PERSONALIZE MEDIA

Humans love to work through problems. When we were producing early broadband and interactive TV services at the BBC from 2000-4 it came as a big surprise that outings such as Test the Nation (IQ), maze games and video/audio ‘observation’ quests (Mammals, Pyramid, XCreatures, Death in Rome and later Spooks) drew such loyal and ’stick-at-it’ audiences - sometimes 4 million playing for 90 minutes solid! Retention and engagement remained high but most importantly the audience keep coming back for more. This continued in other more advanced pilots such as my Top of the Pops which had word puzzles, video observation quizzes, multi-choice (level based as the show progressed) and so on. Give people puzzles and they will consult with each other, help each other and try to be first - oh and want to win prizes/recognition Tailor made for Web 2.0.

TwoWay TV of course built a mini empire around the ‘casual gaming’ industry around the same time - and they are still going strong into on-demand, IPTV environments. Which leads to the focus of this post - cross-media puzzle solving and an interesting article from late last year in the Australian Age - more below.

I stumbled (literally via the firefox plugin of the same name) across the Google personalized homepage feed for the Da Vinci code. Clicked a couple of times and voila there it was mixed in with all my serious media feeds. I played for a while but was less interested in the first square puzzle grid - which although was fun I just didn’t have time (the reward for me taking part was also not clear - untold riches doesn’t cut the mustard), what was more interesting was the fact that the TV in the corner of my lounge suddenly blurted out a Da Vinci Code scratchcard promotion. The same branding, similar puzzle symbols etc: strange coincidence, strange timing. What is going on? Later on in the evening I was checking out the trailer for the movie via my 29Guide iTunes feed (which actually was downloaded on the 4 April) but compelled by my cross-media exploits I wanted to check out the movie. (I have struggled through the first half of the book finding it a little dry, hoped that the movie had some ‘colour’). The trailer focused on the strong set-up, true to the book’s enigmatic death in the Louvre. Again rather bizarrely on the TV (we all multi-task at home don’t we?) a variation on this trailer appeared, at the same time! Perplexing indeed, has someone connected my browsing habits to broadcast adverts? Now that is what I call personalization The thing that intrigued me with the video podcast trailer (apart from the lack of a URL - although everyone just googles movie titles nowadays anyway) was the three sets of symbols interspersed with the trailer credits at the end. This drew me into my own webquest on why they were there. Embedded calls to action? I eventually ended up in a rabbit hole of endless sites giving commentary about the concept (fact/fiction), numerous puzzle solving spoiler sites, many sites that spoofed the whole thing, several mash-ups (such as the auto Dan Brown book fun generator) and on and on. I also came across several blogs and funny spoof videos that may or may not be centrally controlled, and then the launches of the Sony/Kayak mobile game, the commissioned PS2 console game - all before the film is out. We then get the DVD, extras, various on-demand offerings and so on. The film is tailor made for casual puzzle game exploitation for sure!
But..after my little user journey I suddenly realised that there is such as thing as cross-media overload. If you try to be everywhere all the time you can actually water down what could be a very constructed and tightly managed enigma surround your property. I also found a very useful article from the age entitled “The Vampire Code“. It refers in some detail about the ‘marketing techniques’ (the real world term for cross-media viral distribution) for the book.

Everyone in publishing insists that the only reason for Dan Brown’s sales is word-of-mouth. But his word-of-mouth was nurtured by a massive pre-publication campaign and amplified with television exposure, media momentum, cross-media tie-ins and even plain old advertising. While many mid-list books struggle for any crumbs of exposure in review pages, many publishers look to The Da Vinci Code for clues that will unlock the secrets of bestsellerdom.
Dan Brown’s fourth novel was launched on March 18, 2003, backed by a $500,000 television campaign, unheard of in the book world. This built on several months of advance hype - an unprecedented 10,000 cheaply printed copies of the novel had been given to American booksellers by the end of 2002.

So the freebie, get them addicted model (read my Media Addiction post) still works combined with a ‘look-we-think-this-property-is-important-look-at-this-expensive-ad-campaign’ strategy. The article then goes on to point out the need to embrace the other many forms of ‘word-of-mouth’ blitz - give stuff free to those who shout the loudest (not rocket science!)

“Publishers are still coming to grips with the internet, and we see the same cautiousness when it comes to the bloggosphere,” says Cunnane. “But they’re wrong, totally wrong.”
She believes the way forward is to send books to bloggers, to start conversations with readers online, even to publish whole books on the net.

I suppose this post is similar to my previous post in that there are many techniques to reach fragmented audiences today and there will be many more layers to come BUT be very careful about adopting all of them. The science behind cross-media exploitation is still young (fellow LAMP mentor Christy Dena highlights existing models in a talk from last week) and the scatter-gun approach shows both an element of panic and certainly immaturity but more importanly will confuse an audience if not done with careful planning. Poor marketing (be everywhere all the time) does not work in a world where ‘being everywhere’ IS the actual experience for the audience.
Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

We are all familiar with the flood of ‘heritage’ media channels moving into on-demand and digital streaming video and audio distribution. TV channels make the most noise, then there is the tidal wave of user content, we have heard that radio, telcos and web portals of course are creating specific content for on-demand too. It is great to see that a new kid has finally jumped on this band-wagon and are attempting to become video servers.

This report from Media Post talks about what could be the ‘killer’ guest to join the party - niche magazines. Uncreatively entitled “Mags Use New Video Platforms To Become TV Channels” the item talks about several ‘passion’ mags taking the plunge.

IN A SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT, NICHE publishers are utilizing new video platforms — both broadcast and broadband — to become television producers. Primedia today unveiled plans to create a new broadcast TV channel based on its popular Motor Trend magazine. However, the new channel, Motor Trend TV, will take advantage of the new multicast broadcast spectrum that some stations will create by compressing their digital broadcast signals into multiple, lower definition channels. Primedia said it is partnering with Multicast Networks Group (MNG), a company specializing in network distribution via the new digital broadcast spectrum, and that the new channel would launch as a 24-hour network in 2007.

I think the infrastructure and readership learning around niche magazine production, especially the focused advertising that plays a major role, actually gives magazines a real advantage in this new era of rich media distribution. Of course they do need to recruit staff who understand the craft of moving visual production, but there are plenty around, believe me! The article continues to point out that a few magazines are dipping their toes in the water via YouTube and Google Video, which also makes sense - the free CD on the front of the mag always drew me in to buying the item on the shelf.

Another related development from Media Post also is the fact that eBay is teaming up with ABC to create a reality show around the all encompassing auction site. Another originally titled article “eBay Makes Bid For Reality TV, Prime-Time Show Will Air On ABC“  the driver that surfaces is of course advertising and brand placement. Expect to see hundreds of variants on this theme - reality shows being about reality, where the reality is more and more people spending their real lives using broadband for example

In order to boost a family’s chance of making its dreams come true, producers are expected to seek product tie-ins, for which companies would donate items to be placed up for bid to help the family raise money. For example, a family seeking to revamp a Little League baseball field might benefit from items donated by Major League Baseball that could be placed up for bid.

The real advantage the mag industry have though is the existing audiences globally for niche mags. They understand their readers, they have always had a two way relationship but more importantly are able to identify audience shift pretty quickly - imagine if every mag on every shelf in the newsagents around the world had a corresponding on-demand audio/video service - now that would be something to give the TV channels a run for their money. In the distant future of course we may be buying connected digital paper magazines, where personalized, niche content is delivered directly to your always-on broadsheet - but for the moment, one revolution at a time.
Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

A fabulous, clear page from David Sifry on the growth of the blogosphere as at April 2006. His exec summary:

In summary:

• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

I like the phrase 50,000 per hour, suddenly quantity measurement turns into speed - but I digress. Here shamelessly is the chart that most astounds me from his posting (note this is an image link not a copy locally onto my server - David will understand)

The other chart that fascinates me is the peak chart on his page. It certainly shows the psychographic, gadget/nerd make-up of the audience (hence ‘boing boing’ being top dog most of the time) when iPod video and intel mac announcments get more daily posting peaks than Live8, Indian Tsunami and Superbowl.
I am trying to work out where this is heading. It is curving upward in true exponential fashion. Does this mean everyone on the planet will have their own online journal in a few years? Will the tools become so commonplace that we have it built into every device, speech to text, or even every device has an IP address that can be accessed from anywhere. If you allow it your digital video camera has a ‘allow/disallow’ function. In WiMax zones around the world your content can be picked up from anywhere else. Why bother publishing it when the raw content can be perused. Perhaps intelligent edit algorithms built into ‘capture’ devices simply make just the good bits accessible. A world of every device IP connected. Bits of peoples lives captured transparently in fragments across this sea of devices. Agents piece together stories, mashing together these fragments (with user consent) to be shared, instantaneously globally. Anyway that’s to come - for the moment here am I typing text into wordpress, movabletype, blogger etc: It’s easier than it was - but my word is it going to get easier!

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

It seems social networks and user generated content that pervades them is now most definitely the next advertising dollar frontier. As reported by MediaPost, MySpace is about to create TV programming around it’s uploaded videos and start to introduce major media buy within that.

The enormously popular social networking site is working on deals that, Gold says, would extend the life of a TV sponsorship for a marketer, “integrating social networking into the TV show and their traditional TV buy.” All this would expand the life of a TV deal from “30-seconds to 3-months,” he added

MySpace now has 77 million members, mostly younger users, and is adding 230,000 or more a month. It has been touted as an emerging powerful tool for youth oriented marketers.Already some 100 advertisers regularly buy into the site including Honda Motors, Toyota Motor Sales, Wendy’s International, and Cingular Wireless, to name a few. Additionally, MySpace already has many deals with TV networks, which sponsor the site.

Simple - get the ads to the where the eyeballs, ears and index fingers are, certainly to where audiences are most attentive, in their trusted social networks. How long will they remain trusted though? How many uninvited guests will it take before MySpace turns into TheirSpace?

Another report from the Center for Media Research actually starts to quantify the UGC ad world. I copy the exec sum below:

Blogs, Pods and Really Simple Stuff Deliver Advertising At An Increasing Rate
…reports that advertising spending on user-generated online media - blogs, podcasts and RSS…has grown to $20.4 million by the end or 2005. Spending on blog, podcast and RSS advertising is projected to climb another 144.9% in 2006 to $49.8 million.
Some of the key growth drivers are continued audience fragmentation, the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, and the desire to reach the elusive 18- to 34 year-old demographic.
Other key findings included in the Executive Summary:

• User-generated media remains primarily national in scope with 98.1%, or $20.0 million, of all advertising spending coming from the broader market in 2005
• Advertising networks and click-throughs are the largest ad insertion methods, generating $8.0 million and $7.8 million, respectively
• Blog advertising accounted for 81.4%, or $16.6 million, of total spending on user-generated online media in 2005, but blog ads will comprise only 39.7%, or $300.4 million, of overall spending in 2010
• Podcast advertising totaled only $3.1 million in 2005, but is projected to reach $327.0 million in 2010, when it will account for 43.2% of all user-generated media advertising
• Spending on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) advertising totaled $650,000 in 2005 and will grow to $129.6 million in 2010
• Total spending on user-generated online media is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 106.1% from 2005 to 2010, reaching $757.0 million in 2010
• Technology was the largest single category at $4.0 million in 2005, due primarily to the technology-savvy early adopters of user-generated media
• Auto was the second largest marketing category, generating $3.9 million in 2005, as car manufacturers utilized user-generated media to market their higher-end models to the “influential” demographic
• The media industry spent $3.2 million to advertise in user-generated media in 2005, as the industry tried to capitalize on its advanced knowledge of the consumer shift away from traditional media

It is no surprise that blogs and podcasts look like the major ad spend in 3 years time (70+%) but I really think, returning to the first part of this post, that UGC TV will be bigger. Whether delivered to your portable media player, broadand TV or PC, the appetite for original, unlimited programming will mean a vast audience exodus from traditional ad placement areas and I suspect this will include static and dynamic (non-rich media) web pages.

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

Another Milia-post break so I can add the next in the ‘Media Journeys’ episodes started a few weeks ago – epiposts? I had a seed sown (read: scribbled on the back of a programme!), during Milia, of a simple evolution of media and associated receiving devices. My diagrammatic excursion below is not intended as a catch-all - it doesn’t look at the many media forms across the devices (that is in part 3) but plots time against portability and interactivity and at the same time look at 4 continuum – moving image, computing, voice communication and games. There are other ‘Moore’s law’ elements I would have like to have added but you can take them as read that the big three (storage, bandwidth and processing power) are all increasing up and to the right.

Before we continue a couple of important points. 1. This is a blunt, industry perspective so it is intended to be simplistic 2. The word convergence is never intended to suggest replacement (ie: everything is moving to one entity, point). ALL, I repeat ALL of the elements on the charts are still in existence and apart from VHS and DVD will be around for a good while. We also see ‘divergence’ of media forms as it morphs across a sea of devices that continue to grow, layer upon layer.

Chart One – Simply the axes of Interactivity (level of choice and engagement) on the x and Portability (personalisation, ownership) on the y.

Chart Two – The addition of a subtle chronology rainbow of the last 100 years of media or so. It is surprising when you see the next few charts how the introduction of key devices map exceedingly well against this timeline. The never ending rush to portability and interaction/communication.

Chart Three – This is a quite specific ‘moving image’ continuum mapped across the grid. Starting from the one to few cinema in the 20s, from one to many broadcast TV in the 40s, going through the capture and playback VHS and CD/DVD in 60s and 80s through to portable Personal Video Recorders iPods and other media players 2000 onwards. Part metaphoric also for other linear forms as radio/audio follow the same path.

Chart Four – A simple chronology of computing, from the desktop of the 70s through to the portable journey of laptops, PDA’s and connected devices of the last few years

Chart Five – Without looking too deeply into VoIP this contains only two elements. The moderately portable landline telephone (meaning you can make calls from phone boxes, cafes, various rooms in house) to the ultra portable true mobile really introduced in the late 80s.

Chart Six (click on image for larger version)– The basic evolution of early games consoles and set-tops rooted to the TV then the portable journey to today’s portable games units, from Sony and Nintendo for example.

So there we have it if you click on the final chart you will get a higher res version to explore in your own time. A few of the elements don’t line up completely (not sure a video iPod is more interactive than a laptop for example, or all the games units more interactive than communication devices etc:). One could get overly detailed but my real goal is to raise what we actually think the ‘?’ will be. That character on the top right of the chart. In the portable domain will we always have separate phone and serious gaming device. I am not sure. We are already seeing the merging of the phone, organiser and media player (8GB phones around the corner folks) – given you can dock these portable devices to the larger screen, carry all your content and that they can receive high definition TV, do we need fixed devices at all - is there a sweet-spot device? The charts do hopefully raise this point. In Pt 3, I map media forms in a similar way, the difference between individual form, services and formats, keep watching.

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

I had a minor eureka moment at Milia, suddenly the new mobile kid on the block was exposed, naked with all the acne and teenage angst that every immature platform goes through - clear for all to see. I gave the mobile, or rather the content that us humans have so far designed for it, the benefit of the doubt for many sessions at Milia. On our portable new toy these sessions ranged from specific business models for mobile, purportedly innovative content pitches, showcases of the best content and endless references in keynote sessions to this revolutionary platform. On the exhibition floor we had the likes of Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Orange showing off the latest toys for boys. Then of course we had the commercial food fight sessions that goes on with new platforms – as the very clever Mark Halper said in his introduction to Mobi Wars session…

“a 42 billion dollar market by 2010…putting aside the sad anthropological fact that this turns our species into one born with gadgets in our hands, the question becomes who will make money? Mobile entertainment as the phrase plainly tells us joins together two powerful industries accustomed to calling their own shots. Entertainment and mobile. Think Murdock, think Vodaphone. Now get them chasing 42 billion dollars together and they start to look at each other kinda funny. To summarise it both want 70%. This may be new media but it’s not new math. “

Regardless of the fact that some services started on mobile and then went to TV/PC, my sense of disbelief finally broke at the Content 360° Pitching Session: Total Mobile & User Generated Mobile Content. I suddenly came to realize that regardless of the endless “made just for mobile” or “unique world first experience” mantra that permeated most of the presenters talks, 95% of the content experience was in fact not very good, poor. Poor, to the extent that all the formats were borrowed directly from daddy TV or their older sister ‘broadband. PC’ unchanged. In these early days, run by marketers after early big buck and brand positioning and NOT true creatives the quality of services we must expect will indeed be copycat and souless. So some of my ‘exposed’ services include:

1. The TV Reformatters. VJ Search from Chum TV (who sell programmes to 130 countries worldwide) for example. Reality shows ‘as TV’ but on your phone. ’10 finalists fight it out…’ you get the idea. To be fair there were tens of you vote for this then that type services – proud that they are really using the communication capability of the phone but most proud that things are actually working! That is obviously a major factor – before we get creative, lets make sure we get real – and it is so easy to copy existing formats.
2. The Straight Reversioners. Vodaphone talking about their ‘variety packs’ of mobile TV channels “its about content not channels”. TV straight onto the phone. Full length movies, Eurosport simulcasts, 24 mobisodes etc: Vodaphone Germany have over 30 TV channels and on and on. Several of the network presenters reminded me forcibly of BskyB in the early days ‘its new, lots of choice, delivered in a new way…’ and more marketing hype but it is still TV as you already know it Jim.
3. The Same Olds. There is nothing new under the sun as I saw the upteenth CDROM-type service reversioned for the mobile phone, yet being praised for it’s innovative idea. There was the alphabet learning game, or the recipe book online or how about navigating through short video clips.
4. The Wannabees. There were several ‘virtual’ so and so type services and quite a few ‘mobile episode’ services (one day someone should join those two words up and charge people for using it . For example “PS I Love You” from MediaCorp– very culturally targeted, aimed at an innocent, teenage Asian audience. The thing that struck me with this and many others with this and a couple of similar services was the middling production value but poor script, direction and little edutainment value (cutting corners abounds).
5. The PC on your Mobile’rs. Several projects talked about UGC and mobile. How mobiles are story tools extraordinary? They are but in the wrong hands things can go horribly wrong. Several pitches and commercial services struck me as straight lifts from PC. Time Capsule, effectively video nation on your mobile, or an endless range of send in your ‘audition’ clip for a range of be a celeb services – your 15 seconds of fame in many cases.

There was hardly any content that drew gasps of approval from the audience. Several examples produced laughter though – for the wrong reasons.

Now I am sounding terribly old school here are some of my favourites. They are still only 60% there but at least they feel they are in the right direction.

1. Paul Bennun, Somethin’ Elses – a user generated TV programme. Basically passionate viewer comments about a range of topics compiled for peer review but presented in a more unique way, without the feeling that this was PC reformat. There was an observational quiz programme, although nothing new, used the audio strengths of the mobile to a great extent and the video just supported that and posed questions that often required a second playing – keep the money rolling in guys!
2. Pieto Bezza from Neo networks in Italy showed a half-game, half drama service called Video Partner. It premiered in March 2003 on 3 in Italy now on Orange in Israel. You effectively navigate through a range of short clips (after an mms, push, call to action) to either woo a man or woman (non-porn, aimed at Italian adolescents) – learn how to be nice to the opposite sex, kind of thing, in the privacy of your own hand. Pieto called it a video adventure (copyright the expression now Pieto!) Who could you play with (as a man) “we have Sarah, a dancer, or she wants to be. Then we have Julia, the next door, innocent, pretend to be innocent, student. Then we have Rebakka, a sensual foreigner…” Quite a complex hierarchy, you choose an option from a multi-choice at the end of each video clip – “what should you say to her after a failed dance audition for example’…although the production value was low there was something game-like about it that almost worked.
3. I would have liked to have seen more personalized, targeted services. Ones that know you, give you a unique experience (in the context of this blog) – but none spring to mind, in fact there just weren’t any – and that was sad. Still years away from those heavily personalized mobile experiences, perhaps it is time to move some of my ideas into the market
4. Judy Gladstone from Bravo!Fact in Canada showed some very personal and poingnant cell phone video shorts that they commissioned as part of ChumTV shorts. Here the audio and textual overlay played a significant role - a multi-dimensionalism was created vs a flat reversion relying heavily on video only. She talked in two sessions about cliff-hangers and the cross-media implications of this - but there is a fine line, it felt good from the personal story aspect but I kept flicking into this is self indulgent new media arts/poor UGC mode too.

There were very few services that used the locative capability of the phone combined with DMB (left image) but ‘our friends’ from Tasmania had some great ideas, which is why they won the pitches I believe – what is it about Tasmania – perhaps the distance from the market gives them big picture advantage, over to you Mr. Gurney! Mip/Milia was mass market stuff after all and it is very easy for academics and experimental labs to point the finger (dear me that is what I have just done!). Across 3G point-to-point, broadcast and synch mobile services there is such a long, long road ahead. Then there is media and hardware convergence. I say media convergence, which was used in the wrong context several times, but from a perspective of mobile media convergence…as a successful new format comes along it will be duplicated from many carriers and providers around the world, bandwagon convergence.
I know from personal launch experience that early ‘mass audience’ launches does require lowest common denominator thinking, reduce the risk by reducing the number of variables that can go wrong. Add to that pure greed, yes lets be clear on that one, and you have a recipe for mediocrity. (As a tangent I thought it hilarious that there was serious discussion about Fox asking for a fee on their earlier trademark of the term “Mobisode” - several presenters were a little concerned about using the term in public as the royalty amount was not yet made public – greed indeed, shame on you Fox.)

Back to the mantra, it doesn’t matter that it was “made just for mobile”, well in fact it does because to be honest the production value and conceptual depth made most of it look like a series of cheap pilots that TV companies would turn down in a second – so it could therefore ONLY be made for mobile. It also reminded me that, back to my opening statement as an adolescent platform, in the commercial world at least mobile has no true identity and it heavily borrows from its older media family – one day it will leave the nest and stand-alone. I expect I will be part of that evo, sorry revolution.

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

Some more words of wisdom from Gary Carter CCO of Freemantle that should have been in a previous post. These are from the final q and a and even though the questions are a little shallow the answers offer a simple ‘manifesto’ for traditional producers looking down into the black hole of digital cross-media entertainment.

How do you change the way you do things?

“That will happen by itself. Really what I am trying to say to you is that there is a distinction to be made between the entertainment that is going to be experienced on other media apart from television. Sooner rather than later I do believe that forms of entertainment will emerge that have little to do with television and a lot to do with the medium that carries them. That’s the particular area that I am interested in. I don’t have any answers though.”

The threshold for tolerance for someone watching a smallish screen form of entertainment vs sitting on your couch with a plasma. Will it be that a 30 minute show will translate to your iPod or do you think audiences not have that kind of patience that we see with a two hour feature film ?

“I have my suspicions that they will only want to consume the 2 hour feature film in certain circumstances on a very small screen or at least versions of it on a very small screen. But that is simply to use all these new devices as a distribution medium for existing content which is perfectly valid but it is not what I am about. I would prefer to think ‘what type of content would make an audience sit and want to watch a small screen for two hours’ if it were possible. But I don’t think it is going to be content that is going to come from a different form.”

What are you trying to develop (paraphrase)?

“I am trying to develop entertainment properties which are in part application and in part content – to the extent I want them more content than application. I am not primarily going into the software business but I do understand that the development of any kind of entertainment, or entertainment form will have to include some kind of software development itself. I am very interested in exploring ways in which audiences can generate their own content and invent their own rules for what they do with material in a given set of circumstances.If you look at Flickr for example, a photographic database on the web, but in my opinion it represents a paradigm for new entertainment. That you may say is surprising. Flickr is a place where amateurs and professionals can store their digital photographs online. It is a huge database but it has two interesting features. First is you can tag your photographs with your memories…and other users can tag with their memories. People started to use it for different things. Firstly it became a community which requires a certain degree of participation in the content. Secondly they started to use it in ways that people hadn’t quite imagined it would be when they first put it up…something else has started to happen. The users themselves are starting to generate their own games out of the rules of flickr. They are starting competitions to tell the best story from photos in flickr. They are starting to elaborate competitions and content of their own by playing with the rules of flickr itself. That for me is the definition of modern entertainment in this environment. The makers of flickr have made a gesture towards the audience, the audience has picked that gesture up and they have started to explore the possibilities. So the people who run flickr rather than being producers of entertainment are more like curators in this kind of environment – and I think that’s very, very significant…

I am not trying to challenge television at its heartland. In fact I am really trying to specifically get away from the conversation about television and what kind of content will be distributed on other technological devices. I think we as people who work in the media industry have to rethink the nature of our engagement with the audience.”

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

More to follow from Milia once I have tidied the rest of my notes up but I have been compelled to join in the blogosphere murmur, nay chatter about the turning point that happened today (Here are some of the reports MediaPost, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo!,). ABC to offer its top programmes online, free.

I am speaking at a small digital distribution seminar here in Sydney tomorrow and one of my key points is that advertising is still the biggest factor in legal media distribution.ABC/Disney have announced that the morning after all their new and popular programming (Lost, Commander in Chief, Desperate Housewives etc:) you can get them free over the web. If you think this sounds like a good deal (bit like the IMP from the BBC) don’t expect it to be ad free. From Yahoo!

The shows, being offered by the Disney-ABC Television Group, will be supported by advertisers, including AT&T Inc., Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Unilever PLC, among others.

The advertisers are falling over themselves to simply be where the eyeballs are. As legal digital distribution catches up with good old (user unfriendly) bitorrent the transition from scheduled to on-demand viewing is now becoming a race. If this was a cartoon race the slow shuffling down the lanes keeping an eye on one other has turned as one of the runners looks forward and begins to jog.

The strategy behind this is simple - if they (old biz model broadcasters) don’t move now then existing online portals (eg: MSN video, Google etc) will beging to develop their own ‘video content’ brand and place in the market - and attract the big ad revenues. Already advertisers all over the US have stated that their money is being channeled into online video distribution and away from traditional broadcast - so it seems obvious that broadcasters move their brand across to keep their hands on that ad dollar, before it is too late.

What this means is of course is that other fta broadcasters will start to jog forward, online will become a mass of free, ad funded (read: ad full) content, delivered through branded (albeit on-demand) channels - doesn’t sound that much different from the old model Almost feel as if individual content owners have missed their chance yet again - over to the aggregators and their 70%…

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

Following on from a couple of posts ago on the theme of how we are going to find stuff in the sea of content, one of the other overriding themes of Milia (and the Mip market) was that of the deluge of viewer created content coming over the horizon. Every panel talked about or referred in passing to vlogs, video, audio and picture messaging, mash-ups, good and bad short films, citizen journalism and so on. Some panels took it very seriously, others (mostly the older execs) talked about it being a superficial, fringe activity and unlikely to affect their business (we won’t see them around for long then).

A couple of keynotes and panels addressed the issues head on. Gary Carter, Chief Creative Officer for FreemantleMedia gave a slightly irreverent but highly witty, surprisingly educational keynote/lecture (refering to sociohistorical tech, comparing with Orson Welles and a handful of philosophers) on the wonderful, cross-platform, democratised future we are all entering into. Called “Whose TV is it anyway? his intro poked fun at the ‘death-of…” brigade – (parts sounded similar to one of my rants in the EPIC post on the same issue some months ago).

“these days, when I turn on the television, when I listen to the radio, when I listen to the radio on the web, when I watch the news on the web, when I read the newspaper, when I read the newspaper on the internet, when I read my email alerts on my blackberry, my rss feeds, when I click on google, when I listen to a podcast on my iPod, I hear and see the following messages…reality television is dead, 30 second commercials are dead, broadcasters are dead, old business models are dead, schedules are dead, tv is dead, everybody is dead except iTunes (audience laughs)…and except technologies companies, who are the new broadcasters, and brands who are also the new broadcasters, content is king and of course gameshows, gameshows are back”

His talk whose title was loosely based around the stage play “whose death is it anyway” gave a tantilising glimpse on where Freemantle particularly will be putting many of their eggs in the future…another quip “if TV is going to die, to paraphrase Joey from Friends, how will we know which way to face out furniture”.

More seriously he tried to work out what exactly we mean by the death of television and how statements like this are a nonsense misnoma. “Do we mean the device or the form…if we look at the history of mass communication technology we can learn some interesting lessons…the only mass communication technology in history ever to be replaced was the telegraph, and it can be argued that that was not mass communication”. He then got into the over used term UGC –

“We don’t own creativity. Now that audiences have the same tools as us, its only natural they want to do what we do. My advice is this” before you issue a writ, just remember that copyright was initially introduced to stimulate creativity”.

More from Gary at the end but this leads into a specific panel (not the BBC 360 content pitch on UGC) but one moderated by the transformational Brian Seth Hurst. His panel (which included David Jensen) hit upon the same themes as Gary Carter but talked more about the practicalities of engaging with the social network, getting viewer trust and some of the rights mechanics of UGC. The Panel User Generated Content: The Next Big Thing in Media? Had Simon Assaad (Heavy.com), Andy Grumbridge (Channel 4 UK),, Alex Kummerman, (Clicmobile France), Phil Jones (Extreme Sports - perhaps the first user generated brand) and David Jensen with his 12th Street Jam, Yahoo! hat on.

Simon announced like David Jensen that they will be launching a video rich upload area of the service, in this case ‘myheavy, in June of this year.

“the ecosystem of community and user generated content, is something that involves users, platforms, editorial outlets and it also involves advertisers, that really helps make the whole thing run - from our point of view we are trying to put something in the hands of users that no only gives them a way to get noticed because the currency of user generated and community is really attention. – that’s really our job to facilitate how can they get attention and then leverage that into something else – getting paid, new job, another career, people looking at them and getting credibility in their peer group”

Andy from Channel 4 of course talked about the relationship they have with their audience through such initiatives as 4 docs and Slash music. He didn’t really throw any nuggets of wisdom into the pot but simply that they found it quite easy to ‘set-up’ the scenario’s, make it easy for anyone to take part and present the output in a compelling way and the users will follow.

David Jensen’s offering was more in the self-help, transformation space through shared story domain - he said there are comedy propositions which he didn’t show. The ‘Principles’, aims to work in communities using video arts techniques to help people document their lives. He played the trailer, which possibly was the Yahoo! pitch? Here is an excerpt…

“I want to hear your story and I want to tell you mine. You could give it a fancy name like social networks or something but really it is just our basic need to communicate, connect and identify with one another. We tell stories at 12th street Jam and we use technology so that after you hear our story you can share your own, discover yourself…Principles are based on Patrick Moore’s self discovery book of the same name. Patrick believes in the principles of 12 step recovery to address their day to day problems, the key is to do it with another person…the first principle is surrender, in other words, giving it up…”

The panel talked about the perennial issues of moderation, quality and filtering, making the users think it is their brand and rights/money issues. I asked the panel in a web world of hundreds of portals asking for user content for their top three tips to engage and get video contributions…David Jensen replied

“In the case of 12th St Jam and in relation to some of the data Yahoo! shared with us is the need or desire for users to bring life around the stories and not just through text and graphics. That is one of the most compelling reasons. I also think that when someone quoted that 99.99% of the content may not be usable but for certain select audiences I think it is very powerful and very usable and very inspiring. A lot of this content is from a youthful demographic and they have grown up with this technology and they want to own it and they are going to respond back to it. But even broader and niche groups who you think may not want to respond, at first they participate and then maybe eventually they will respond to contribute video stories. We need to think about building a broader demographic around UGC”

Alex from Clicmobile added “I think one of the dynamics of UGC comes from this idea of social networking. One of the first really strong things of social networking is to first build your profile, say who you are. The second thing is to build a buddy list with whom you will exchange information and be visible with your friends. The third step when you are visible, a small star among your friends then you continue the process and build content.”

Finally back to Gary Carter trying to get a handle, a term on what professional producers actually do in this world and after a few jokey false starts ended up with “to acquire and/or develop popular entertainment with audiences in an altered context.” Some final portentous words that sum up why the power is now in the hands of the audience -

“The reason were all struggling to identify new business models is because the audience hasn’t told us what they are yet. TV will continue to grow, but we need to rid ourselves of past expectations of what that means”

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006

Of the nineteen, yes 19, presentations I attended at this years Milia my favourite must have been the Mobility and Content: Entertainment Everywhere! Held in the Esterel on Thursday morning – this panel seemed to cover all the main emerging media issues with ease, not tied down to a specific theme they handled the revolution without resorting to too much retrospect. The other two panels in this area, MobiWars and Developing Cross-Platform content I refer to briefly below.

Mobility and Content was excellently set-up and moderated (in a flowing vs sequential way) by Jessica Sandin (Fathom Partners) and the particular combination of Patrick Walker (Google), Ilkka Raiskinen (Nokia), Paul Bennun (Somethin’ Else) and Gerard Grech (France Telecom) had most bases covered – content, search, telcos and mobile.

It didn’t get too toys-for-boys, gadget talk and I include a few quotes from the presenters from my audio notes.

Jessica Sandin 190 million broadband connections,

“Apple has fuelled the awareness of portable digital content…look at the figures in some more detail 42 million iPods by January,2006 1 billion songs via iTunes…23 songs per device, maybe iTunes not as big as we think…3 million video capable iPods equates to around 5 videos per device…but Apple has created an awareness about portable digital content….Looking at the whole mobile industry, mobile phones 2 billion, 42 million iPods, 50 million PSP’s not all are multimedia enabled – only around 4% are 3G…the jury is still out on how successful mobile entertainment will be.”

Has convergence happened or is it hype?

Paul Bennun “The last time I came to Cannes I came to Milia. This it is MipTV featuring Milia so if you believe in the genius of the market convergence has happened”

Patrick Walker (after polling the audience) “Its definitely happening and it has been happening for a long time. We are all here representing companies that are reactive and proactive in serving consumer needs and they are demanding it, an exciting space to be in…the difference between then and now is that we are entering what I would call the perfect storm, bandwidth is increasing, the cost of bandwidth and devices are decreasing and the rights holders are being more flexible about delivering across platforms…”

There was a significant amount of obligatory discussion about reformatting and relevance to cross media devices and their strengths. This included talk about length of linear content, the associated ads and how many different versions you need to make. Ilkka from Nokia chirped in”

“I echo what is said early but will add some more data points. We have been running mobile TV pilots globally now and have received final results from four of the pilots, Spain, Finland, UK and France. Whats interesting is that the average viewing time is pretty stable at around 20 plus minutes per day…so as a content provider you need to optimise your portfolio to that experience. Also interesting is that it adds to the consumption patterns. Typically on TV you have the morning and evening TV peak and the mobile ad opportunities in-between to take advantage of that and it puts pressure on your content and services…”

Gerard Grech (France Telecom) “Talking about different formats for different devices a good example is when we did a recent sports event. We had HiDef MP4 on IPTV, then on PC with windows media and we had it streamed on packet video on mobile phones. The experience was different given the device that the consumer was accessing the content. On IPTV we had a very interesting mosaic with different camera angles, on mobile we had the highlights because we knew people were snacking and wanted to know what the score was and on PC it was between the two, people like to browse, read what other people have been saying about the game more community features…your formatting the content and what you wrap around the content to different devices and that is something you need to think about…if you propose something to an operator like us…think about what you offer but what else you offer in addition to that”

Then things got a little more interesting when distribution rights appeared in the discussion: a panellist came out with the standard “content once its created wants to go everywhere” Paul Bennun replied:

“over reliance on DRM is creating customer confusion, it means I can get it on this device and not that device, at this price point here and this one there…it is massively confusing, its massively restrictive and it is stunting the market, the way DRM is currently being deployed does not work.”

The metaphor of boats sailing by – that we are locking down content too restrictively and consumers are looking elsewhere turned into these being pirate boats and un-controlled super distribution. All panellists agreed that some content should be given away free, now particularly advertising full content. Illkka lightened the discussion with an exercise in definitions

“…different platforms with different rules. This is not a sustainable situation. I have been discussing with several people, what is this device (holding a Nokia N92, mobile TV, phone) is this a mobile phone or a mobile TV and then depending on what we decide there will be different rules….in different countries, different rules, historically we have attached rules to different distribution mechanisms…that whole paradigm is changing, consumers do not believe they are buying the content for the platform, they believe they are buying it for themselves. If that angle is not part of the discussion in how we solve this then we are creating a kind of priest-like ‘ohh this is a mobile tv, this is a phone’ it is going to be really really stupid”

The discussion moved via Google into people power, consumers driving prices and user generated content. Consumers will create stuff they want if we, the media, do not, because they can now. Google said their role is to simply facilitate this, suggesting I felt with or without the so-called professional media makers.

I asked a question about a converged device and what might be a common format device in the future, a communications device that acts as your mobile PVR with a few hundred GB of storage and can dock to larger screens, all your personal, vlog, feature film and TV content (they/we want content they own in their/our hand) – used my old iPod content-to-go model combined with mobile phone…Patrick from Google replied

“I would love one of those. You made a really important point when you talk about portability, mobility, you said dock it to the TV right. How many people have an iPod and have docked it to their stereo to get a higher fidelity sound at home or in a hotel? (All audience raise hands) See. You have really got to think about portability in terms of circumstance…storage devices are getting much less expensive. The storage for the PSP was more expensive than the device originally, that will change, the ability to store and take as long as the device has upgradable memory”

Illkka then did a sales act on me and said they have a dockable TV device using ORB to share and move content around via WiFi. Very cheap. Paul then pointed out the fact that automatically you can use RSS to capture content via bit torrent that will sync to your iPod completely illegally and many people are doing this already. Circumvents all business models being discussed in other panels. The boats are again leaving…the discussion went on in a lively way referring to mash-ups and the value of UGC etc:

Another panel in a similar domain was Mobiwars – content owners through to telcos and mobile virtual network operators…Mark Halper a Freelance Journalist had a few interesting opening tips and moderated a difficult panel very effectively. This one was how content producers can get money without going through a mobile operator portal:

1 – Distributing via text message, direct download
2 – Your own mobile portal – delivered via a mobile friendly website
3 – MVNO, mobile virtual network operator, rent mobile capacity to sell your content
4 – Rent wholesale access to networks – sell content at a fixed fee (not traffic fee)
5 – Transferring content via PC to phone
6 – WiFi signals,
7 – Using broadcast signals to get content to handsets
8 – Advertising sponsored content, without or within the operator portal

Overall the mobile TV, VOD panels suggested there is a great deal of confusion in the market highlighted by Ilkka from Nokia who said old distribution business models are being broken down and consumers are circumventing these in the market. What fun it is in the grey zone of media transition

Posted by Gary Hayes ©2006