ESPN's John Kosner: "You are what your record says you are"
Or perhaps more importantly, you are what you say you are. And that is, a digital powerhouse that captures more male fans 18-34 than 39 basic cable networks. In fact, the only digital properties that can claim more "total minutes" generated by this audience are Google, Facebook, all of the Yahoo sites combined, and all of the Microsoft sites combined.
What has ESPN done here? As the prolific Don Draper likes to say "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation." They can't compete with Yahoo on uniques, so they're creating a new currency. While the rest of the industry continues to trade on reach alone, ESPN changes the conversation entirely with a new metric called "total minutes". Uniques x time spent. An engagement metric that speaks to the brand advantage of content consumption across platforms and bucks an industry perspective that often devalues audience duplication.
So check out a bit, a byte of how "total time" is dominating ESPN's record as part of Kosner's Forrester Consumer Forum keynote, then let me know what you think . . .
Julie,
I love the Don Draper quote. What ESPN is measuring really gets to customer engagement and involvement which is what truly drives value both for ESPN and for advertisers. ESPN is a pioneer and other media companies and content providers should be taking note of this.
Naras.