The COMPLETE Collection of one of the most famous comedy teams in history.
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/3845/c/186/a/618
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Jaffer Ali: Web Video Savant
by Sheila Shayon
Vidsense CEO Jaffer Ali runs a company billed as "the
only online network to offer true brand scalability and
effective reach."
With 20,000 safe-for-work websites in the company's so-
called Video Snack Network, and some 100,000 licensed
family-friendly video clips, its Pay-Per-Visitor model
is an alternative to display advertising. With online
video growing in power as a search and branding tool,
Vidsense boasts more than 11 billion monthly page views,
and the ability to drive more than 250 million monthly
visitors to brand websites bundled with licensed video
clips.
Ali is known as a contrarian and an advocate of disinter-
mediation. "In sharp contrast to the ghetto mentality that
drives the current proliferation of sophisticated target-
ing methodologies, our elegantly simple model is predicated
on the equally simple observation that our obsession with
targeting actually prohibits scalable big brand reach, the
only thing big brand advertisers truly want."
Your career path seems a series of prescient and disruptive
business decisions. What is the skill set that equipped
you for such a path?
Actually, most people have the skill sets to do what I do,
but lack the temperament and motivation. One must have a
passion to get to the heart of what makes the industry
tick. That goes beyond making money.
You started your career in a family home video label (MPI)
in the 1980's. Was that your field of choice?
I was headed for a career in academia and in graduate
school at Arizona State. I had an under grad degree in
business administration from the University of Illinois
but decided to study political philosophy. After my father
got very ill, I left grad school to enter the business
world.
How did MPI get rights to the Beatles' films A Hard Days'
Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, and classic TV shows
like The Honeymooners Lost Episodes?
My uncle, Waleed Ali wrote a book on the Beatles, called
Yesterday Came Suddenly, and met Walter Shenson, the
Producer of A Hard Days' Night and Help! He happened to
control the rights to those films and we made a deal with
him. The Honeymooners Lost Episodes happened to be owned
by Jackie Gleason himself. I saw a story about a "lost"
episode showing at a Honeymooners fan convention and
called the guy who ran the convention. He put me in touch
with Jackie Gleason's lawyer... and we made the deal
directly with Jackie Gleason.
Why the next shift to direct-to-consumer video marketing ?
what changes did you see coming in the media advertising
business?
We were selling millions of videos of collectible classics
to Time-Life, Readers Digest, PCH, etc. and I suggested we
start a direct-to-consumer division because we had a
collectible library and we could not get the big companies
to sell everything we had available. My family did not
want to compete with our largest customers, so I left the
family business to found a direct-to-consumer company.
This was disintermediation before it had a name.
Next came TV Direct Response, which you've described as
'chasing the last hit.' Could you explain what you mean?
TV Direct Response is a hit-driven business. We had hits
selling Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, but had over 25
campaigns that you never heard of. You can easily go broke
chasing the next hit? and we nearly did. This also taught
me that predicting a hit is not an easy thing to do.
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YOUR VIDEO SNACK BAR
Top Viewed Videos...
1. All the Single Babies
http://c.gophercentral.com/Icgl
2. Celebrities: Before and After Make-Up
http://c.gophercentral.com/lhPb
3. Amos N´ Andy - In the IRS Office
http://c.gophercentral.com/DVhQ
4. The D-Day Invasion
http://c.gophercentral.com/DDAx
5. The Spanish Civil War
http://c.gophercentral.com/3K42
6. The Human Slinky
http://c.gophercentral.com/Wwa9
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You got into email newsletters, where you placed text ads
and garnered a robust ROI, in 1998 ? were they an early
version of a blog?
Yes, these newsletters or e-zines were blogs before they
were called blogs. They were the most effective marketing
vehicle we ever experienced ? as long as the content was
good. That business is not what it once was due to mailbox
overload, but we still have many e-zines.
Your next venture, PENN, brought together e-commerce/early
online DR and media ownership. Being ahead of the curve,
was it a tough sell-in?
We never wanted to get into selling media. We created our
media to sell our e-commerce products. But we had more
media than we could consume ourselves. We tried getting
other companies to represent our media assets. Our entry
into the media selling business was due to our inability
to interest intermediaries to represent what we had to
offer. So once again, disintermediation played a part in
our development.
Your next move was bringing video clips to the Internet
with a DVD sales offer, "sort of an MTV with an ordering
option." Again, explain what got you into that business?
In our direct-to-consumer company, we had developed
relationships with all the home video companies. So we
secured the rights to stream video clips from their
libraries with the intent to sell DVDs being one click
away. EVTV1 was our video portal and we thought having
classic clips with an ordering option would yield a lot
of DVD sales. We were wrong.
With EVTV1.com, you found that users would only tolerate
one in three video clips carrying pre-roll ads. How did
you arrive at that ratio?
When DVD sales did not roll in, we had to develop a model
that could take advantage of our growing audience. People
liked visiting EVTV1 and this was before You Tube. So we
started using pre-roll commercials to monetize the eye-
balls. Abandon rates soared. Growth went into reverse. We
started with every clip with a pre-roll. That is a 1:1
ratio. Looking back, it was absurd.
You've written provocative pieces such as your column
"Can Eric Schmidt and Marketers Predict Human Behavior?"
in which you write: "the purveyors of voodoo behaviorism
are neither snake oil salesmen, nor charlatans, merely
intellectual simpletons." Please elaborate.
Predictive modelers like to think they are applying the
latest in scientific principles when they are using an
outdated scientific worldview. Predictive models have
shown themselves to be folly. Credit card companies have
30% toxic debt using their predictive algorithms, the
stock market has shown the fallacy of algorithmic trading,
and most off-line direct mailers have tried to go the
route many of our online BT folks are treading, and most
of them are now bankrupt.
In your column titled "The Real Dope on Pre-Roll," you say
"The weirdest part of the pre-roll saga is how the inter-
mediaries have been able to convince brands that this was
the road to effective, scalable reach. Two things are for
certain: these clever intermediaries obviously didn't use
their own money, and certainly didn't use pre-roll to make
their point." Who are the intermediaries?
A common thread of my career is disintermediation. Agencies
and consultants are intermediaries that have worked with
brands to convince them that the emperor is fully clothed,
while any reasonable person can see he is naked as a jay-
bird.
Are you alone in this view?
Alone? Not hardly, but few will actually write about what
I call the "gelding class" because of political repercuss-
ions. In many private conversations, this is well under-
stood.
What will online digital brand advertising look like in
five years?
All online brands will own their own media. Another example
of disintermediation. But this is not going to happen until
the present brand cognoscenti lose their jobs chasing the
failed strategies offered up as solutions right now.
What's the most salient advice you can give to young
entrepreneurs today?
Slow down! Eighty percent of what we do is chasing string
like a cat. This is especially true with being plugged
into digital devices 24/7. Entrepreneurs have tremendous
passion and they need to slow down to introduce deliberate-
ness to their routine, otherwise a lot of wasted energy is
expended.
Looking back, anything you would do differently if you
could?
Not really ? as I am where I am because of all the earlier
failures. I've failed faster than most to be where I am
today!
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Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
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