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BBWF: Accenture sees little financial value in Web 2.0
No new economic models for online social networking, says consultant
by Ken Wieland
Amid all the excitement at the BBWF show about user-
generated content and the high market value placed on so-
called Web 2.0 sites, such as YouTube, Flickr and Facebook,
an Accenture consultant has warned delegates in Berlin not to
get too carried away.
“There is no evidence that online networking sites are
producing anything of real economic value,” said Theresa
Wise, global director at Accenture’s digital media practice at
the BBWF session entitled “The Emergence of Convergent
Media.”
It is still the Hollywood “big hits” that consumers are willing to
pay for, argued Wise, with only a very small percentage of
user-generated material being popular.
“Big brands do not always lend themselves to social
networking websites, as Web 2.0 users aren’t always
receptive to them,” she added. “There is no evidence that
these sites are monetizeable.”
Wise went on to debunk a couple more digital media myths:
digital advertising is set to overtake TV advertising, and that
digital media usage statistics are measurable and therefore
bring accountability.
According to Wise’s figures, the global digital media
advertising market is worth US$25 billion (and growing, on
average, by around 13 percent per year). The TV advertising
market, on the other hand, is worth $150 billion and growing by
around six percent. “Given the size of the TV advertising market, it is
still growing well,” said Wise.
She also said that, on average, TV watching per person per
day totalled between three and four hours in developed markets,
whereas digital media watching averaged out at 30
minutes. “Digital media consumption is nowhere near as big
as TV consumption,” said Wise.
As for producing measurable statistics, Wise argued that while
there was indeed much data available, very few companies made
complete use of it.
Traditional economic models assume either that consumers
and/or advertisers pay for a service. With online social
networking sites, Wise is not convinced that this will happen
and, what’s more, there are no alternative workable economic
models available to compensate for that fact.
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