10 Ways to Use Time Wisely While Streaming Service Ads Play
With Amazon Prime Video being one of the biggest streaming services by subscribers, their move in January to start showing ads (except for subscribers who pay an additional monthly fee) was viewed in many corners of the advertising world as a seismic shift.
"We strongly believe that Amazon’s decision to add advertising to Prime Video will be a disruptive force to commoditized advertising video on demand (AVOD) players, siloed connected TV (CTV) platforms and non-top 20 linear cable networks,” MoffettNathanson’s Michael Morton wrote in a client note in January.
With more streaming services looking to increase the number of eyeballs on shows and movies where ads play, to maximize advertiser revenue — combined with the average entrepreneur-viewer looking to keep costs down in their personal lives as they do in their businesses, leading to staying on plans with ads — this has led to a lot more down time per viewer.
How business owners can take back their time during streaming service ad breaks
Here are 10 ways to multitask so that most, if not all, time spent while ads play can yield a positive return for your business:
If you have employees, look at your org chart and the biggest revenue-impacting tasks on your plate for the next 1-2 weeks and delegate more of them. Remember, you’re only one person — unfortunately, you can’t literally do it all.
Are you in the middle of a physical book focused on improving one or more areas of your business? Get it out, along with your bookmark, and get closer to finishing it. Mark the page and place where you left off when the ad timer reaches zero and your show is back. (I’m recommending a physical book because your eyes will benefit from a screen break.)
If you have your work laptop or desktop computer in or near the room where you relax in front of the TV — and you have a backup setup in place that doesn’t back up every file change to the cloud immediately 24/7 — use ad breaks to initiate a backup. Yes, even if your backup software does it once a day or even once an hour. Disaster can strike at any time, and this way your latest work will be protected.
How long has it been since you re-shopped the biggest vendor costs for your business, such as benefit plans (if you have employees), insurance, bookkeeping and tax filing, and internet access? If it’s been over a year, and especially if you subscribe to any of these plans on a monthly basis, use ad time to go back into the marketplace and see if you can score a better deal.
If it’s been 6+ months since you or someone on your team last did this, go to your business website, pretend you’re a prospective customer or client, and engage with the ways you’ve set up to do business to ensure your customer/client journey still goes as intended and doesn’t have any breaks in the chain or bottlenecks. Think starting a chat session if you use a livechat solution, sending an email and ensuring you get an auto reply, filling out a form and ensuring that both your business and you are properly pinged, and, yes, even calling the one or more phone numbers you’ve set up to deliver service and support. You may be surprised at what you find needs fixing, and you’ll likely think of ways to improve existing processes and customer/client touch points.
Do you use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or a similar solution, to drive your leads pipeline? If so, there are always opportunities to improve your associated processes and tactics, especially to drill down into new target audience segments and to monitor what competitors are doing. One of my contacts I recommend following for help with this for Sales Navigator is David J.P. Fisher.
Maximize your networking focus. For solopreneurs, especially newer ones, this could mean signing up for free virtual speed networking events and/or local events, such as through your chamber of commerce. (I have a weekly reminder for this on my calendar.) For larger and/or more established businesses, this could mean a greater focus on trade events and other conferences. Incorporating #1 from my list, ask an employee to make sure you’re consistent on this compared to past years (this may not need to be something you lead yourself).
When was the last time you took a vacation? If you don’t remember off the top of your head — and if your business is doing well enough and is staffed sufficiently so that time away by you won’t tank it — it’s time to plan to take some well-deserved time off. Use ad time as fun time for planning, or call your travel agent and ask them to get to work on your next getaway. While vacation time uses personal funds, you’ll get money back in your business in the form of a body and mind that are supercharged to conquer the world when you return home.
Is your succession plan both documented and fully communicated with all associated stakeholders? Nearly two-thirds of family businesses don’t have both of these bases covered. If you fall into this camp, and obviously if you don’t have a plan mapped out at all, get out your laptop or a notebook and make some progress on this front. You owe it to your family as well as to your employees and other business stakeholders to get this house in order.
Speaking of succession — specifically, of fending it off as long as possible and maximizing your time to enjoy the business you’ve built — use the 1-4 minutes while ads play to get off your butt and do some exercises. Here’s a set of four I like that you can do in your living room, and which won’t leave you too sweaty when your show resumes.
More help on improving business efficiency
This is my third post in the category of improving business efficiency. Check out the others I’ve written here. One of them even concerns maximizing your productivity while watching TV shows (outside of ad time).
