future of media: 10 top tips for mobile apps

Mobile applications are high on every digital marketer’s agenda at the moment. But what exactly are they for and how can you get the most out of them?

Following on from our ten things you absolutely have to know about mobile advertising right now, the IAB has once again collaborated with our mobile council and other IAB members to come up with ten things you absolutely have to know about mobile applications right now. 

1. Only do apps when you need more
Compared to browsing, mobile apps offer a richer level of user interaction allowing more complex graphics, media and information to be presented. They also provide a more robust and secure environment for user engagement. But, if you can deliver what you are trying to achieve through a browser you will be able to reach far more consumers. 
Jeremy Copp, CEO, Rapid Mobile Media

2. Tell people about your app 
Don’t just rely on app stores, you can distribute apps via mobile sites, operators and through multiple ad placements and formats for maximum impact and reach. 
Theo Theodorou, EMEA Sales Manager, Mobile Advertising

3. Think further than the iPhone 
The iPhone offers fantastic functionality for developers and users alike, and apps developed for the platform are eminently PR-able, and are often shared virally. It has a fast growing user base, and reaches relatively wealthy 25-44 year olds who actively use mobile media very well; but also developing a java version, optimised to work over a wide range of handsets including BlackBerry will give you a far greater potential reach. 
Mark Angell, Business Development Director, Marvellous

4. Getting the balance right
There are 2 fundamental balances to achieve. Firstly, business objectives vs user needs-for the application to be effective the business needs must carefully consider the user as well as commercial objectives. Secondly, the three E’s (Engagement, Entertainment and Effectiveness)-functional apps often outlast the usage of entertainment based apps. 
Paul Taylor, Strategist & Planner, COI

5. The average app user 
There are 8.7 million people who have used a downloaded app in the UK which is 18% of mobile users. 60% of these users are playing games that they have downloaded. The median age of an apps user is 32 years old and 43% are female. 36% of app users own smartphones compared to 15% of the total market. 
Alistair Hill, Analyst and Mobile Products, Europe, comScore

6. Brand-building vs sales 
Free applications get the most downloads, where as paid-for applications generate revenue. Knowing whether you are branding or selling is a key point when launching your first application. 
Ross Butler, Creative, Parrott and Miller

7. Product longevity is essential 
Every service needs a roadmap, no matter how basic. Customers will quickly get bored with a uni-functional app which has no new features or capability added over time. By adding functionality as time goes on you can create brand advocacy. 
Christian Harris, CEO, Gorilla Box

8. Send them in the right direction 
Ads in existing applications are a great place to advertise, but make sure that the destination site is optimised for mobile. If you don’t then you risk low conversion and a poor perception of your brand. 
Jonathan Abraham, Brand Sales Director, AdMob

9. Test, Test and Test again 
If a customer can access it on their handset it needs to work. If it doesn’t it will do more damage than good to your brand. Invite feedback and always read customer reviews (don’t just ask friends to write them!) to ensure you’re meeting the needs of your consumer. 
Oliver Newton, Head of Emerging Platforms, i-level

10. Be on brand 
Just like with any form of communication ensure that your app is ‘on brand’. Tone of voice, brand values, message, production values and brand fit are essential in making a great brand app. 
Kieron Matthews, Marketing Director, IAB

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http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/theiabsguidetomobileapplications010909.mxs

feed the conversation – you can’t control it

‘Feed the conversation – you can’t control it”  - is the title is from a recent presentation I gave at the world magazine conference. This article from the Economist seems to back that thinking up…

THE race is crowded, but San Francisco stands a fair chance of becoming the first major American city without a daily newspaper. The San Francisco Chronicle, founded in 1865, is trimming its already pared-down staff in an attempt to avoid closure. And if it does disappear? “People under 30 won’t even notice,” says Gavin Newsom, the city’s mayor.

Most industries are suffering at present, but few are doing as badly as the news business. Things are worst in America, where many papers used to enjoy comfortable local monopolies, but in Britain around 70 local papers have shut down since the beginning of 2008. Among the survivors, advertising is dwindling, editorial is thinning and journalists are being laid off. The crisis is most advanced in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but it is happening all over the rich world: the impact of the internet, exacerbated by the advertising slump, is killing the daily newspaper.

Does that matter? Technological change has destroyed all sorts of once-popular products, from the handloom to the Walkman, and the world has mostly been better for it. But news is not just a product: the press is the fourth estate, a pillar of the polity. Journalists investigate and criticise governments, thus helping voters decide whether to keep them or sack them. Autocracies can function perfectly well without news, but democracies cannot. Will the death of the daily newspaper—the main source of information for most educated people for at least the past century, the scourge of corrupt politicians, the conscience of nations—damage democracy

Picked apart

A newspaper is a package of content—politics, sport, share prices, weather and so forth—which exists to attract eyeballs to advertisements. Unfortunately for newspapers, the internet is better at delivering some of that than paper is. It is easier to search through job and property listings on the web, so classified advertising and its associated revenue is migrating onto the internet. Some content, too, works better on the internet—news and share prices can be more frequently updated, weather can be more geographically specific—so readers are migrating too. The package is thus being picked apart.

The newspaper’s decline is both cause and effect of the worrying finding by the Pew Centre that the number of Americans aged 18-24 who got any news at all the previous day has dropped from 34% to 25% over the past ten years. But that figure may be less troubling than it looks. Because newspapers pack together all sorts of different content, many of those who claimed in the past to have seen some news probably did so for a few seconds before turning the page to the sports scores. Acquaintance as shallow as that with the news is probably no great loss to society; Pew surveys of general knowledge suggest that young people are about as well (or badly) informed as they used to be.

And the newspaper companies’ tribulations do not necessarily presage the demise of the news business, for they stem in part from the tumultuous and expensive transition from paper to electronic distribution. News organisations are currently bearing two sets of costs—those of printing and distributing their product for the old world, and providing digital versions for the new—even though they have yet to find a business model that works online.

Up to now, most have been offering their content free online, but that is unsustainable, because there isn’t enough advertising revenue online to pay for it. So either the amount of news produced must shrink, or readers must pay more. Some publications, such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, which has more than 1m online subscribers and has just promised to develop a new system of micropayments for articles, already charge for content. Others will follow: Rupert Murdoch, the Journal’s owner, has said he expects his other titles to start charging too. With news available free on Google and Yahoo!, readers may, of course, not be prepared to pay even for deeper or more specialised stuff; but since they do in the paper world, where free-sheets and paid-for publications coexist, there seems no reason why they wouldn’t online.

Better mobile devices may encourage them to do so. Apple’s iPhone is the first reader-friendly mobile phone, and the latest update to its software, due shortly, will enable news providers that currently give away content on the iPhone to start charging for it. Amazon has just unveiled a new, larger version of the Kindle, its e-book reader, better suited to displaying newspapers. Similar devices are available from other firms, with many more on the way. Better technology coupled with new payment systems will not solve the acute problems faced by newspapers today, but should eventually provide new models to enable news to flourish in the digital age.

And already, there are signs that it will (see article). New sources of news are proliferating online. Many, it is true, are unreliable. Most are badly funded. Some are the rantings of deranged extremists. But some—like Muckety, an American site which enriches news stories with interactive maps of the protagonists’ networks of influence, and NightJack, the revealing and depressing blog of an anonymous British policeman, which won the Orwell prize last month—enhance society’s understanding of itself, and could not have existed in the old world.

But the only certainty about the future of news is that it will be different from the past. It will no longer be dominated by a few big titles whose front pages determine the story of the day. Public opinion will, rather, be shaped by thousands of different voices, with as many different focuses and points of view. As a result, people will have less in common to chat about around the water-cooler. Those who are not interested in political or economic news will be less likely to come across it; but those who are will be better equippe

the future of media

I thought I’d share this from http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/17/jump-into-the-stream/

 

Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages. Web companies large and small are embracing this stream. It is not just Twitter. It is Facebook and Friendfeed and AOL and Digg and Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop and Techmeme and Tweetmeme and Ustream and Qik and Kyte and blogs and Google Reader. The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness. 

 

This real-time stream has been building for a while. It began with RSS, but is now so much stronger and swifter, encompassing not just periodic news and musings but constant communication, status updates, instantly shared thoughts, photos, and videos. 

 

What does this mean for how we will come to consume information? John Borthwick from Betaworks has identified the real-time Web as a key investment opportunity (Betaworks portfolio companies include Twitter, bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Chartbeat, and Tumblr). He admits he and other investors are still feeling in the dark, but he describes the shift he is trying to capitalize on this way in a post titled “Distribution . . . now”:

 

First and foremost what emerges out of this is a new metaphor — think streams vs. pages.

 

In the initial design of the web reading and writing (editing) were given equal consideration – yet for fifteen years the primary metaphor of the web has been pages and reading. The metaphors we used to circumscribe this possibility set were mostly drawn from books and architecture (pages, browser, sites etc.). Most of these metaphors were static and one way. The steam metaphor is fundamentally different. It’s dynamic, it doesn’t live very well within a page and still very much evolving. 

 

A stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.

 

In a sense, he is trying to rationalize his investment strategy. But if he is correct, the shift from pages to ever-widening eddies of information will have a dramatic downstream impact on many Web businesses, especially media businesses. This rising stream has the potential to fundamentally change the contours of media distribution on the Web. Large destination sites like Yahoo and AOL, already weakened as distribution hubs by search and social networks, now face the prospect of becoming completely bypassed. No wonder AOL is sticking the stream in every part of its service, from its homepage to Bebo to AIM. (Yahoo is grappling with the emergence of the stream as well, but so far still thinks it can hold onto its place as a central traffic and distribution hub).

 

The stream does not replace Web pages or search, for that matter, but it has the potential to completely transform them. Already, we are seeing Web pages adopt the stream as a new user-interface. Web pages are increasingly being designed as places to present the most relevant streams of information. And with streams of data “>spreading everywhere, search actually becomes more important than ever as a navigation tool. As Borthwick points out:

 

Traffic isn’t distributed evenly in this new world. All of a sudden crowds can show up on your site. 

 

Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled. 

 

The problem, more than ever before, becomes one of information overload. How do you keep from drowning in the deluge? Borthwick suggests letting go of teh notion that you can ever master the stream, even just your own personal data stream of friend’s Tweets, updates, blog posts, Flickr photos, YouTube video finds and so on:

 

This isn’t an inbox we have to empty, or a page we have to get to the bottom of — its a flow of data that we can dip into at will but we can’t attempt to gain an all encompassing view of it. 

 

So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge.

Media trends 2010

 

Media trends 2010 – Editors become Curators, Art directors become Experience Directors…

- In the very near future we will see traditional print based and multi-channel content Editors become Curators. We will also see Art directors evolve to become multi-channel ‘Experience directors’

- editors will routinely, not only create (commission), but also co-create (with consumers) and most importantly curate. They will make ‘sense’ of the ‘information network’ for their communities (brands’ customers).  

- Marketing will become ever more focussed on creating engagement – creating engaging time spent with a customer who has infinite choices and is on an infinitely networked journey

- Engagement it is not about tricking people – it’s about creating a strategy based on why people would want to spend time with (and therefore share your) brand. 

- Marketing will be increasingly about creating conversation between brand and customer – therefore creating conversation between customer and customer  

- This will be achieved via a variety of immersive techniques – e.g. content, interactivity and utilities.

- Technology advances, specifically ubiquitous hi-speed wi-fi broadband, will facilitate seamless visual and interactive communications that connect with core human emotions.

- and finally, remember “achieving the integration of your brand into a conversation between two people in a relevant and meaningful way is the pinnacle of marketing”.

 

Below is an article by Jeff Jarvis in The Media Guardian which points to how this is already happening in the world of news journalism

In Mumbai, witnesses are writing the news

Jeff Jarvis

The Guardian, Monday December 1 2008

Article history

Moments after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai began last week, Twitter exploded with messages. Prasad Naik, AKA krazyfrog, tweeted: “Firing happening at the Oberoi hotel where my sister works. Faaak!” Next, he reported that she had called and was safe. Then: “What the fuck! I just heard a loud blast! What the fuck is happening in Mumbai?” He was near a taxi blast in suburban Vile Parle. Nine hours later, his sister was home and he tweeted: “She saw piles of bodies. The Oberoi hotel guests. Staff members from her own department. All dead. Right in front of her eyes.”

The witnesses are taking over the news. That will fundamentally change our experience of news, the role of witnesses and participants, the role of journalists and news organisations, and the impact reporting has on events. Mumbai – like the Sichuan earthquake – brought reports from witnesses via Twitter and blogs. Both then appeared on traditional media as online witnesses were quoted and interviewed. The novelist Amit Varma wrote of surviving the attack in a nearby hotel and because of that spoke on CNN. Photos from the scene filled Flickr and showed up on newspaper sites and TV screens.

On all these services, people nearby and then worldwide – not witnesses – had an urgent need to share what they knew. So on Flickr we also saw screenshots from TV screens, and on Twitter we heard repeated news. There was a need to organise all this disorderly information. Wikipedia’s users did a remarkable job of updating its snapshot of current knowledge. Google Maps users annotated the geography of the story. The citizen-powered news sites GroundReport, Global Voices and NowPublic also gathered reports. All this created the need to pursue rumours. The blogging journalism teacher Amy Gahran tried to track down unverified reports that the Indian government had asked tweeters to stop reporting from the scene so as not to inform the terrorists.

These are all journalistic functions – reporting, gathering, organising, verifying – that anyone can now take on. Traditional news organisations will still perform these tasks, but in new ways. NYTimes.com posted a front-page notice asking witnesses in Mumbai to send reports. The Guardian, CNN, and other news sites instead curated what was popping up on Twitter, Flickr and elsewhere. In the future, I believe, organising news will be the most important role of news organisations.

At the next huge event, we may see the next step in this rapid evolution of news: witnesses will not only use their phones to broadcast live video. I’ve spoken with engineers at a phone manufacturer working on software to enable assignments to be sent to people at the scene: imagine being able to find who is near a news event, collecting their perspectives, even quizzing them from afar.

The last mass-news story was 9/11, packaged from a distance. The 7/7 attacks on London and the 2004 tsunami then brought the perspective of witnesses via their cameras. The Sichuan earthquake and the Mumbai attacks brought the urgency of Twitter. The next news story will be seen live and at eye level.

Ever since I survived the 9/11 attacks, and later saw the coverage the world saw – smoke spied from rooftops miles away – I have made sure to always have a camera with me, as the view of the story from the ground was so different from that seen on TV. Now I carry a mobile phone that can capture and broadcast text, photos and video immediately. If I’d had that then, the image I would have shared would have been the image I most remember – not of smoke and helicopters, but instead of black tear-tracks on the face of an African-American woman covered in the grey dust of destruction. Such will be our new view of news: urgent, live, direct, emotional, personal.

 

• Jeff Jarvis blogs at buzzmachine.com

The future of media

Hulu to Match YouTube’s Revenue: Ten Observations For The Future of Media

- by Publishing 2.0

An analyst at Screen Digest estimates <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74ab11da-b415-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c.html>  that in “2008 YouTube will generate about $100m in the US, compared to about $70m at Hulu <http://hulu.com> . Next year both sites will generate about $180m in the US.” That’s very significant because YouTube had 83m unique viewers in the US in September, while Hulu only had 6m. Here, in no particular order, are ten observations you could make from this data, which speak to the the future of media:

1. Professional content still has A LOT more value than “user-generated content.”
2. Legal content still has A LOT more value than illegal content.
3. Professional content produced for analogue media is worth pennies on the dollar when distributed in the web’s commoditizing content marketplace.
4. It probably costs a lot more than $180 million to produce the content on Hulu, which means that it’s not a standalone business.
5. Ads inserted into online video are about 1,000 times more annoying than TV ads (I say this having watched many shows on Hulu) — losing control of your content is not a web-native experience. This suppresses advertising value.
6. TV/Video will likely follow the path of music and newspapers in suffering a dramatic decline in content value on the web.
7. Video is probably not a panacea for newspapers trying to reinvent their businesses on the web.
8. Most analogue media businesses, when fully transitioned to the web, will likely bear little resemblance to the original businesses.
9. Google isn’t doing any better than anyone else at solving the content commoditization problem on the web.
10. Six years after Google perfected search advertising, there has been no innovation in online advertising that even comes close to the same scale. 

http://publishing2.com

what do you think?

Media content: from controlled to distributed

In case you missed this here’s a speech made by YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley – 16 Oct 2008…

 

A Brave New World – The Future of Managing Content

I would like to share with you a quick story that many of you may already know. 

A small group of innovators introduce a new technology that has the ability to entertain and engage people on a massive scale. Advertisers willing to risk money on this untested platform are hard to come by. Content owners are reluctant to embrace it for fear of alienating their existing audiences. And experts hail this new platform as signaling the demise of another.

As some of you may have guessed, this is not only the story of YouTube. The year is 1941, nearly 70 years ago, and CBS has just launched its new television network amidst cries that it means the death of radio.

From the printing press to the blog, from the record player to the iPod, and from the stage to the home theater, the way content has been produced, distributed and consumed in the world is constantly evolving. 

The challenges we face today are not new. Today, my keynote kicks off the digital portion of this conference. I would argue that the difference between this part and the part that preceded it is semantics. We are all – digital or otherwise – confronting the same challenges and we should all be searching together for common solutions. We must embrace this new chapter, as those that came before us embraced theirs 67 years ago. 

The digital age has brought with it great change and great challenges; to some it brings the goal of global content distribution closer. For others it represents a loss of control and maybe the loss of a business model. As this era accelerates – as content moves from controlled to distributed, as we migrate from a single platform delivery model to multi-platform delivery, as the world changes around us – we need to ask ourselves: can and will we adapt to this new paradigm? Are we the drivers of change, or will change drive us? 

I am here to say that we want to continue to be your partner. We want to continue to work with you – the content owner – to make smarter, more informed decisions about managing and distributing your content. Many of you have already recognized the power of online digital distribution. Companies like CBS, the BBC, HBO, Sony BMG, North One and AFP just to name a few, have already joined us. In fact, yesterday we announced a major partnership with RAI, one of Europe’s biggest broadcasters. Italians have been passionately embracing our platform, discussing current affairs and enjoying performances from local talent. With RAI on board, users will be able to watch some of the most popular professional Italian content on their computer screens. And today, we are happy to announce a partnership with European powerhouse Panini. We look forward to working with both companies to provide the online content their audiences are demanding.

For those of you wary of this new, decentralized distribution model, understand that the technology exists to give you the control you need. And by opening your content to digital distribution, as so many content providers have already done, you gain unprecedented reach and scope to touch new audiences around the world, anywhere and anytime. If you embrace this opportunity, you will evolve your business model and find new channels and opportunities to deepen engagement, discover new viewers and find new, substantial revenue opportunities. 

Ultimately, we all need to embark on this journey together. We cannot retreat from technological advances. Even if YouTube didn’t exist, other platforms would surely be driving this change.

There was a time when a centralized distribution model was relevant and effective. But if you listen to your audience; if you hear what they are telling you; you will understand that the days of the centralized distribution hub are ending. Your audience – today’s consumers – want access to content on PCs, TVs, mobile phones and social networking pages. And contrary to what some believe, the internet doesn’t take viewers away from traditional broadcast. As the President of NBC Research told the New York Times a few months back: “The Internet hardly cannibalizes; it actually fuels interest.” In fact, reacting to a recent Forrester study focused on engaged viewers of online video, executives from ABC, CBS and MTV all agreed that online video was adding to their total viewership rather than taking away from it. So the question before you today is: do you circle ranks and push back against the surge of change? Or, do you open yourselves to the promise and possibilities of globalized content everywhere at anytime on any device?

This world may appear chaotic, but it can be harnessed to your advantage if you’re willing to think outside the single platform delivery model. We need to continue to work together and find ways to open your content to the world, and do so with the standards, protections and strategy in place that gives you control and satisfies your audiences. Opening your distribution will give you a greater presence than ever before. And you will be able to manage your content in a way that generates new channels of revenue and taps into emerging and explosive markets, in the same way that companies like CBS and RCA, under the leadership of visionaries like David Sarnoff, did so many decades ago.

This new world is not without its challenges. The concerns that some of you have are very real. Does digital distribution mean that you lose control? What about the quality of online content? 

Does the digital distribution model make sense? These are all valid and familiar questions. 

The truth is that the long-anticipated convergence of TV and the computer is happening faster than anybody predicted. It’s happening now. Let’s look at just a few data points on this:

So online video is here to stay and evolving faster and in more dynamic ways than anyone imagined, even a few years ago. As for the business questions: the market potential of online video distribution may be in its early stages, but it’s here and growing fast.

- The online video advertising market is set to be worth over a billion dollars by 2010, will reach over $3 billion by 2012, and over $5 billion by 2013

People want solutions for searching, discovering, watching, and interacting with video. And you, as content providers, are looking for new audiences and new revenue channels. Given these demands, how can we take advantage of this massive market opportunity? 

Let’s recognize that video captures the visceral, dynamic quality in life and shares it with the world. This has driven YouTube’s exponential growth in the last two years. Again, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s the equivalent of Hollywood releasing more than 57,000 full-length movies every week. Hundreds of millions of people come to YouTube every month to search, discover and share this content with their friends. 

For you, the content owners, online video provides big opportunities across the 4 Rs: Reach, Research, Revenue, and Rights Management

First, online video provides massive and targeted reach to hundreds of millions of viewers. And we’re making those videos and communities even easier to discover. Online video also provides content owners with an opportunity to extend their brand, reach new consumers, and tap new revenue opportunities, which I’ll discuss later. For this group, online video provides the benefit of longer viewer engagement with greater frequency across multiple channels.

In August of this year the International Olympic Committee launched nine Channels on YouTube. Through our platform, the IOC offered this year’s Summer Olympic Games to a truly global audience across 78 territories in Asia, Africa and the Middle East for the first time in Olympic history. Hundreds of millions of people around the world were able to engage and experience the Olympics online, many of whom never had never had the opportunity to see the Games on their televisions. All of this took place while NBC, the broadcaster that owned the rights to the Olympics in the US, effectively used our Video ID technology to monitor and quickly block copyrighted Olympic content uploaded to the site.

Second, research provides a new breed of analytic tools that dive into who, why and where your content is being watched.

The products and features being developed by online video providers continue to evolve. For example, the American rock bank Weezer launched their music video “Pork and Beans” on YouTube resulting in over 4 million views in just two days. Using our sophisticated analytics tool, the band was able to then get an in-depth look at the video’s views. This data provided an online focus group of sorts, enabling them to prepare more effective and powerful marketing campaigns. It even helped Weezer understand where their videos were being watched and then plan their upcoming tour.

And third, global distribution and analytics tools give advertisers and content owners fresh channels of revenue on new and existing forms of content. Advertisers want simplicity with reach. Online video does this by combining reach beyond TV, with the targeting, reporting and accountability of sophisticated online advertising tools and analytics. Online video began as a playground for advertisers where they could test ideas, drive brand awareness and create consumer engagement through clever viral video campaigns. In the current economic climate, this platform also provides advertisers with an affordable distribution channel and metrics to help gauge the success of a campaign and drive engagement numbers up. 

As some of you may have heard, last week we announced a groundbreaking deal with CBS to test full-length feature programming on YouTube. We also designed a new video player to provide the best possible user experience when watching this long-form content. With nearly 80,000 subscribers in their Channel and 250 million views, CBS has received a strong, positive response from the YouTube community around the quality of its programming. Under the terms of this latest deal, CBS has added more than 80 full-length shows to their Channel, complementing the more than 9,000 short-form videos already available. CBS will be selling its own advertising inventory on YouTube. This arrangement allows CBS to aggregate their ad inventory across the web to increase their reach and levergae the strength of their sales force.

An then there’s the fourth “R”. And I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that one. Of course, I’m talking about rights and rights management. From the very beginning, we’ve been committed to working with content owners to make sure YouTube remains a platform for distribution, not unauthorized uploads. In fact, over 300 media companies, including NBC, RAI, Formula One, the Olympics and Lionsgate are using innovative products like YouTube’s Video Identification tool to better manage their presence on our site. Along with the other tools in our Content management system, Video ID helps content owners decide whether to block, promote, or even generate revenue from their content.

The European Commissioner for information, society and media, Vivian Reding, recently hailed YouTube as a great example of how content producers and service providers can work to benefit each other through our Video Identification technology, saying: “The Youtube platform tells the rights owner if his content has been uploaded to Youtube. He then has a choice: leave it up as it is, add advertising – thus monetizing the content- or requesting that the content be taken down.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. And we will remain committed to introducing these types of protections tools in the future. 

Ultimately, the online video experience is about empowerment. Consumers of online video are empowered to be their own content programmers, consuming the relevant mix of mass, niche and personal media they demand. Advertisers are empowered through data to better understand and engage with their audiences. And content owners are empowered, through sophisticated identification tools, to control their content and make smart business decisions with their content. 

The proliferation of content will continue exponentially. And as methods for uploading, aggregating, personalizing and distributing digital content develop, content owners will find new challenges and business opportunities. Spurred by technological innovation, people are already looking beyond their laptops to upload, customize and distribute content from and to any device.

Video content delivered to mobile devices will open consumers, advertisers and content creators to a world of opportunity. Everything from movie watching and sharing to hyper-targeting and dynamic, interactive, location-relevant ads are emerging within the mobile market. As the Web grows, so will videos’ presence in it. Accelerated by the power of embeddable video, developers will find new, innovative ways to push the boundaries of how ads are served and watched online. And the jump from the desktop to the TV, or the phone to the TV, or the camera to the TV, will all become seamless. 

Gaining control of online video content and discovering effective business models are vital not only for our growth, but for our common survival. Online video is already fully integrated into the fabric of the Web – its presence is universal, inspiring and empowering to all that embrace it. In the very near future, the distribution of online video will soon cease to be seen as a threat, but rather as a fundamental distribution solution that can be personalized on desktops, phones and tv’s alike. 

Where we are today is not the YouTube era. It is not the digital content era, or the multi-platform era. Where we are today is an extension of the work you have all done, built on the shoulders of CBS, RCA and the other innovators who came before us. There is no old media. There is no new media. There is one media with one common purpose: to inform, move and inspire the world through information, art and entertainment. Together, we can find a solution that will benefit everyone in this ecosystem, from consumers to advertisers to the content owners alike. 

Thank you very much

 

Key soundbites from the speech:

YouTube wants to partner with content owners to help them “gain unprecedented reach and scope to touch new audiences”

“The days of the centralized distribution hub are ending”

“This world may appear chaotic, but it can be harnessed to your advantage if you’re willing to think outside the single platform delivery model.”

Around 10 billion videos are viewed monthly online in the U.S. alone

On YouTube 13 hours of content are uploaded every minute

In France over 120 million hours of video content is watched per month while over 3 million mobile phone subscribers use their phone to view a video

http://www.mipcom.com/App/homepage.cfm?moduleid=399&appname=100495

what do you think?

the web in 2020…

By Arti Gupta (Intel) 2008 

I listened to a panel discussion on where the web will be in 2020. It was headed by researchers from Google, Bell labs, Yahoo and Stanford. You might be thinking — 2020? that is ages away! Not really if you think of 1998. We are 12 years later and think how the web has changed our lives.

Some of the key trends being discussed are

• cloud computing – data, software and services being stored in the cloud. This might change the face of IT as we know it. PC’s will no longer hold our data, it will be in the cloud.
• Web 3.0 – web a database of data. With all personal / non personal data being stored in the cloud this will need to become shareable to create mashups. Today the data is limited to the site it was uploaded to, with minimal sharing
• Videos/photos/maps/gps – will become the eyes of the world. You will be able to see what is being seen by who and where
• Search – with the explosion of data, enhancements to search become critical, semantic search will replace keyword search
• online communities will grow. People will start communicating to a group of people more than 1 on 1 communications, example twitter
• mobile devices usage will outgrow PCs. Today there are 3 billion cell phone users vs 1 billion PC users.

  What do you think? 

The Web in 2020 – Where do you think it will be?

infinite TV, infinite media and me-media

Hulu is weeks away from unveiling a tool that lets users embed the Hulu service itself into their website. Soon you’d be able to stick all of online TV into your blog. finally after decades of dicated what we can watch and when, the networks would be reduced to a web widget, functioning at the user’s whim.

“You can’t protect old business models” – Peter Chenin, President of News Corporation

(from – As seen on TV, Wired 16/100)

What do you think? 

www.wired.com

http://www.hulu.com/widgets

frank_rose@wired.com

the infinite conversation

Digitization has fundamentally re-wired our lives… we are now living in a constantly on, omni-directional and hyper-connected world, which is facilitating a profound shift in the way our society operates. It’s a world where brands and individuals’ activities are there for all to search out and share – we are all now, more than ever, defined by how we behave.

The era of mass marketing is over and media fragmentation is accelerating exponentially – the consumer is in control and is re-defining their relationship to commerce, brands and their marketing strategies. The only way to attract and hold on to the modern consumer is to keep talking to them on their terms, through their networks, by adding value to their lives and establishing a new kind of relationship with them through open and adaptive dialogue.

Word of mouth has always been cited as the most powerful reason in ‘the decision to purchase’, establishing trust, and, in the commitment to start and develop new relationships. Creativity, community and collaboration are trademarks of human nature – conversation has always been at the heart of our society. The infinite conversation describes a new paradigm in which we all now exist, and a communication strategy, that embraces both social media and human nature. It represents a shift in behaviour that must be employed by brands, businesses and individuals, for them to thrive and survive in the networked world.

What do you think?

the infinite conversation – markets, life and everything

 

Wise words from George Soros, global financier and philanthropist…

In my opinion, in addition to the housing bubble that was the trigger that set off the financial crisis, there is a super bubble that has been going on for 25 years or so that started in 1980 when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and Ronald Reagan became president. That is when the belief that markets are best left to their own devices became the dominant belief. Based on that, we had a new phase of globalisation of financial markets and liberalisation of financial markets. The idea is false. Markets do not [correct] towards equilibrium.

If [as a regulator] you only use your powers to bail out the failing institutions you introduce, this will encourage the phenomenon of moral hazard. That is what has been going on for the last 25 years. As a result, credit creation has been encouraged and these periodic crises managed to be dealt with without any serious fallout in the real world. That reinforced credit creation and the misconception that markets correct themselves.

That is how we arrived not only at the housing bubble but also the creation of this alphabet soup of synthetic instruments so that when the sub-prime crisis happened, the authorities were totally unprepared that the whole system would fall apart. Markets that I didn’t even know existed ceased to function. That revealed that the whole construct, this really powerful financial structure, has been built on false grounds. For the first time, the entire system has been engaged in this crisis and the authorities have considerable difficulty even in providing enough liquidity.

read more 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/credit-crunch-one-year-on-885315.html

What do you think?