Brands should be wary of publishers’ ‘pivot to video’

Publishers, not to mention Google and Facebook, see video as a panacea for all their ad revenue issues, but consumers find videos annoying and prefer text-based journalism so brands must take note.

The phrase ‘pivot to video’ now has meme status in the world of media, as a euphemism for when a publisher fires a bunch of journalists in response to disappointing ad revenue.

Fog Creek Software CEO Anil Dash’s joke on Twitter is the most joyful scoff at this phrase: “Horse broke its leg, so we had to take it out back and help it ‘pivot to video’.”

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