Safa Raschtchy, a senior analyst with Piper Jaffray, opened with a series of quotes, including:
“We never know here the consumer is going to be any point in time so we have to find a way to be everywhere. Ubiquity is the new exclusivity” — Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO of Kaplan Thaler Group
What we’re going through right now is a user revolution.
It’s best to look at this from a consumer point of view.
- Users have more than 30 choices now of what media to consume
- Consumers know “what I want, and I don’t want somebody telling me what I want and how to get it.”
- TV is becoming boring for them.
- Newspapers are no longer popular.
That doesn’t mean TV and newspapers are going to away, but their dominance is slipping away, Raschtchy said. He also said, “These are just not predictions, but based on research that we’ve done.�
We have to accept the fact that consumers don’t really like advertisements – not the sophisticated and educated consumer. To them they are disruptive.”
“Consumes know what they want. They don’t like traditional media and they’re highly energized. They say, “Don’t tell us to buy something. I know what I want.'”
Raschtchy talked about emerging themes in media. One of them is “communitatinment.” As an example he used the teen who spends two hours IM’ing with friends, which includes sharing songs and videos and links. Rather than spending two hours watching a movie, today’s net savvy, young consumer spends his or her time in social entertainment.
User-generated content sites are also increasing in popularity. In April 2005, only 3 percent of web traffic went to UGC sites. Now it is 31 percent. “This is not a fad, folks. This is here to stay.”