Ubiquity of Content--Producers' Perspective

Your attention may also have been caught, as mine was, by a headline in AdAge MediaWorks (subscription required) a few days ago; “Consumers to Watch 25% More Video a Day in Five Years: Viewing on Computers, Mobile Phones Will Drive Increase.” We all know that video has become an indispensible part of the Internet landscape. This incredible rate of growth has implications beyond video itself to all types of content.

Users expect content to be “any time, anywhere, on any device” more than ever before. And that’s putting strain on marketers to meet their demands in ways that advance marketing objectives. A recent study of media and entertainment executives by Accenture sheds more light on the issue. Their results point to the importance of multi-platform distribution, an open model of content sharing, the importance of digital royalty (revenue) management and a common understanding of intellectual property.
The concept of an open model of content distribution deserves attention. It’s an enterprise concept, not free provision of content. According to a 2006 white paper by PricewaterhouseCoopers, “in order to create shareholder value, companies in the content, technology, and distribution sectors must adopt an open business model, eliminating internal walls between business units and external ones between the company, its partners, and other strategic business allies.” This clearly refers to the creators of content who have already begun to distribute content to users through various channels. To better understand the strategic implications for enterprises, the entire 62-page PWC report is worth reading.

Consider these charts from Compete on two major content creators for TV--NBC and Fox--and the growing share of some of their programming on video-streaming site Hulu. Interesting, isn’t it, that the share of comedy viewing on the Internet is considerably greater than for dramatic programs. Wonder what that implies? Demographic differences, certainly, but probably more.
The Accenture study suggests capabilities that are necessary to accomplish media convergence within the enterprise. The point








being that unless the internal barriers can be broken down, the “anywhere, any time, any device” needs of the user cannot be met. The content companies in the Accenture study believe they have organizational capabilities in place to meet those needs. How many product or service companies can say that they have organization-wide understanding of intellectual property rights, the necessary IT architecture, integrated management of their digital assets, the necessary customer data and insight and a way to track the revenue produced by their content? Accenture believes that content companies are not as far along as many believe they are in this difficult organizational transformation. I’d suggest that even fewer product/service companies are dealing with issues of how to use content to best advantage.

I’ll conclude this segment with a quote from a US media executive in the Accenture report:

“You must break the innovators dilemma and walk away from old paradigms…you must have a keen focus on determining what consumers really need and what makes their lives better.”

I’ll continue with an installment on what consumers really do want.

Read Part 2 here.

Is Media Convergence Really Happening?

This video from AlwaysOn discusses disruptive change in media and looks at where media business models may be going. The kind of convergence they are talking about is the increasing media and marketing integration between traditional and online media. Or you could simply describe it as “survival”—see the newspaper headline in Friday’s post!
View the video here.

The venture capitalists at the AlwaysOn network survey media industry leaders and what they found is not hugely new but backs up the contention that new media is on the move. It doesn’t illustrate the fact that old media is behind much of the growth in new media, but it (necessarily) is. News of venture funding for Glam and British network Adicon makes the connection.

With that in mind respondents to this survey forecast that the move to new media would continue unabated. They believe that neither advertisers nor their traditional agencies have a good grasp on how to take advantage of changes like social networking or how to get a satisfactory ROI on their expenditures in new media. Other posts on this site discuss the need for better mobile standards, but nonetheless respondents see the mobile web assuming greater prominence in the near future. See all the survey results here.

Convergence is one description of what is going on. It’s not hardware convergence—everything available on a single device. The variety of content has probably outgrown that type of convergence. But media are coming closer to a seamless ecosystem in which users can get the content of their choice on the device of their choice at the location of their choice. Is that the ultimate goal or a milestone on the way to an even more disruptive innovation?
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Computing (and Ads) Everywhere

Talk about your captive audiences! Yesterday the Hawthorne Videoactive Report highlighted results from Nielsen Media Research that found 70 percent of respondents recalling advertising seen on gas pumps. Even more impressive, 84 percent said they will pay attention to the next gas-pump advertising they see. When you’re pumping your gas, you truly are a captive market! But think about how many other times that is true—at the ATM, standing in line at a retail store, stuck in traffic on an urban expressway.

Also think about how often you are willing to use free-standing kiosks to perform a routine task—checking in for a flight and placing your deli order in a supermarket come to mind. Staples recently announced a new customer service application that uses in-store kiosks to connect shoppers with product experts at other locations. I remembered a store associate using something similar to find out if the items I wanted were in stock, so I went down and took a look. I found 2 kiosks where you can scan items to get the price, one where you can design your business cards and saw that they called their self-service copiers “print kiosks.” Their applications seem to be a mix of sales and service.

More broadly, the WSJ’s Walt Mossberg (subscription required) says the iPhone points to a wave of “multitouch” items we can expect to see blossom in the near future and gives some examples in an accompanying video.

The big kahuna of this set of products is Microsoft’s Surface computer. Microsoft describes the product as multi-touch, multi-user with ability to recognize different objects and provide direct interaction. At about $5,000 per screen not many of us will have a surface computer coffee table soon, but you will see them in locations like Harrah’s Casinos and Starwood Resorts.View the video here.

Service and sales applications of multitouch devices suggest intriguing possibilities. The eventual advertising implications are unclear. Just how many times, in how many places are we going to be willing to accept advertising before we completely tune it out? The limit seems to be a moving target, but new devices and channels heighten the need to provide more relevant and engaging messages for an already-jaded public.
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