#mediaposting cord

[deadhorse77]

just thinking about how I had a dream the night before flirt or flight came out that the new ep made logicality canon and then the actual episode was like That... wild

[deadhorse77]

is this Taako from The Adventure Zone

Emilio Pucci // Ready to Wear - Fall 2015

[pauldughi]

A huge number of Millennial Men aren't watching any TV on any device

A huge number of Millennial Men aren’t watching any TV on any device

  How big a deal is this cord-cutting thing for TV?  It may depend on who you ask.  The number of people cutting out cable has slowed, but it’s still a growing number.  But when you slice and dice those dropping (cord-cutters) or never subscribing (cord-nevers), this new report shows one demographic that’s cutting at a significant rate. Millennial men are not subscribing to cable, according to a…

[payment-providers]

New Post has been published on Payment-Providers.com

New Post has been published on https://payment-providers.com/toys-r-us-kids-became-amazon-adults/

Toys R Us Kids Became Amazon Adults

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There have been a number of great commercial jingles in the history of commercials — tunes so catchy that they stick, almost forever, and remind us of brand names simply by nature of being so catchy. Toys R Us’ famous “Toys R Us Kids” jingle succeeded in doing that, and then some. That jingle also managed to be oddly, and unfortunately, prophetic.

  Find any human being raised in the United States between 1978 and 1992, and ask them to sing the song. There is a good chance the average American — in their late 20s to early 40s — will be able to get through at least the first few bars. The prophetic part is at the end, when the song notes, “I don’t wanna grow up because, if I did, I wouldn’t be a Toys R Us Kid.”

As it turns out, those “Toys R Us Kids” did grow up. Though, as countless have pointed out over the last five years or so, millennials did make a valiant effort holding off that process by having their mothers do their laundry for as long as possible. However, the core Toys R Us Kids — the group that remembers humming the early ’80s jingle during their entire childhood — have firmly embedded themselves in adulthood. These days, though, we call them Bridge Millennials.

And, as the recent bankruptcy and great sell-off demonstrates — when they grew up, they definitely weren’t Toys R Us Kids anymore. They were much more likely to be “Amazon Adults.”

The Changing Buying Habits Of Millennial Parents

It’s worth noting at the outset that millennials are blamed for killing all kinds of things: home ownership, the diamond engagement ring industry, dressing up for work, physical retail on the whole — the list goes on. Though it has been popular to lay the blame for the fall of Geoffrey at the feet of the Generation Selfie, that narrative needs to be taken with a lot of salt. Not a grain of salt — a whole container.

Walmart actually displaced Toys R Us as the nation’s top toy dealer in 1998 — 20 years ago when older Bridge Millennials were starting college — and much of the generation was still having toys bought for them. At that point in retail history, Amazon was mostly known as an online bookstore. Toys R Us had also taken on a massive amount of debt — thanks to being taken private in 2005, via a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout deal with Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado Realty Trust. Those massive debt service payments, combined with declining sales, were the double whammy in the demise of the brand.

However, those declining sales remained because the emerging generation of parents — those Bridge Millennial moms and dads — shop and buy in a very different way. This consumer group is extremely prone to using smartphones as commerce tools and using stores as showrooms — a full 14 percent of Bridge Millennials report using retail stores to look at things, but not to buy them.

They are fickle — in fact, by the numbers, they are the most fickle of all consumers. Nearly a third of Bridge Millennials have switched away from or tried a new merchant in the last 30 days. That’s compared to 21 percent for other shopping cohorts.

They are also very enthusiastic about shopping online — definitely not the shopping cohort for which Toy R Us was built. Instead of enhancing and expanding their online sales or mobile capabilities in the early 2000s, Toys R Us doubled down on brick-and-mortar, buying out the competition at KB Toys and FAO Schwartz.

Toys R Us remained slow to respond even as it became apparent that digital was becoming the dominant driver of retail’s future, and cord-cutting siphoned off a robust advertising channel. One of the reasons that most people in their 30s can still sing the Toys R Us jingle is because they heard it on repeat — on their television screens, every Saturday morning, for a decade.

Today, the ardent cord-cutters are millennial parents, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Toy commercials were once things that children saw regularly — now, children who only watch Netflix hardly ever see them at all. Last June, even the Toys R Us CEO criticized the brand’s website, acknowledging that the store had simply fallen behind contemporary shopping habits.

What’s Next For Toys

What parents are buying for children is clearly changing — that was apparent before the bankruptcy of the nation’s largest toy store, and the collapse was at least partly driven buy it. In the last year, Lego, Mattel, and Hasbro have all reported declining sales for key brands that are generally reliable areas of strength: American Girl, Barbie, and even Star Wars merchandise took a hit.

Conversely, electronic toys for children — tablets and video game consoles — have seen their sales skyrocketing in recent years. But good old-fashioned analog toys have lost a lot of their appeal.

That means, according to some experts, one might expect the market to see a lot of consolidation. Smaller toy brands once relied on Toys R Us, which was responsible for some 12 percent of the toy market’s total annual sales, as a platform for exposure. Those brands will like struggle now, particularly as they must fight with mega players for shelf space, which is now compressed into big-box stores like Walmart or part of an infinite digital-sea on Amazon.

With Toys R Us out of the way, retail power has shifted to Walmart, Target and Amazon. Jackie Breyer, editor-in-chief of industry magazine The Toy Book told Reuters, “A lot of the smaller niche brands that you’d buy, because you’d seen (them) while browsing in Toys R Us, are going to be hit very hard.”

Those smaller niche brands, Beyer noted, will likely spend much time combining with each other in an attempt to build scale. It is also likely many will still fail or be consolidated into one of the large firms.

Yet, there may still remain some room for optimism, because there is much about Bridge Millennials for retailers — even toy retailers — to love. Karen Webster noted in her commentary on the Bridge Millennials data, “They are affluent and well-educated. They are settling into more stable careers and are earning more money.”

Money that — the data shows — they love spending on their children. In fact, according to eMarketer, they actually love splurging on their children. Reports in Romper say those parents may not be spending $15 on Barbie dolls quite as much, but they love spending on educational toys, particularly if those toys are wired up in some way. MediaPost noted that 65 percent of older millennial parents said they’d pay between $41 and $60 for a “smart” toy, while 23 percent said they’d spend “upwards to $80 or more for a connected toy.”

Projected to be a growth industry, Juniper Research predicts smart toy sales will “exceed” $15.5 billion in revenue come 2022.

Toys R Us may be gone, with the toy industry (as we know it) changing and becoming more high-tech. However, the good news is that toys, as a whole, are probably not dead — just evolving for a new generation of parents.

We will miss Geoffrey the Giraffe, but we hope someone nice buys him in the intellectual property auction.

………………….

You Might Also Like:

Amazon, consumer habits, ecommerce, Main Feature, Millennials, News, Retail, Saturday Feature, Toy Shopping, toy stores, Toys R Us, Toys R Us Kids

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[alexandraoconnor-blog1]

Skinny TV Bundles not so attractive

MediaPost TVWatch reports that the new “skinny bundles” that are supposed to bring those cord-cutters back may have one major drawback: users will not be able to skip commercials via DVR technology. Much like on VOD platforms for major TV network groups, it seems like new digital services like Google’s YouTube TV cannot afford to run without traditional advertising. Although, it may only be the smaller, newer services that are going with this plan for now, as Hulu allows its consumers to fast-forward through commercials with the purchase of its cloud DVR service as well. Also, both Vue and Sling’s DVR technology technically support fast forwarding, but this can actually be superseded due to particular rights deals-a fate Hulu may face in the future as well.  

As audiences continue to search for more avoidance options, TV services counter with new versions that re-package the existing system in a more attractive ways. However, this may be one version audience cannot swallow. For me, the purpose of DVR is two fold-being able to watch on your own time, and without commercials. If you are forced to watch a show you recorded with advertisements, you are removing one of the major advantages of the technology. Audiences are more likely to skip the DVR cost addition and watch on time if they have to watch commercials anyway.

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/299319/how-the-4-digital-factor-impacts-the-upfront.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=102264&hashid=-hra68zj3Wr-z6TdmohRvlPF7sQ

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/hulus-live-tv-service-to-cost-39-99-per-month-with-ads-sources-say/

[deadhorse77]

headcanon that taako is not his birth name and when lup changed her name when she transitioned taako was like "oh shit, you can do that?? you can change your name??"

he changes his name to taako and lup's like. "that's literally our last name what do you mean." and then taako's like "no, get this- it's spelled with a K, so it's NOT our last name"

idk how to wrap this up but anyway I think this is hilarious

[deadhorse77]

I'm just. Thinking about how ned chicane is just stan pines. And I know that's probably not news but I Just started listening to amnesty and I can't stop thinking about it

[deadhorse77]

I think of this every time I watch die hard and I finally had to make it

[deadhorse77]

Time to get bullied by thb

So, I spent an entire afternoon working on this. Enjoy! Let me know what you got and whether or not you think it fits!

[deadhorse77]

me wanting to re-restart the clone wars in order to make a star wars sideblog that consists of nothing but me gushing about clones

VS

me desperately wanting to continue and reach the end of clone wars plus my inability to sit through immediate rewatches of things because adhd

or as it's more commonly known: unstoppable force vs immovable object

[deadhorse77]

hooooo boy imagine playing a horror game and the main character has the same name as you. couldn't be me (real or birth name) but rip ethan

[deadhorse77]

AHHHHHHHH

[deadhorse77]

YEAH LITERALLY...

anakin literally just throws rex and he's screaming the whole way down and then anakin stops him from hitting the ground and rex goes "next time, just tell me to jump"

pov you're captain rex. your jedi general says "up up and away" and uses the force to throw you off of a wall. what do u do

accept my fate </3 

why “up up and away” tho who says that

im losing my mind imagining this play out. comedy gold actually

[deadhorse77]

I bet redd literally does not know whether the art he's selling is real or not. he just picks up art from random places and probably assumes it's all fake and then sells you priceless artwork for like 5000 bells. my god

[deadhorse77]

me, watching Marvel's 616 episode 5 "Suit Up!": 🙂

me, watching the costume contest part:

[deadhorse77]

did something stupid in animal crossing and just said to myself "I meant to not be a dumbass, but it's just so HARD" and like, honestly? just a general mood