Andrew Keen, author of the controversial new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Doubleday/Currency), condemns Web 2.0 as the destroyer of traditional American culture, from mainstream media to the music industry. But he’s not totally opposed to online video advertising. While he criticizes consumer-created ads, which “undercut the work of traditional advertising agencies” and sponsored webisodes, which are “commercials that appear to be entertainment,” he understands the ads must play if content is free, but thinks the public should be educated about what the advertisers are up to. Keen, the founder/president/CEO of Audiocafe.com and host of the Internet TV show AfterTV, offers his sharp opinions about the Web 2.0 world and video advertising’s role in it to iChat.
iSPOT: When I was reading the book, at first I thought it was amazing but then it seemed almost obvious the points you’re making. They should have been said so many times before.
Keen: I know, it’s funny. It’s just that the problem is it’s a reflection of mainstream American media. No mainstream American journalist would have had the nerve to do it. I’m not braver than them, it’s just that no one can fire me. The person who makes this argument needs to be an insider outsider like me. The fact that I’m a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and know this business and have been an idealist adds to the credibility, plus the fact that no one can fire me since I don’t work for a traditional media organization. I think you’re right. I don’t think there’s anything in it that isn’t obvious. I join the dots really.
iSPOT: It seems it’s so obvious but no one’s come out and said it before, so it’s new in that sense.
Keen: There’s been so many books written from the other position, the long tail economics and people say it’s a biased book, but it’s no less biased than the long tail, no less driven by a certain kind of ideological agenda, but the Web 2.0 people have seized the middle ground. It’s like politics, when you seize the middle ground and start saying the most absurd things that everyone listens to and accepts as being true, then it’s time to push back. The most extreme example is Wikipedia, where people will trust a high school kid as much as an established professor. It’s such an absurd thing to say, like night is day or black is white. Everyone accepts it as true but it’s ludicrous. Someone who’s spent 40 or 50 years of their lives specializing in knowledge knows more than a high school kid. It requires revealing the emperor’s clothes.
iSPOT: iSPOT focuses on broadband video advertising, so I want to discuss your opinions about that.
Keen: I think that advertising is the whole future, the key economic issue and the most interesting issue, so I’m pleased to talk about it.
iSPOT: You have some negative things to say about it in the book. You’re down on consumer-created ads because they’re not created by professionals and you also offer negative comments about webisodes sponsored by advertisers because they are entertaining which is obviously what they’re supposed to be.
Keen: Let me clarify what I’m critical of. I don’t have any problem with traditional advertising. It’s driven the television economy and to an extent the newspaper economy. I’m not against advertising. There are only two ways you can monetize content online or in any media, you either sell it or build advertising around it. My problem is the breakdown of the church and state division between advertising and content. What I cherish is media in which there’s a clear distinction between advertising and content. In television the 30 second ad between content is a good thing. My problem with online media concerns YouTube, where it’s increasingly unclear where the content and advertising is, so ultimately everything becomes a long commercial break. I talked with the founders of YouTube at the Wall Street Journal conference and asked them publicly, are you troubled by the fact that on your site it’s hard to distinguish between paid for advertising and independent content, let alone the fact that half the people posting on YouTube are advertisers–and they said no, we’re not as long as people enjoy the content and I think that was such an absurd response, a thoughtless dangerous response.
iSPOT: I understand what you’re saying, but some of the advertisers are running webisodes because there’s been so much criticism of the repurposed TV ads that run online, so they’re looking for alternatives, so what’s wrong with that?
Keen: What’s wrong with it is it’s fine for people like us who know how media works, we’re media savvy and can figure these things out, but I saw for example that Lonelygirl15 picked up the sponsorship of a skin care product. The problem is that who’s to say when content is about a young girl getting happy because her skin clears up. I have a problem with skin cream people advertising around Lonelygirl15, unless it’s clear that the content is not purely made to get people to buy skin cream. That’s my biggest fear because consumers no longer trust advertising. They’ve got Tivo machines, they’re getting out of the habit of watching ads and they think culture should be free, but what they’re actually getting instead of free culture is advertising. With lonelygirl15 what you call a webisode is what I would call an advert for skin cream.
iSPOT: That’s the price everyone has to pay for free content.
Keen: Exactly, that’s the price but that’s what they’re not addressing and it needs to be spelled out, not idealized as wonderful YouTube where we go and get free content that is so amusing. It’s not true, there’s a price for free content.
iSPOT: How do you think advertisers should work online with video ads?
Keen: My view is that if we educate consumers that there’s no such thing as free content, they have to be willing to put up with spots before the show. We have to aggressively educate consumers. If they want decent content online, they have to put up with advertising. There’s no free lunch, no perfect media where everything’s free.
iSPOT: But even if they accept advertising, they’re not going to accept it in a certain format, so can we present it in different ways, like webisodes?
Keen: Well I think you have to play around with it. I would rather have advertising however annoying it is in the first 15 seconds before you see the content than woven often dishonestly into the content itself. It’s a huge problem, a fundamental problem, the heart of the issue about the future of this media economy. It’s how are you going to get consumers to accept advertising in a culture which is so consumer centric, convincing them that they shouldn’t have to deal with advertising. Ultimately of course you’re going to have more and more personalized advertising, the Google model which is Orwellian. You’re feeding all this information back to your search engine or Internet service provider and they’re going to personalize the advertising. They’re going to know you better than you know yourself. You’re right, there are no easy answers. That’s what I want everyone to address. There is no ideal solution. If you want content, you have to be willing to put up with advertising, but it’s forcing advertisers to be dishonest. Advertisers aren’t naturally dishonest but the more you undermine their traditional business model, they’re forced to do it.
