Do Founders Make Better CEOs? I thought the answer was no, but Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz make a strong case why the answer is yes. They write:
At Andreessen Horowitz, our primary goal is to invest in the great technology franchises. As we looked at the history of great technology companies, we discovered that founders ran an overwhelming majority of them for a very long time, including:
- Acer—Stan Shih
- Adobe—John Warnock
- Amazon – Jeff Bezos
- AMD—Jerry Sanders III
- Apple – Steve Jobs
- DEC—Ken Olsen
- Dell—Michael Dell
- EA—Trip Hawkins
- EDS —Ross Perot
- Hewlett-Packard—Dave Packard
- IBM—Thomas Watson
- Intel—Andy Grove
- Intuit—Scott Cook
- Microsoft —Bill Gates
- Motorola—Paul Galvin
- nVidia—Jen-Hsun Huang
- Oracle—Larry Ellison
- Peoplesoft—Dave Duffield
- Salesforce.com—Marc Benioff
- Seagate—Al Shugart
- Siebel—Tom Siebel
- Sony—Akio Morita
- Sun—Scott McNeely
- VMware—Diane Greene
Read the whole thing on Ben Horowitz’s blog. And yes, I guess I am biased in answering that question. I touched on this overall theme back in 2007 in “Step Away From the Machine, Give me the Keys”.
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WatchMojo NewslettercomScore pegs monthly video views in the US at over 33 billion, here is the title:
U.S. Online Video Market Continues Ascent as Americans Watch 33 Billion Videos in December.
Nielsen pegs the figure at 9 billion, here is theirs:
More than Nine Billion Video Streams Viewed in the U.S. in March.
That is a 24 billion discrepancy in monthly views in the US from two leading sources. That is just ridiculous. No wonder why online video remains a bit of a joke in the eyes of traditional media and fortune 500 advertisers.
The only thing I can think of is that one is tracking home or work and the other is tracking both home and work, I’ll email the companies and see what they have to say and will update accordingly.
UPDATE:
Here is what Andrew Lipsman Sr. Director, Industry Analysis at comScore told me:
One source of difference is that comScore data includes video ads (We will soon be introducing an enhancement to our service that breaks out video ads from video content views.).
Interesting, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to include ads, but it should indeed be broken up into two separate groups as well.
It’s official: Tech Crunch is launching TC TV.
Arguing that:
You only have to glance at today’s headlines on Mediagazer (Techmeme’s new media news aggregator) to realise that online video is big business right now. According to one headline from AdWeek, “most marketers plan to up their online video ad spending in 2010″ – while NewTeeVee leads with the story that “One quarter of online videos are viewed in primetime” – suggesting that online viewing, long seen as an at-work addition to traditional broadcasting, is starting to make inroads into mainstream viewing habits.
(…)
Clearly any media organisation that isn’t looking seriously at online video now is doing themselves and their audience a huge disservice.
(…)
Given this level of professionalism, then, and the investment that Mike Arrington and Heather Harde have made to make sure TCTV will be required viewing for anyone with a passionate interest in the world of technology start-ups and entrepreneurship, their next move was curious to the point of lunacy.
Tech Crunch is diving deep into online video. I think it’s a brilliant move.
They’ve hired Paul Carr to run it (if only someone can introduce him to headlines and the occasional boldfaced title and sub-title!)
All of the tech blogs have experimented with video: New Tee Vee, Business Insider and now Tech Crunch. Paid Content less so… but it will be interesting to see how each one migrates from a text offering to a video one. Lord knows it ain’t obvious.
From AdAge:
Reckitt Benckiser, owner of hundreds of household brands such as Lysol, Woolite and Clearasil, is essentially doubling-down on its 2009 campaign, which was also at the time the biggest yet for web video at an estimated $20 million. New for 2010: The buy is going global, and YouTube is participating.
But just like last year, there’s a significant catch that is making most publishers and some ad networks wary: Rather than the $30 and $40 per-thousand-impressions (CPM) ad rates achieved by premium video sites such as ABC.com and Hulu, RB is looking for CPMs less than, $2.
That means slim pickings for ads in professional video, presenting a challenge for RB’s new agency Zenith Optimedia, tasked with finding inventory that even some video ad networks won’t touch. But RB is willing to have ads run in some questionable content in exchange for getting huge scale. RB ads have been spotted on pages discussing cocaine and abortion.
Sub-par inventory
RB is fully aware that some of its placements are sub-par, but that’s also part of the strategy. “This is a very fragmented market — even more fragmented than the TV market,” said RB’s U.S. internet manager, Marc Fonzetti. “What we learned last year is there are a variety of different tiers of video, and not everybody deserves $50 CPM.”RB is looking for mass impressions and synchronizing its online buys with TV campaigns on every continent around the globe. “We very much look at this as TV advertising, just on another screen,” said RB’s global internet marketing manager, Andy Sarfas. “When we launch a TV campaign, we see an immediate impact on the sales line. When we do an online campaign, we see the same movement as well.”
- A survey of agencies and marketers revealed that 52% of them plan to spend more on content sites this year, whereas only 35% said they were likely to increase budgets for ad networks.
- The report also found that online video will take a share away from broadcast TV this year, with 57% of respondents saying they were likely to shift ad dollars in that direction. The reason is similar to the shift that favors content over network. Sites like Hulu.com are enticing marketers with clean, professional content.
- The study showed that among big ad spenders — those budgeting $10 million or more — 70% were likely to move money from TV to online video.
Read more:
While Brightroll is somewhat biased in releasing these findings, I do believe that they are accurate:
- 94% of respondents said they plan to increase their spending on video — up from 87% last year.- 54% plan to spend their budget on interactive pre-roll,
- 20% plan to spend their budget on branded entertainment,
Also:
- 56% of respondents stated that they view online video advertising as either “more effective” or “much more effective” than other forms of advertising.
Targeting was identified as online video’s most valuable asset by 32% of respondents, followed by ad unit format, at 21% — reach, at 19% — price relative to TV, at 10% — and ability to reuse creative, at 10%.
Meanwhile, 45% of respondents said they would most like to base online ad spend on cost per video view, while 34% said cost per engagement, and 16% said cost per impression.
In 2009, advertisers, on average, bought 42% of their online video through ad networks, 43% of their video directly through publishers, and only 15% through portals.
With users still showing a lot of resistance to sit through pre-rolls, I expect branded entertainment to grow over time, but most of the bid budgets still look for reach and that is usually obtained with pre-roll. We can give an advertiser nearly 10,000,000 pre-rolls asap, so while pre-rolls create a lot of friction with users, it is somewhat friction-less on the media buying front.
I’ve always stressed that print won’t die though it will shrink and radically change. The problem is the inertia and denial which leads many executives to think that these revolutionary changes won’t affect them but the next generation of leaders at magazine and newspaper companies.
Ironically, the recession accelerated history and the main trends and that forced some print companies to shape up. We saw Conde Nast lay off a lot of people, for example, despite historically having a lot of overhead. We also saw both Gannett (parent of USA Today) and McClatchy go through some painful steps that explain why in Q1 2010 both companies reported profits.
Here was Gannett’s 51% profit spike last week, today we read about McClatchy’s profits. Of course, the worst thing these companies can do is look at their lowered costs (which explains their return to profitability) to put their heads in the sand. All print companies need more than the iPad to save their bacon. As I’ve long argued, if they really want to come back with a vengeance they would look at how they can leverage video online, which is totally incremental revenue for them (unlike TV and film companies).
With television advertising being a $70 billion market and total online advertising weighing in at $22.7 billion for 2009, you can’t help but wonder why online video advertising only represents a $1 billion market.
In fact, according to the IAB, video advertising grew from $734 million to $1.017 billion from 2008 to 2009 — or 38%. That’s not bad, but when you consider that total video consumption per month has soared from 10 billion videos in July 2008 to over 33 billion in December 2009 (or 230%), you wonder why the revenue growth hasn’t mimicked the viewership.
For sure, economics tend to trail consumer patterns. Moreover, the recession and advertising slump didn’t help either. And yes, the so-called experts might not be all-knowing either, after all.
I personally think there’s more to it than that.
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