Bill Gates has his head up his…tail
Here’s David Card paraphrasing Bill Gates on the newish marketing phenomenon called the “long tail“:
Deutsch asks a good question: in this world of fragmented media, aren’t we losing a great advertising platform – the big hit show that reaches a mass audience simultaneously?
Gates: No. This new environment is better. Now marketers can buy an audience – instead of a show – across media. In the current model, there is a lot of manual labor and inefficiency in using shows as a proxy for audiences.
Deutsch: But how can you plug into a wide audience?
Gates: That’s really a question about how many shows/hits make up the head of the “long tail.� Technology allows the long tail to exist. That doesn’t mean everything in the tail will be popular. The top hits at the head of the tail will still be a huge part of what people watch.
The “head of the tail” is an interesting place to be. An interesting concept. It makes me think of things like “wagging the dog”, or the Ouroborus symbol of the serpent with its own tail in its mouth.
I don’t think Bill wants to let go. He’s not even a head of the tail guy, really. He just wants to be the Head Guy. Like all media giants, he certainly wants to find a way to subvert and own a phenomenon that should remain “fragmented” and therefore more democratic. Adsense for everyone forever? Maybe not. Not if Bill gets his way.
May 14th, 2006
[...] I’m all for it. Let’s broaden our focus. Let’s think past the “head of the tail” as Bill Gates put it in a recent interview. But let’s do it across the piece. Let’s acknowledge that externalities eventually have to paid for. [...]