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Friday, July 23, 2010

The 10 commandments of content marketing

The 10 commandments of content marketing
By Eric Anderson


It's only a matter of time before some marketing pundit boldly declares this to be the Era of the Boldly Declared Era. Our attempts to make sense of the rapid changes in consumer media consumption have spawned such era-defining labels as "Web 2.0," "Emerging Media," "Generation Facebook," "The Death of Print," and most recently, "The Splinternet."

Historically, a mania for naming has been a sure sign of cultural anxiety, and in our industry, it's a sure sign that marketers are still percolating over the big questions: Will social media take over the world? Will streaming content kill broadcast? Will someone eventually click on a banner ad? Will society finally grind to a halt when there's nothing left to tweet about besides Twitter?

Stay informed. For more tips on freshening up your brand's marketing initiatives, attend the iMedia Brand Summit, Sept. 11-15. Request your invitation today.
As an industry, we're struggling with these questions because we're stuck in outdated categories. We still think advertising is advertising and social media is something else. In fact, advertising and social media are the same thing: They're content. We can find answers to the vexing questions of our time the moment we realize that all marketing is content. And at the risk of adding yet another era-defining label to the mix, I want to suggest that the new approach demanded by these rapid changes is something White Horse calls content marketing.

Content marketing is already occurring; it's all around us. Marketers that do it well might not even know that they're doing it because they weren't burdened by the old way of thinking in the first place. Fortunately, it's possible to bring a stone tablet down from that mountain and share what works about content marketing. Its 10 commandments are as follows.

Content shall be shareable
Advertising will have its renaissance the moment a majority of marketers care about creating something worth passing on. Consumers don't trust advertising because it shouts at them. But the broadcast advertisers that top the viral video charts week after week don't shout -- they amuse, entertain, and inspire. If every creative brief in every agency in the land asked, "Why would someone want to pass this on?" then we would have TV ads that don't make us reach for the TiVo remote and banner ads that can finally make us cry for reasons other than frustration. That's not just advertising, that's good content.



Content shall be malleable
I mentioned the Splinternet. Sorry. But it's true that we've got to start paying more attention to how the message fits the medium. It's hard to do that with advertising, but it's easy to do it with content. You stop worrying about reusing brand assets and think instead about things like, "Mobile's great at location-based stuff. What can I give my customer that's useful based on their location?" Our mania for brand consistency has allowed us to forget that brands are built on trust. And trust is built on relevance. Good content is always relevant.

Content shall be collaborative
Marketers love to let customers into the brand laboratory -- as long as they don't touch anything. We invite consumers to give us their ideas, but how often do we let their creations out of the lab to roam free? Doritos figured out that consumer-generated content was just as good as its own content -- maybe better -- and so it let consumers create the brand's Super Bowl ads. From scratch. The only monstrosities to come out of that experiment were the results: Doritos' ads were the most-favored and most-recalled of the Super Bowl. Oh, and they were the most-shared (see Commandment 1).



Content shall be measurable
Enough with the hand-wringing over ROI. If you can measure how much traffic a given piece of content has driven to your website, you have vastly exceeded the measurability of 95 percent of advertising since its invention. (Actually, 96 percent -- we measured it.) When you put content out there -- on social networks, on YouTube, on blogs, etc. -- you can measure the traffic that comes back. You can even measure what that traffic does next. It takes a bit of work. Notice there is no "Content shall be easy" commandment. But it's worth it. How do I know it's worth it? It's measurable.

Content shall be fearless
If advertising were a personality type, it would be obsessive-compulsive: ritualized, repetitive, controlling, and fearful of change. Content isn't like that. Content concerns itself with an exchange of ideas, so it morphs and evolves as new ideas are added. Take Starbucks' fearless crowd-sourcing experiment, MyStarbucksIdea.com -- a simple idea engine that shape-shifts its content with every comment and contribution, all adding up to a pretty durable brand proposition that says, "We care what our customers think."



Content shall invite comment
Most content that we produce for our customers will fail. This is a good thing; our success depends on knowing when things fail, so we can try something else. It's only a problem if we shut our ears to it. For decades our industry didn't hear customer feedback outside of the airless environs of the focus group; now we have a chance to get the full, pent-up barrage of feedback in every tweet, YouTube comment, and blog posting that our brands attract. We need to embrace it, monitor it, learn from it, and move on. We're fearless now, remember?

Content shall start everywhere
Marketing no longer belongs to marketers. For content marketing to succeed, we're going to need a big tent with room for the PR folks, the product managers, the researchers, the sales staff, and, yes, even the execs. They all have content to contribute, and we can't do it all ourselves. The marketer's core expertise will no longer be knowing how to produce marketing content; it'll be knowing how to channel marketing content in ways that keeps the conversation going. We're going to need ads, articles, opinions, advice, feedback, and pithy observations in 140 characters or less. And no, you can't get an intern for that.

Content shall go everywhere
In the beginning, there was the marketing funnel, and the ad impressions did delivereth leads unto the marketing funnel, wherein many were converted. Today, leads bounce all over the place before they ever get sucked into the funnel. They visit blogs, message boards, review sites, and social networks to get the real scoop on the brand. You need content in all of those places. You need to coordinate that content with your marketing funnel and measure its impact. How are you possibly going to get all this done? See Commandment 7.



Content shall be sponsored
It used to be that PR content went to PR outlets and advertising content went to advertising outlets, and the two might nod to each other in the hall as they passed. Not any longer. Publishers are inviting both over to dinner, with package deals that include sponsored content in your area of expertise seated right next to paid advertising. Marketers that haven't embraced content marketing will blow these deals by phoning in the PR content, or they'll miss the opportunity entirely.

Content shall be forever
OK, "forever" might be an exaggeration; the planet is 6 billion years old, and today's marketing content can't be expected to endure longer than a billion or so years, depending on what happens with Facebook. But that's a big change because traditionally advertising only lasted as long as you paid for it. Content marketing lives well beyond a campaign because it shows up in archives, on sharing sites like SlideShare and Scribd, on blogs, in tweets, and in content aggregators like Digg and StumbleUpon. It's the swallowed gum in marketing's digestive tract, except that the flavor endures.

That's content marketing, and it's where White Horse stakes its claim. Like all content marketing, this is an unfinished discussion; others will add and detract, and the end result is outside of our control. We're good with that. We're content marketers.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

10 Technological Advances Marketers Can't Live Without

10 Technological Advances Marketers Can't Live Without
Liodice Continues His Series by Looking at the New Strategies and Tools Changing the Game for Brands

Inventions have changed the face of advertising consistently throughout history and will continue to do so, as technology evolves at an ever-increasing rate. The creation of new forms of media, from radio to TV and the internet, have caused the industry to create new strategies and tools to help brands find their own optimal media mix. This week, as the ANA hosts its inaugural Digital and Social Media Conference, we take a look at 10 technological advances that marketers of today and tomorrow cannot ignore.


HULU: Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Advertisers always sought a way to track the elusive "word-of-mouth" phenomenon that affected their brands so heavily. Social media brought the conversations that consumers were having online, giving marketers the chance to monitor, further and contribute to them in real-time. Nielsen found that while 14% of people trust ads, 78% of people trust consumer recommendations. The conversation for marketers turned from the one-way nature of traditional media to a two-way dialogue that could not be ignored. Social media has shifted the conversation so forcefully that consumers have an unprecedented level of control over brands, rapidly turning themselves into a brand's best advertisers.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search engine optimization is one of the most important and cost-effective ways to attract customers on the internet. Research has found that almost two-thirds of the time, people look only at the first page of their search results. They rarely make it beyond the first 10, and virtually never beyond the initial 30 results. When it comes to e-commerce transactions, more than half originate from a search listing, proving the importance of being "found." SEO is a way to ensure that those consumers using the web to search for a product or service easily find it, resulting in a more targeted lead for the advertiser and easier search process for the consumer.

INTEREST-BASED ADVERTISING (BEHAVIORAL TARGETING)
Behavioral targeting allows ads to be more relevant, valuable and thus persuasive to the consumer. This has given the marketing industry an unprecedented level of precision. This comes with a level of caution, however, as consumers are wary of being watched on the web. As such, a group of the nation's largest media and marketing trade associations including the 4As, ANA, BBB, DMA and IAB released self-regulatory principles to protect consumer privacy in ad-supported interactive media. The principles require advertisers and websites to clearly inform consumers about data-collection practices and enable them to exercise control over that information.

ONLINE VIDEO: VIDEO ON DEMAND
The arrival of video on demand and sites like Hulu and YouTube signaled a huge change in the industry. People started looking to the web for entertainment, and advertisers redirected dollars to take advantage of the growing world of online video. Because of internet video's low distribution costs and built-in sharing capabilities, brands have been eager to produce the next viral hit. Viral videos have shown potential to turn ordinary people into brand ambassadors as the clip gets instantly forwarded to friends and family. Internet broadcasting also has provided another online venue for measurable and targeted advertising in the form of attached text and pre-roll ads.



MOBILE: This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cellphones, smartphones and tablet computers. MEASURING ACTIONS VS. IMPRESSIONS
Online ads originally mimicked those in traditional media, where marketers paid for the amount of exposure gained. Since the cost-per-click model has emerged, advertisers have been taking advantage of the internet's ability to measure user action, something impression-based pricing cannot match. Those using action-based systems like Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, and sites like Facebook, pay based only on how many people engage an ad with a click. Marketers can now see a clearer picture of ROI; consumers who interact with ads tend to be more valuable.

INTERACTIVE TV
As DVRs made their way into consumers' lives, many industry pundits mourned the end of the 30-second spot and wondered how advertisers would fare now that people could skip through their commercials. The answer was not just to formulate ads that worked in fast-forward, but to introduce interactive TV ads that worked within and in tandem with regular programming. Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV, and Canoe Ventures brought the first clickable ad to "receive more info" to the airwaves just last month. This area is one to watch, as consumers accept, and eventually seek, interactivity in all aspects of their lives.

BRAND-SPECIFIC COMMERCIAL RATINGS
More than $70 billion is spent each year on TV advertising. With such a large amount of funds devoted to commercials, the industry began calling for a better way to assess whether they were getting their money's worth. Where, on one hand, the digital realm was providing precise statistics on an ad's effectiveness, TV ratings were still based on the average of all commercials airing with a program. In 2007 the ANA began calling for ratings that were specific to each commercial. The industry is now starting to see a potential pathway, as a test conducted by Nielsen shows that the move toward brand-specific commercial ratings is clear.

MOBILE ADVERTISING AND PAYMENTS
According to eMarketer, the mobile advertising industry is expected to be worth more than $1.56 billion by 2013. This burgeoning platform is seeing a meteoric rise thanks to the proliferation of cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers. Apple's iPhone and iPad specifically have brought the mobile arena to the forefront, as consumers increasingly look to their phones to aid in more aspects of their lives. While the internet can tell advertisers what sites consumers visit and for how long, the iAd platform gives a detailed picture of their potential customers' everyday lives. Additionally, mobile payments allow marketers to make appeals for instant buys, and dole out coupons and other rewards.



Companies such as BrightLine iTV formed to bring the interactivity of the web to TV. MARKETING-MIX MODELING
Marketing-mix modeling provided researchers and analysts the opportunity to think more precisely about integrated marketing. Technologists found ways to create highly productive media-decision models by weaving together analyses of consumer sensitivity to a company (or brand's) media platforms. This tool gave media planners the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of an integrated marketing plan while reducing overall costs . Modeling has become more difficult with newer forms of media, the management process for conceptualizing integrated media plans remains the same. This is expected to improve as marketers and agencies better assess consumer sensitivity to digital media platforms.

AD-ID
Since 1970, advertisers, agencies and TV networks used the ISCI commercial coding system to identify TV commercials. To help bring a higher level of accuracy to the coding process and consistency to advertisement identification, as well as enable the industry for digital convergence, a new identification system was created. Developed by the 4As and the ANA, Ad-ID came into the marketplace in 2003 as a digital identifying code for advertisements. It has since been dubbed the "UPC code of the advertising industry." Ad-ID helped transform the marketing industry for the digital revolution.

6 digital trends to watch

My colleague Steve Rubel and I wear many hats at Edelman. One of those hats is keeping an eye on the trends unfolding in real time and deriving meaning from them as they pertain to organizations and brands. Attached to this post is a slideshow where we identify what these trends are and at a high level how your organization needs to plan accordingly for them. They are:

1.Marketing in the age of streams
Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.


2.The Googleization of media
Quality Content and potent social connections in addition to traditional keywords are influencing how visible you are to the search engines. Everyone is media.


3.The data decade
Data is increasingly becoming available to anyone and everyone. From it we can derive insights into behaviors. We must become “data junkies” to fully harness this trend.


4.Business becomes social
Moving from designated spokesperson to employee engagement at scale—business itself is beginning to look more social as organizations start to engage all stakeholders in open and mutually beneficial ways.


5.Location, location, location
Where you are is becoming the new what are you doing as multiple platforms begin to adopt the new geolocation status update generating new kinds of data.


6.Private becomes public
Despite privacy concerns, applications and behaviors which support social sharing are still going strong as what is considered private becomes re-defined as we continue engaging in networks.

We believe these trends are not future gazing but what’s happening at this very moment and that they will cause organizations to adapt to change, adopt new practices and innovate accordingly. For more industry insights, ideas and perspectives you can visit our newly created “branded channel” on Slideshare.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The great survivor

Leaders.
In praise of television

The great survivor
TV has coped well with technological change. Other media can learn from it
Apr 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

NEWSPAPERS are dying; the music industry is still yelping about iTunes; book publishers think they are next. Yet one bit of old media seems to be doing rather well. In the final quarter of 2009 the average American spent almost 37 hours a week watching television. Earlier this year 116m of them saw the Super Bowl—a record for a single programme. Far from being cowed by new media, TV is colonising it. Shows like “American Idol” and “Britain’s Got Talent” draw huge audiences partly because people are constantly messaging and tweeting about them, and discussing them on Facebook.

Advertising wobbled during the recession, shaking the free-to-air broadcasters that depend on it. But cable and satellite TV breezed through. Pay-television subscriptions grew by more than 2m in America last year. The explosive growth of cable and satellite TV in India explains how that country has gone from two channels in the early 1990s to more than 600 today. Pay-TV bosses scarcely acknowledge the existence of viewers who do not subscribe to multichannel TV, talking only of people who have “yet to choose” a provider. This is not merely bluster. As our special report this week explains, once people start paying for greater television choice, they rarely stop.

The advantages of indolence
It helps that TV is an inherently lazy form of entertainment. The much-repeated prediction that people will cancel their pay-TV subscriptions and piece together an evening’s worth of entertainment from free broadcasts and the internet “assumes that people are willing to work three times harder to get the same thing”, observes Mike Fries of Liberty Global, a cable giant. Laziness also mitigates the threat from piracy. Although many programmes are no more than three or four mouse clicks away, that still sounds too much like work for most of us. And television-watching is a more sociable activity than it may appear. People like to watch programmes when everybody else is watching them. Give them devices that allow them to record and play back programmes easily, and they will still watch live TV at least four-fifths of the time.

Yet these natural advantages alone are not enough to ensure television’s survival. The internet threatens TV just as much as it does other media businesses, and for similar reasons. It competes for advertising, offering firms a more measurable and precise way of reaching consumers. Technology also threatens to fracture television into individual programmes, just as it has ruinously broken music albums into individual tracks. TV has endured because it has responded better to such threats than other media businesses.

One of the lessons from TV is to accept change and get ahead of it. Broadcasters’ initial response to the appearance of programmes online was similar to the music industry’s reaction to file-sharing: call in the lawyers. But television firms soon banded together to develop alternatives to piracy. Websites like Hulu, a joint venture of the American broadcasters ABC, Fox and NBC, have drawn eyeballs away from illicit sources. Gradually it has become clear that these websites pose a threat to the TV business in themselves, and that they are not bringing in as much advertising money as might be expected (which is similar to the problem faced by the newspaper business). So television is changing tack again.

With impressive speed, TV firms are now building online subscription-video services. The trendiest model is authentication: prove that you subscribe to pay-television and you can watch all the channels that you have paid for on any device. Such “TV Everywhere” services are beginning to appear in America and Canada. It is likely that Hulu will become a “freemium” service—mostly free, but with some shows hidden behind a paywall. The move from an ad-supported model to a mixture of subscriptions and advertising is tricky, but logical. It shows that it is not enough to embrace technological change. Businesses must also work out how to build digital offerings that do not cause their analogue ones to collapse.

Television has domesticated other disruptive technologies. Ten years ago digital video recorders like TiVo promised to transform the way people watched TV. The devices made it easy to record programmes and play them back, zooming through ads. The TV networks responded by running advertisements that work at high speed. Cable and satellite companies built cheap digital video recorders into set-top boxes and charged viewers extra for them. In effect, money flowed back to the television business. In Britain those boxes will soon be deployed to deliver targeted advertising, enabling the living-room television to compete with the internet.

Other outfits are learning from TV. Record labels sound terribly innovative when they talk about bundling music together with broadband subscriptions. Yet this model comes from television. For the past few years ESPN, a sports giant, has been showing games on its website. The cost is buried in monthly broadband bills. Hulu-style joint ventures are all the rage in media, too. Magazine publishers have set up Next Issue Media, which is trying to shape the evolution of digital devices to suit their needs. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem aims to do the same for films.

That box might appear to be sitting in the corner of the living room, not doing much. In fact, it is constantly evolving. If there is one media business with a chance of completing the perilous journey to the digital future looking as healthy as it did when it set off, it is television.

Monday, July 19, 2010

YouTube Scores 101 Online Videos Per Viewer in May

YouTube Scores 101 Online Videos Per Viewer in May
Jack Loechner, Jul 16, 2010 08:15 AM
New data from comScore shows that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month of May. YouTube.com achieved record levels of viewing activity with an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos viewed and surpassing the threshold of 100 videos per viewer for the first time.

U.S. Internet users watched nearly 34 billion videos in May, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 14.6 billion videos, representing 43.1% of all videos viewed online. YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second, Microsoft Sites ranked third followed by Vevo and Viacom Digital.

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Videos Viewed May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)

Property
Videos (000)
Share of Videos (%)

Total Internet Audience
33,950,891
100.0 %

Google Sites
14,628,095
43.1

Hulu
1,174,844
3.5

Microsoft Sites
642,027
1.9

Vevo
430,257
1.3

Viacom Digital
346,755
1.0

Yahoo! Sites
336,314
1.0

CBS Interactive
333,189
1.0

Turner Network
331,897
1.0

Fox Interactive Media
328,492
1.0

Facebook.com
245,120
0.7

Source: comScore Video Metrix


Google Sites attracted 144.6 million unique viewers during the month, followed by Yahoo! Sites and Vevo.

Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers May 2010 (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)

Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Average Videos per Viewer

Total Internet Audience
182,918
185.6

Google Sites
144,550
101.2

Yahoo! Sites
46,031
7.3

Vevo
45,579
9.4

Facebook.com
45,492
5.4

Fox Interactive Media
44,266
7.4

Hulu
43,541
27.0

CBS Interactive
41,028
8.1

Microsoft Sites
39,416
16.3

Turner Network
35,307
9.4

Viacom Digital
34,572
10.0

Source: comScore Video Metrix


In May, Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 56.2% of the total video viewing audience, while ScanScout Network ranked second with a potential reach of 54.3%.

Top U.S. Online Video Ad Networks by Potential Reach of Unique Viewers (May 2010 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations)

Property
Unique Viewers (000)
Potential Reach

Total Internet : Total Audience
182,918
100.0 %

Tremor Media
102,787
56.2

ScanScout Network
99,290
54.3

YuMe Video Network
87,508
47.8

Adconion Video Network
86,641
47.4

Advertising.com Video Network
83,877
45.9

BBE
83,026
45.4

Break Media
80,869
44.2

SpotXchange Video Ad Network
76,734
41.9

TidalTV
69,640
38.1

BrightRoll Video Network
67,521
36.9

Source: comScore Video Metrix


Notable findings include:

•The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group), BrightRoll Video Network, and Tremor Media Video Network
•84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video
•144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (101.2 videos per viewer).
•The average Hulu viewer watched 27.0 videos, totaling 2.7 hours of video per viewer.
•The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Brands Offer Incentives for Location-based Check-ins

Brands Offer Incentives for Location-based Check-ins
Published on June 23, 2010
Share Brands such as Starbucks and Domino’s have pushed the concept of location-based marketing a little further with hard incentives.

Starbucks has introduced its first-ever national “mayor special” with Foursquare that rewards consumers - specifically, mayors that have checked in to the Foursquare location-based network at Starbucks outlets - with dollar discounts on Frappucinos. In the U.K., Domino’s has a Foursquare promotion running that offers free pizzas and discounts to Foursquare users who check in at its locations.

Now other less visible brands are following suit - and stepping up the concept a bit by rewarding customers for frequenting them through these networks through formal rewards programs. Tasti D-Lite, for example, has rolled out TastiRewards, a rewards program for customers to associate their Twitter and Foursquare accounts with their Tasti D-Lite membership cards. Customers can use Treat Cards - which also double as gift cards - to earn points for purchases, but those that opt in to the social media bonuses will automatically earn additional points, Mashable explains. Their Twitter and Foursquare accounts also get updated each time the card is swiped and points are earned or redeemed.

Bigger Picture

It’s the bigger picture that is significant for marketers, Mashable says as programs like these are an efficient way to tie social media to the bottom line.

“Imagine the data that Tasti D-Lite can now collect, analyze and apply to budget discussions around allocating resources to social media efforts. Will the company get accurate accounts on the quantity of tweets and checkins with card swipes? Absolutely. Can it quantify those social media updates with sales figures? Yes. Plus, it can track change over time, as well as the influence of these TastiRewards tweets and checkins as it pertains to growth of the program,” Mashable writes (via MarketingVOX).

WeReward

Another example is WeReward, a mobile app launched by social media firm IZEA that offers money to users for checkins. Basically, users snap a picture of themselves at the site and post it on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. Then they get paid - usually a penny per point but businesses can set other rates. One thousand points nets $10 through Paypal. Right now it is only available on the iPhone, but next month it is coming out on the Droid, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

“Our model is everyone gets compensated with cash,” Ted Murphy, IZEA’s founder said via the Sentinel. “What gets listed is based on who is willing to pay [users] the most.” Businesses like the data the app provides such as who checked in, how much they spent, other stores the users went to and what they bought there. Businesses could even contact the person through Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare, the Sentinel says.

The app also allows products to be listed - such as Jones Soda. Uses take a photo holding a sold anywhere and get a point.

Hulu, Google TV, And The Brewing TV "Desktop" Storm

Hulu, Google TV, And The Brewing TV "Desktop" Storm
Tom Wilde | Jul. 8, 2010, 10:50 AM | 808 | 7

The last twelve months has been one of the most remarkable times I can remember in terms of sheer innovation and disruption in the digital video market. The long awaited “watch what you want , where you want, when you want” vision seems to be closer to becoming reality than ever before.

Whether it’s subscriptions on iTunes, the ubiquity of video on demand from cable companies, the explosive growth of Hulu, the growth of broadband and fiber to the curb, or the fervent adoption of the iPad, the confluence of all the access, devices and offerings is making video everywhere a certainty.

These various armies of video enablement are marching towards a showdown that I believe will be the next battleground where video fortunes will be decided. This battle royale that I am referring to is for the control of the TV “Desktop”.

What exactly is the TV “Desktop”? It’s what used to be in the twentieth century the “Electronic Program Guide”, the dreadful scrolling interface we have all had to endure when trying to find a program to watch on television. It still lingers, but clearly its days are numbered. Its limitations became even more obvious and unbearable with the arrival of web search. There is a better way to search, browse and discover video content, it just has not found its way to the television yet.

While browser based (online) video is the current “shiny object”, watching television on the PC still pales in comparison to the amount of television watched on traditional networks and devices, namely your cable programming viewed on television. Getting the anywhere-anytime video to the TV is the Holy Grail for publishers and broadcasters, and the destination where everyone wants to get to, but only some will make it there successfully. As the multi-platform, multi-device world arrives, finding, organizing and searching for television content becomes even more crucial, and is equally critical real estate for everyone in the TV consumption value chain. I sat down the other day and wrote out a list of all the segments and players, and I was surprised by just how many are vying to control this valuable asset:

Next Generation Services: Comcast, Time Warner Etc.

Through their “TV Everywhere” initiative, they hope to be the gateway to all your TV viewing, regardless of platform or device. They control the pipe and critical payment and account authentication gateway and have the content relationships. Comcast is aggressively investing in the platform and data sides of their business, and the NBC acquisition leaves no doubt as to their belief that access to content is vital.

Next Generation Devices:

1) Traditional players such as Motorola and Cisco.

The set top box developers own a critical piece of the value chain, but their slow pace of innovation leaves them exposed, and they lack the relationships with the content providers.

2) New entrants such as AppleTV, GoogleTV.

These players suffer from the same challenge Tivo endured. Do consumers want another box in the living room to watch TV? The reality to date is that few consumers want to have several pieces of hardware in order to watch television. This was a big part of the reason Tivo struggled, despite having such a superior product.

3) Gaming Platforms including Nintendo, Sony, XBOX.
The biggest advantage here is that consumers have already added these devices to their consumer electronics “must haves” and they are connected to televisions, and increasingly, to the Internet. Streaming video to gaming platforms is growing explosively.

4) Consumer Electronics players such as LG, Samsung, Sony.

With 30MM digital TV’s sold each year, the opportunity around connected consumer devices is real. The consumer electronics brands want more than just a one-time sale. If they can generate some annuity revenue from some combination of content promotions, subscriptions, or a-la-carte content sales, their profits could explode. For mobile, the inclusion of an HDMI output on devices such as the 4G Sprint Evo creates fascinating opportunities to view the mobile device as a form of portable set top box.

Next Generation Middleware: NDS, Rovi, Hillcrest Labs.

These players develop the applications that integrate the content and metadata into an interface that can be used on the set top box. Owning both the metadata and application know-how combined with a datastream of user behavior puts them in a unique position

Next Generation Applications: Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Boxee.

The subscription movie cable channels like Showtime etc are terrified of Netflix. Its brand strength, ease of use and ability to go over the top has fueled its rapid growth. The risk is Hollywood decides it has too much channel power and begins to crimp its access to first run content. The others have access to content, and have seen tremendous growth.

Hulu, however is being pressured into a subscription model, suggesting the power that the content providers hold over its destiny. Boxee has run into barriers with the content providers. ESPN3, and HBOGo are examples of content companies going direct to consumers, albeit still in cooperation with the ISP’s. In ESPN3’s case, it’s via your ISP’s willingness to pay for it on your behalf, and ESPN3 broke records with its multimillion simultaneous streams of the US-Algeria game.


The weapons in the battle for the TV Desktop are varied, and will ultimately dictate the winner:

Access to content: without content, it will be difficult to create the value proposition to the end user.
Access to consumer: Most of the contestants described above believe they have access to the consumer. Whether it’s Apple via iTunes, Samsung via TV sales, or Microsoft via XBOX, access to the consumer is critical.
Metadata: All TV Desktops of the future will rely on a complete set of metadata. This metadata will not only need to include proper titles, descriptions, actors, genres etc, but increasingly will need to include frame level metadata to unlock future advertising, search, and content recommendation opportunities.
User Experience: The experts in online consumer experience bring a lot to the table competitively, with Apple and Google obvious examples.
Channel dominance: While not providing an insurmountable barrier, channel lock certainly helps, and the cable companies and set top manufacturers will be difficult to displace.
Regardless of who wins, it looks like consumers are close to having a new interface for television that matches the experience they have come to expect on the Internet, and the value of the TV Desktop will ensure an epic battle over the next few years.



Tom Wilde is President and CEO of RAMP. RAMP is the definitive Content Optimization platform solution for major publishers, media companies, and broadcasters, which provides customers with workflow, discovery and engagement solutions to drive monetization of online content.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-coming-war-for-your-tv-desktop-2010-7#ixzz0tCU6LRop

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Don’t Look for a TV in Television’s Future

Don’t Look for a TV in Television’s Future
By NICK BILTON

Illustration by Nick Bilton/The New York TimesI have seen the future of television, and it doesn’t involve a television.

Growing up in England, I remember intently following World Cup soccer; we called it football of course. Back then, my viewing and engagement options were few. I could watch games live on the TV and follow the scoring brackets in the newspaper the next morning.

The way I have followed the 2010 World Cup is totally different — not only from my experience in England watching the 1982 and 1986 Cups, but also from any way I have experienced any other live television to date.
During this year’s games I followed along on Twitter and Facebook; on Twitter, I wrote a post, Goooooooool!!, when teams scored, and I vented about bad referee calls.

I checked in to games on Foursquare, joined chats on HotPotato and commented in real time with friends, family and strangers from here to Timbuktu, literally. I watched real time stats, graphics and professional commentary on iPhone apps, and read live blogging on The Times Goal Blog.

I also watched the game everywhere but on standard cable television: on my iPhone at a park streaming through Mobi TV, in the corner of my computer screen at work from Univision (shh, don’t tell my boss) and on ESPN through a computer hooked up to my standard TV at home.

I even watched a portion of a game from work last week while video chatting on my mobile phone with friends who were watching at a bar.

Just four years ago, during the previous World Cup, practically none of these options existed. The iPhone was a figment of the nerdosphere’s imagination; Facebook was still largely a college network; the word “Twitter” probably evoked the thought of birds; and no one was streaming live sports over the Internet, even illegally.

But now this is the way many people follow the Oscars, political debates and long-running news stories.

In 2014, during the next World Cup, the fully augmented experience of the South Africa games will likely seem as dated as 2006 does to us today. By then, products like Google TV, Boxee or Apple TV will likely replace the cable box in many living rooms with a Web-enabled viewing experience. New iterations or versions of Twitter and Facebook will exist.

The 2010 World Cup, and the sphere of digital interactivity that has surrounded it, offers a glimpse into the future.

Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers, Snaps up Snarky Woot

Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers, Snaps up Snarky Woot
Published on July 02, 2010 | Comments: 0
Online retailer Woot, one of the first websites to sell just one product at a time until the item runs out or until midnight of the next day, has been purchased by Amazon.

Terms of the agreement were not announced. Woot will continue to be run the way it has always been run, says CEO Matt Rutledge (via Sci-Tech Today), “with a wall of ideas and a dartboard.”

Woot, which calls itself “an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap,” has about 2.75 million registered users.

Snarky Business as Usual

Woot will remain substantially the same, wrote Rutledge in a memo to employees. “From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk.”

Amazon Courts Impulse Shoppers

Amazon tends to be a destination source for people who know what they already want, while Woot is “about persuading you to buy something you didn’t even know you needed,” says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst covering ecommerce for Forrester Research. The Woot deal will help Amazon attract shoppers that the company has so far not been able to capture, Mulpuru says.

Amazon has been Woot’s sole outside investor. Last year, Amazon purchased Zappos.com for $847 million, and in 2008 it purchased Audible for $300 million.

Email Drives Social Networking Use

Email Drives Social Networking Use
Published on July 06, 2010
Share Email can drive social networking use, says digital marketing firm e-Dialog.


Email was clearly the primary driver to social networking activities, participants in the Global Perspectives study said. Overall, 53% said email sent to a personal account was the primary thing that drove them to social networking activity, writes MarketingCharts.

Respondents also stated that they sign in directly to social networking sites (35%) and that SMS mobile messaging also drives them to social networking activity (19%). Consumers in Asia-Pacific selected email to a personal account (42%) and direct sign-in (31%) at the highest rates, while for North American consumers, these drivers were less popular, at 25% and 23% respectively.

Email-Inspired Purchases Prompt Further Research

In addition, two-thirds of consumers indicated that email-inspired purchases have prompted them to further research a brand and its products while more than half say it spurred a peer recommendation. Moreover, roughly half of consumers revealed they are willing to act as brand advocates in order to connect email content, such as special offers and promotions, to social networks. This activity is highest in Asia-Pacific where the number of consumers indicating such behavior exceeds the global norm.

This indicates a clear opportunity for companies to maximize their marketing investments by connecting email to various digital and offline communication and commerce opportunities, e-Dialog says.