thought leader that I know in our space. 0:43 So, uh, you know, please enjoy my conversation with Mike Shields. Hey, Mike, welcome to Stream Wars. Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me. 0:52 Um, uh, you know, I've been reading, uh, you know, your content for, you know, a long time back to, you know, when you were at The Wall Street Journal and then Insider. 1:00 Um, kinda give our audience a little bit of a idea on the empire you're building with, uh- Empire... Mike Shields Inc. Yeah. [chuckles] Empire, maybe, I don't know, maybe in the Star Wars context. 1:09 I'm not sure about that. But, uh, [clears throat] so yeah, sure. I, I was a reporter for a long time, a traditional journalist. Um, 1:17 I actually started, I started this business as in, in the agency side of things, actually. I was a media planning guy way back, 1:24 and then I was a journal- journalist for about 15 years at places like Adweek and Dig- Digiday, the Journal, like you said, and Insider. And then, um, about the last four years, I've been on my own 1:35 doing all sorts of consulting, um, helping, helping companies with thought leadership, things like that. And then, uh, I also have my own Substack, Next in Marketing, and a podcast, same name, Next in Marketing. 1:47 Uh, and that's kind of the extent of the empire that I could then... I, I hopefully I'm not forgetting anything, but that's, that's kind of my deal. What's the biggest issue when you're consulting with companies? 1:57 You know, kind of the most common question you're getting asked. It's, it's often... E- this is, like, a very specific thing to this world, I think, but everyone wants to do... 2:08 They want, they need a content strategy, they need thought leadership. They wanna, but they don't know what that means, or they think they know what it means, and they're way off. 2:18 And they, and they, and they don't, and, and there's a common misperception that they, everybody can just get a, um, I'll just-- everyone-- they'll, every publication will just take my byline, right? 2:29 I'll just, I'll just write a brilliant column, and that'll be easy to do. Um, usually unless you're Mark Zuckerberg or Sir Martin Sorrell or something like that, it's not really [chuckles] it's not the way it works. 2:38 Um, and I think, I think the other thing that comes up a lot is companies think they're... If you wanna be a "thought leader," you should read other thought leaders and get a real sense. 2:50 That sounds rude or [chuckles] but, like, I feel like I, I got... 2:53 There's a lot of clients when they want to start this journey, they don't really understand what works in that space, and then they think they're, they, they, they think their ideas are wholly original and a lot of it. 3:03 It's, it's very common. Just either the stuff has been talked about like crazy or they don't, um, they don't actually have a sharp angle to take, and that's kind of what, what works in that, in that arena. Yeah. 3:17 I mean, uh, it's, I mean, you know, this, like, the 99% of the content kinda in the marketing industry is, you know, really bad, right? Like, it's just kind of very generic and, um- I hate to say that, but yes. 3:29 [chuckles] Yeah. You know, the, the, the people that have a point of view and well thought out, that's what gets, you know, shared on social media, or that's the stuff that gets forwarded- Right... 3:37 in email or, you know, it's the, it's consistently the same people. Like, you know, you put out, uh, you know, something that's, that's getting shared widely, it's getting emailed around and, and... 3:46 But most of the stuff that comes out of these content marketing teams is just so generic that it never goes anywhere. Yeah. It's not their fault. I mean, but-- and, and also, like, you know, like, you don't have to be... 3:55 Obviously, it helps if you wanna be really controversial or, you know, a shit stirrer, that's gonna move the needle. 4:00 But you just, just having a point of view or helping people think about things differently is really important. 4:05 And a lot of co- there's just a lot of conservativ- conservatism and fear among a lot of big executives to, like, actually say something, actually have a take that might annoy someone or make someone question the way the business works. 4:19 But that's the kind of stuff that really helps you break out. Absolutely. Kinda what's the biggest story when you look at, like, Next in Marketing, what's the biggest story you're following right now and tracking? 4:31 God, that's a great question. The biggest trend. Um, the, you know, like, I think the hot, the, the, the hottest stories are kinda obvious, like in the last 4:42 how the hell do we target people online when all the rules are changing? Is there gonna be a, uh, [sniffs] fundamental rewriting of the rules, and does that change everything, or can we work around it? 4:53 Is, is a huge story that's g- ongoing. I think the massive shift in television is, uh, you've written about this a lot, I've written about it, like what happens to... 5:04 Yeah, I think a couple of years ago, I, I was even-- the story was interactive advertising is over. I think we've been... Or I, I wrote that and said it, and other people did, and that's obviously wrong. 5:15 Like s- advertising is gonna play a really big role in streaming and future of television, but it's gonna be really different, and the rules are being rewritten, and that's, and it's pretty messy, even though there's a lot of ex- enthusiasm and spending rushing that way. 5:29 And figuring out how to make all that work is the, is like a massive story. 5:33 And then, I mean, you're catching me coming out of the, I was at the Playfronts the last couple of days, and I've been, I've been the biggest the Metaverse has arrived guy, and sort of Web3 is kinda crazy. But 5:45 if you watch what's going on with younger generations, w- and, and I see it in my household, like this broader shift to participatory immersive media is real. 5:55 If whether or not we're gonna live in some metaverse that Facebook builds, I don't know. But like I said, they're- 6:01 How does that, how do these new generations' expectations on what is media and leisure time and social time, how does that com- can that, does that have the potential to completely change pretty much everything? 6:15 When, when, when will those changes take effect? Those are some really massive stories. I gave you a really long answer there, but those are the kind- that's kinda where I'm thinking. Yeah. 6:24 That last one I have a lot of trouble with thinking through because you, you can get to where, 6:30 you know, sometimes we'll talk about video and you get into, you know, user-generated video on mobile and, and all these different formats or, or you can narrow it down to just, you know, what we call kind conversion TV, you know, l- broadcast cable and streaming, which is like super narrow. 6:44 But to your point, like even the original thing of just video could get totally upended because of, you know, the younger generation just doing... Yeah, I even look at how I play video games. Like 6:55 I am still totally fine with, you know, going and I, you know, I play NHL hockey on the Xbox like a, you know, it's like my, you know, relaxation. I'm totally fine with playing a season against a computer- Mm-hmm... 7:05 just to take my mind off of whatever. But you look at my kids, they're wanting to interact with people and like that's- Yeah... they wouldn't even think about playing a, a downloaded game like that, so. 7:14 No, I've had this argument with my kids from like, where they're like, uh, I'm like, "Go play video games. 7:17 I'm giving you this chance right now," and their friends are not online for some reason and they're like, "This is... Why would you do that? That's not fun at all." Yeah. I'm like, "Just..." 7:24 I, I, I used to play Tecmo Bowl against a computer and have a great [chuckles] time of my life. Oh, dude, same. Yeah. Same eight, 12 teams where we had the Raiders and, you know- Yeah... all that for Tecmo Bowl. 7:33 I played it for 5,000 hours. But that, that's unthinkable for them to have, to not have gaming be social or, or, and, and to play with your buddies at the same time. It's that, that is... 7:43 And that's gonna, you know, we haven't seen that trickle up or down whatever to other forms of media. Like w- there's been a lot of attempts to build co-viewing into things. I think it does happen, but I wonder if, 7:57 you know, are those generations going to want to check out and just like, you know... 8:03 We, we assume that on-demand television and immersive pre- prestige TV is going to be the future, but like is that gonna be dull for somebody to just sit there and watch a show and binge on it? 8:12 I, I, I already see that another probably big story is, um, and, and, and I hate just, just using my kids as a focus group, but like it's, it's a struggle to get them to just sit and watch a sporting event with me without doing something. 8:26 And I think that's gonna be what, what, how, how all of tel- of, uh, media is affected by this need to be 8:35 engaged in a different way than just viewing or consuming is going to be a challenge or, or something to really watch for over time. Like, can you-- 8:43 can the-- does your mindset going-- is, is that generation or two's mindset gonna, gonna affect how everything gets designed? Yeah, absolutely. 8:53 Kinda going to, on the TV front, you, you have a recent piece about the upfronts being messy. Uh, you know, what do you think that's gonna look like this year? 9:01 One of the things that was interesting to me that, in that piece when I talked to, is this, you know, the last let's call it 10 years where linear has been steadily declining, yet the prices kept going up and it would defy-- It, it would felt like it defied logic, but it was a supply and demand thing where you, the shrinking audience, the only way you could reach big groups of people was television. 9:21 So the CPMs kept shooting up and it was kinda crazy. Now, if one of the f- it's, and it's a little bit theoretical now, but if the, if we ever start using all these different new currencies and the currencies 9:35 s- they're gonna be-- if they're gonna have a r- a pretty wide range, you're-- are you gonna be telling, 9:42 uh, those buyers who've been obs- who've been eating those terrible price increases that they, they drove crazy, that actually, 9:49 um, the numbers we've been doing, we've been basing that on, on have been way off, undercounting for a long time. And are you gonna, are they gonna feel even more ripped off and want some kind of make good for that? 10:00 Like, uh, the, this last decade of taking a hit is gonna be like, "Wait a second, you gotta make up for that now," and that's not gonna go well with sellers, and that's gonna be a potential source of conflict. 10:10 Um, that's just one example of it's, you know, somebody described it to me last year as like t- every TV buy is becoming bespoke, which is so not the way this, the history of the way television advertising worked. 10:22 It was relatively easy thing to buy and you could buy it and what, what... It worked because you could buy, you could negotiate deals pretty quickly and buy huge scale fast. 10:32 Right now, if every buy is like, "Let's put together five different currencies and work out this like really specialized thing," that's a really different advertising vehicle and I don't know if you can 10:44 ma- you know, you ma- are you looking-- my question is, are you looking at a couple of just 10:48 rough growing pain years where you're trying to figure out these new currencies and then we'll-- and then everybody figures out and gets a new groove or is it going to be torturous to buy television over time? 10:58 I think that's, that's an open question. Yeah. And a k- kind of coming from a digital background, I've always kind of looked at this that that's kind of the way digital is, right? Like it's, you, you know- Yes... 11:09 in, in that you are always trying to seek as much, you know, asymme- asymmetric information as you could against the seller. 11:17 Like if you were-- if we can, if we can buy this inventory for less than we think it's worth, that's a good thing. Mm-hmm. 11:23 Um, but in TV it's just been like locked into where I, I think your point about the scale, about how easy it is to move so much money, that would break that down. 11:31 Um, one other question I have for you, do you see new buyers, whether it's brands or agencies coming in or is it just the same pool as it was, you know, three or four years ago? 11:41 It seems to be, and it's gonna depend who you talk to, but it does seem to be the same. As much as we've talking-- we're talking up this possibility of, 11:50 oh, is, you know, this future of C- CTV is gonna allow for democratization of television, right? 11:55 There's gonna be like Facebook and Instagram and, and Google, millions of advertisers, right, instead of the traditional like couple hundred that really dominated. 12:03 From what I can tell, it's-- and it just in personally watching CTV, um, and I'm focused group one, but like it's still dominated by the big guys. It seems like there, there are direct-to-consumer brands coming on. 12:15 You see more small and mid-sized businesses tr- dabbling, but it, it seems like the currency wars and the way the, the mechanics of the business are being dr- dictated by the big guys or the big, the big media companies, and now there's even fewer th- fewer of them, and the, uh, the, the biggest advertisers and agencies kind of dominating the conversation, the rules, and the market. 12:38 Um, I think there's a, you know, I think that's going to change over time, but it's not easy. 12:43 I mean, the, I mean, the biggest obvious factor besides it, besides it's not easy to crack the, the pool or to crack the buying lanes for smaller brands or do direct-to-consumer brands, like just having television creative is not something that is easy to do for anybody. 12:57 And it-- I, I always wondered if this, if there's a startup out there or somebody who could figure out a way to make it, to automate the production, and this is probably coming or, or-- 13:07 there's gotta be an easier way to make a TV commercial for a small to mid-sized brand that's decent, uh, using AI and 13:15 the technology we have now or something like that, that lets more of those guys play in the game that they can't really right now. Yeah, 100%. 13:22 They're, they're on, you know, Instagram or something like that with their recording with their phone, but they're not taking that same low production cost to- Right... 13:30 you know, running a, a 15 or 30-second, you know, streaming ad. Right. 'Cause yeah, the Instagrams and Snaps of the world make it pretty easy to, to not to produce a ton of ads at scale. 13:39 Just TV just doesn't work that way right now. Uh, well, another thing I know you and I had a conversation about was, was the YouTube's earnings. 13:51 Uh, we're talking right now in, in March, so we're, you know, looking at their end-of-year numbers. 13:56 Uh, I know, you know, we were both surprised that it didn't seem like revenue growth for YouTube kept up with their kind of explosive CT gr- CTV growth. You know, what's going on there? Yeah. 14:08 I got a lot of-- I talked to a lot of different people about that and got a lot of different takes on it, and it's, it's a, it's still to me a head-scratcher. I think, you know, depending on who you talk to again, like 14:19 the, there's a school of thought that the a- the, you know, the Apple identifier changes have really hit, uh, Meta. Meta's been very public about this, and Snap in, in a big way. It's really hurt them. 14:32 And I think some have thought, "Well, it, it's hitting YouTube more than you might think." 14:36 As much as YouTube is trying to push into television dollars and PC, they, they have a long tail of direct response brands, and maybe they're feeling the pain from Apple changing the way that you can track people across apps. 14:47 I'm still not totally sure about that, um, but, uh, it does seem to be that YouTube i-is, is still maybe hitting-- 14:56 it, there, it, it, to me, it should have a very high ceiling, but it's hitting its, um, artificial ceiling a little bit where brands are-- 15:04 A certain pro- segment of the, our advertising world still doesn't think of it as on par with television, and then it's perhaps easier to-- They're, they're not benefiting from the shift as fast as they should probably because it's not thought of as premium to certain ad-advertisers or they just, or-- and there's still probably the lingering brand safety fear. 15:23 Um, but it's a, it's a little bit, it's p- it's puzzling. They should be ste- in stealership. I, I, you know, I understand the ec-economy is weird right now and, and everybody was feeling cuts. 15:35 Um, but broadly, like digital advertising is growing. The advertising business, like the, the agencies are all predicting decent growth. 15:43 Like it's not as like, it's not as though, it's not like, oh wait, where everyone cut their budgets like overnight. So it seems severe that the, the broader pullback should hit YouTube this hard. 15:54 So I st- I still think it's a little bit of a head-scratcher. What about you? What, what are you feeling? Yeah, it's weird. I mean, after we talked, you know, we, 16:03 we've done a lot of research and a lot of people put out, you know, surveys for a long time about the convert-- You know, how, um, buying and planning teams on the buy side are converging and everyone's like, you know, 75% of agencies are converged. 16:15 Um, and we've even, you know, kind of reposted a lot of that. 16:18 And then we, we, we did some research recently that we, I think we released this week that, you know, 90-something percent of people are gonna increase CTV spend. 16:25 And, and the answers to these questions are always like really bullish, but then you see like a YouTube result or you look at like the, you know, some of the conversation from the upfronts 16:34 and you start to see that, you know, in theory, linear should, in this recession, should get cut at a much greater rate- Yeah... than streaming. And I'm kinda getting the feeling that 16:44 maybe they're equal or they're gonna come out where maybe linear gets cut less than streaming or, you know, whatever it is. 16:50 And to me it's like your point about the premium video and how you define YouTube, it's maybe these teams are not nearly as converged as anyone thinks. I think you're onto something there. 16:58 The silo- the budgets are still so siloed. Yeah. I think the budgets are siloed. I think there's still a lot of talk about being one video group, 17:06 yet there's-- you, you constantly hear about these like philosophical clashes, metrics clashes, and just like territorial things going on at, at agencies. Um, the, and the linear folks really do think a certain way. 17:20 And they're not-- I don't wanna paint them as like Ludd-Luddites or they're, but they really think a certain way about television and it's, it's in conflict with some of the way that the, the media is going seemingly. 17:33 And so I think that's a big, I think it's still a big issue. Um, and that they, and they hang on to this like notion that, you know, premium is just comedies and dramas and that's it, uh, 17:45 even though a MrBeast or something like that is absolutely premium to the people that watch it. 17:50 Uh, and you definitely see that with-- and that's a whole other conversation of whether TikTok belongs in that conversation or not. 17:56 But they, they definitely, there's definitely a split vote on whether that belongs in, is really like the same thing as watching TV. 18:04 But, um, yeah, so I think the territorial thing and the, and the silo thing is very real still. And, um- It's just, 18:14 I, I don't know, I don't know how, you know, other than just continuing to chip away, it's hard for them, for YouTube to fight those wars. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I got here a couple more questions. 18:25 Um, first, you know, kinda as your overall kind of view of the industry and even putting your, um, kinda operative hat back on, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the video space, what would it be? 18:40 I think I wish we would stop pretending that, uh-- like the, the, if you look at CTV, for example, like the, um, first of all, the, uh, this, I guess I'm asking this two ways. 18:49 The, the, like we're constantly talking about this fantasy that we're gonna-- it's gonna be just as targeted and this wonderful convergence of digital plus television, and maybe that happens at, at some point, but the-- that's just not, it's not realistic right now. 19:03 You can't, you can't actually deliver a perfectly targeted ad to every individual viewer in every different moment. Technology is not even close to being there, and there's so many, there's so many obstacles in that. 19:13 And I guess, uh, the-- this-- we're, we're constantly ber- berating ourselves about this, the f- the frequency of things are really bad in CTV. 19:24 You see the same ad again and again, even on the premium platforms, and it's a mess, and it's not well, well-targeted. 19:31 And there's this like, uh, there's this throwing up of everyone's hands like, "Oh, I wish we could fix this," or, "We're trying. We have a solution." 19:37 And I just-- I, I'm not certain that most of the media companies really care about it. [chuckles] I think that they're- Yeah. [chuckles]... 19:44 they're just-- it, it's, it's something they could, I think, control if they didn't-- if they wanted to actually turn down cash, and they don't wanna do that right now. 19:51 They'll, they'll take demand from a bunch of different sources and, and not-- and just hold their breath or cross their fingers that consumers don't get too pissed off, but they're not really actively trying to solve the problem. 20:01 I think that's like something that drives me nuts. Like this seems very fixable if you wanted to, to have, share some restraint. And I, I think most media companies just aren't gonna do that right now. Yeah. 20:13 We had, uh, Howard Shimmel on a couple weeks ago, and he-- we were talking about the same thing, and, and he, he brought up a really interesting point where he talked about linear right now, 20:24 which is kind of off people's radar. He's, uh, has almost a greater frequency in ad- Hmm... repeat process, and it's about to get worse because he said that there are so many buyers that have a set, uh, TRP or GRP goal, 20:38 and with the ratings declining so fast- It's just everywhere... to hit that GRP goal, they gotta buy, like, you know, 20% more spots every year, and there are only so many slots. 20:46 And he goes, "They're actually getting..." 20:48 He's like, "You're, you're almost-- The CTV problem, which is a, kind of a technology problem right now, is getting repeated on linear because there aren't that many-- there aren't enough spots basically to, to hit everyone's GRP target." 21:00 Interesting. And I, I hadn't really thought of it that way. It was really interesting. Yeah. I wonder if we don't hear about that as much because 21:05 the folks in the industry don't wa- like, they're probably coastal and watch a lot of streaming, and they'll bitch about CTV, [chuckles] but they don't really watch as much linear, or maybe, maybe we just haven't felt it yet or... 21:16 You, you know, you definitely seem to... 21:18 I've definitely sat through many a, uh, NFL game when you see the same ad a million times, but you don't-- and it's annoying, but I, it seems to me we, we, we expect more from CTV. We bitch about it more. 21:28 We expect the technology to be able to control it better, where it's, it's pretty universal, and it's probably-- that sounds like it's gonna get even more personal than linear. Excellent. One last one here. 21:39 What's your, uh, favorite question to ask podcast guests? Oh, God, do I have a favorite question? I mean, I, I'm, my-- this, uh, I use-- I ask this question, um, 21:49 to both podcast guests and even when I'm working with clients on thought leadership. Like, what is, what is driving you crazy about the industry that no one's talking about, that you have... 21:58 'Cause I think the best-- this is always a writer trick, like the best stories come when you have a lot of passion or 22:04 anger sometimes, but just like, you know, you know, you really wanna get into a subject 'cause you, it's, you, it bur- it's bur- you're burning to talk about it. So, and those are also the best podcast answers. 22:12 You can get somebody to kind of open up and what are you fired up about and what do you wanna say. Um, so that, that's my cheat, my cheat code a little bit. Excellent. Well, Mike, uh, where can everyone find you? 22:25 You can find me, uh, my pod- my podcast is called Next in Marketing. It's actually gonna be distributed. We're, um, our new partnership with BTV is coming up, so you'll be able to find it there as well. 22:35 And, and we're gonna do some video pretty soon. And then I have, um, a Substack also named Next in Marketing that is available for anywhere you have [chuckles] you're able to receive email. 22:46 Um, and then I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn as well. But I'm, I'm, uh, I'm all over the place if you're look- if you're looking for me. Excellent. 22:53 We should, we, uh, link to everything here in the, the post. And, uh, I really appreciate your time and our audience. We love this conversation. Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for having me. 23:01 [upbeat music] Thank you for joining us on this episode of Screen Wars. I hope you enjoyed the discussion. You can find out more about CrossScreen Media at crossscreenmedia.com. 23:11 Please don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, State of the Screens. You can find us on social media, @crossscreenmedia. Join us next time for more insights and analysis straight from the experts. 23:23 [upbeat music]
