What changes when The G-men go fluffy?
Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test.
… and therefore has some interesting messages for marketers.
FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T DWELL in its world, design can sometimes be an esoteric concept. As consumers and businesspeople, we all understand when a media design works for us, or even more noticeably when it doesn’t. But to really understand the thinking that went into it, you have to crawl inside the head of a media designer and experience the world through his or her eyes, ears, and fingertips. Thanks to an unusual program created by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, we got to do just that.
Now THAT’s what I call music! Good to get back to root of it all, the extraordinary genius of the handful of artists that trascend all bickering and commercial skullduggery to enrich human life and spirit. More on Mozart here, from the BBC.
From Search Engine Watch:
A new free service from multimedia search engine TVEyes allows a searcher to keyword search each and every word spoken during tv news segment from well-known news organizations. TVEyes is utilzing voice recognition technology to create a “Spoken Word Index” that makes these programs keyword searchable.
From Adrants:
The madly successful video podcast Rocketboom, which garners 130,000 downloads per day, has decided to accept advertising and will do so by auctioning off ad time on eBay. Rocketboom, produced by Andrew Baron and anchored by Amanda Congdon, will require the winning bidder to relinquish creative control and allow Baron and Congdon to create the ad.
Michael reads the draft mandate for the Media 2.0 Workgroup.
1. The requirement
1.1. The in-control consumer and the rebirth of advertising
For the first time we saw at CES in January this year the reality of convergence, after decades of promised revolution. Content owners and distributors stood alongside device and software developers to declare their intentions. The next big technology war is to be fought on the fields of media, and while much of the fuss will be – as it has already been since the rise of the Web – around rights exploitation and protection, the winners will be those who capture the truly engagement of the m-generation – the increasingly elusive, mobile and connected media consumer. In other words, control of advertising is the reward that will be fought for here.
1.2. The consequences for rights owners and advertisers
Without question the Content is King view will stand big rights owners in decent stead during this immense transition to new value, new business and revenue models. But “stand” can too easily become “stand still”. With almost complete control of (at least the meaningful) engagements with content and brand messaging, the commercially valuable consumer demands authentic reasons to invest time in the promised experience of programming and/or advertising. This challenge can usefully be thought of as Return on Attention, or ROA. So, as media contorts and struggles into its own 2.0 model, ROI will come to mean ROA.
1.3. The new value
If you can no longer insist on the consumer attention you used to – relatively easily – command, and if the growing numbers of your media consumers are diluted by a dramatic ‘thinning’ of quality attention (the TV in the corner that’s on 12/7/365 but is only sporadically watched, for example), there emerges an urgent need to innovate from a place of fresh and credible consumer insight, moving then onto experimentation with new forms of experience, new forms of value, new forms of business and revenue model. Overall, a new ambitious and flexible point of view.
1.4. A resource to meet the challenge
The Media 2.0 Workgroup has been launched to help guide this process, with a mandate to deliver commercially neutral, fresh insight, fresh learning and fresh direction for all of the current and future, big and small, core and peripheral stakeholders in media.
2. Who is affected by Media 2.0?
2.1. Media owners
Most notably among traditional media owner categories, TV and print are showing declines in revenue from current streams and challenges from both end consumer and advertiser. In the US, consumers have, for example, in 2005 forced into existence an on-demand, unbundled proposition for the largest cable operators.
In both print and TV, brands are increasingly vocal in their requests for proof of ROI: at the same time, the online ad industry grew to $21bn globally in 2005 and is confident of a further 30% year on year for the meaningful future. Little more than a drop in the bucket on the one hand maybe, but with advertising bang for buck (remember ROA here …) online estimated at 4 times that of TV, the writing’s on the wall. Or rather, on the network.
2.2. Rights owners
Rights are both negatively and positively affected by the consumer choice and elusiveness conferred by Media 2.0. They remain however largely focused on protection rather than expansion, we would argue to their ultimate detriment.
The point that needs to be bluntly made is that the most valuable consumers of media – the Sky subscriber, the affluent advertising target, the big spenders and consumers of goods and content - hardly fit the profile of pirates, keen file sharers or bootleggers. The piracy angle as an argument for defensive rather than offensive strategies holds little water.
Music, for example, is waking up to the fact that it now trades in a digital media environment where capturing eyes and ears – in order to enable the delivery of the brand messages and consumer responses – is valued infinitely higher than numbers of CD’s shipped or files downloaded. And this is where the offensive exploitation cue emerges: brands, consumers, and media owners – on- and off-line – all are as keen as ever to engage with the music industry, understanding perhaps better than the labels themselves the difference between the value of a track and the value of the overall music experience.
2.3. Marketers
In the history of marketing as a discipline, and advertising as a business, there has never been a more extreme combination of threat and opportunity. But regardless of ‘what could be’, ‘what is’ remains an unprecedented challenge to marketers, most of whom are caught between the need to take risks and innovate, while delivering the still-elusive return on investment their boards demand. A rock and a hard place.
Consumers are busy creating their own media value with user-generated content and rich, multi-channel inter-personal communications. When they do dip into Big Media, relishing an apparently infinite choice of programming – in my time, at my place, on my terms – advertising is pushed into a corner from which the only escape route is through the provision of brand experiences and ‘purchase-independent’ branded services that – in and of themselves – deliver powerful return on attention.
Adtech and rich media, as shown by the relentless growth of on-line advertising year-on-year, point the way clearly for the new criteria that will retrieve marketers from their ‘accountability vs experience’ trap. But this is not the core solution to the problem. Simply put, advertising needs to move from ‘interruption of experience’ to ‘enhancement of experience’. An unprecedented cultural, strategic and creative challenge.
2.4. Technology and infrastructure providers
In a sense, this state of affairs is the fault of the great, empowering technologies that have driven the liberation of the consumer from industry-controlled, appointment based media models.
In the past five years, we have seen the infrastructure evolve dramatically and rapidly with widespread broadband, 50% of the world’s 1bn internet users now having access, alongside 3G (soon to be 4G) mobile, and wireless web commonly available in all media-heavy urban locations around the world.
At the hardware level, iPods and other portable, personal media players have simply exploded (100 iPods sold every minute in the last quarter of 2005), while TiVo and Sky+ are remoulding both the consumer’s relationship with the television (remember when the TV was dubbed “the new hearth”?) and the value chain of the immense TV industry. Media is very, very personal.
Most recently, ‘social media’ has ushered in open, easy to use development environments such as Ruby on Rails and Catalyst, ultra-personal communication tools such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS), blogs, podcasts and videoblogs, that raise the media value bar yet further, driving up the consumer’s control of their return on attention and pushing back the offerings of Big Media and Big Marketing. The much-praised and controversial success of MySpace is the poster child for this development.
At the CES in Las Vegas 2 weeks ago, it became clear that the world’s biggest technology players have their sights fixed on large pieces of the crumbly media pie. But let’s remember two things: the consumer is firmly in control of the media encounter from here on, and the battle for media is above all the battle for the advertising dollar. This fundamental dilemma is beyond the reach of technology to resolve, Google’s dominance of the current stage notwithstanding.
3. The goals and structure of the workgroup
The Media 2.0 workgroup’s outcomes for participants will revolve around 3 imperatives:
3.1. Insight
We will source and develop data, trends and patterns in the market, with particular interest in and focus on the consumer experience and the new forms of value that result from changes therein.
3.2. Learning
These insights will be synthesised and shared among all members, using white papers, presentations, wikis, blogs, podcasts and, starting in the early summer of 2006, in-personal events such as seminars and briefing sessions.
3.3. Direction
The combination of the above activities and outputs will be analysed, presented and discussed along with empirical feedback from the market as it evolves to determine the new business, revenue and technical models that are demanded.
The overall outcome for members crystallises here, as we support you in both derisking your investments and mapping out areas of promising innovation, according to your respective corporate strategies and goals.
4. Where we are and what comes next
4.1. Shape and schedule
The workgroup will launch informally at the “Understanding Media 2.0” event in London on March 2nd 2006. The Media 2.0 wiki and blog projects will launch that same week, and we will expect (low key) press in relevant publications such as New Media Age and Music Week.
We propose a series of phased insight initiatives to get us in motion, with the first quarter, running till June 1st 2006, focusing on framing the consumer’s Media 2.0 experience, defining and raking key components and value drivers. In other words:
4.2. Current commitments
Microsoft Media UK, BT’s Media 21 team and London-based New Media Knowledge have made an in-principle commitment to engaging with the workgroup. A further 5-10 members will be announced in the coming fortnight.
4.3. The M2WG team
Michael Bayler, co-founder and London project leader
Michael Bayler, co-founder of Rights Marketing, is a strategist and futurist. He specialises in the impact on brands, organisations and individuals of developments and trends in culture, media and technology. Prior to 1991, when he moved into new media, he worked in the music business in a variety of senior marketing roles in the US, Europe and Asia. Michael’s first book, “Promiscuous Customers: Invisible Brands - Delivering Value in Digital Markets” (Capstone 2002, with D. Stoughton) explores the value of information and the implications for brands and strategy in the networked economy. He blogs and podcasts on Media 2.0 and Meaning.
Umair Haque, co-founder and West Coast project leader
Umair Haque, advanced strategy consultant and Rights Marketing associate, is a media thought leader. He has been published in Wired, the Red Herring, the Silicon Valley Times, the Global & Mail, and Business 2.0. Prior to his MBA at London Business School, he spent 1.5 years analysing emerging markets at The World Bank, and then 1.5 years developing new media products at a new venture backed by Sun, Microsoft, and Kleiner Perkins. After his MBA, he was recruited by Accenture’s Strategy Group in London, where he advised FTSE 100 clients on issues of corporate and business strategy. After leaving Accenture, he began work towards a PhD at Oxford, and is now focusing on developing his ideas about Media 2.0 strategy.
From CNET:
Tech takes the spotlight at the high-profile Sundance Film Festival, as moviemakers grapple with online releases and who’ll watch video on a cell phone.
From P2Pnet:
…privately owned record label and artist management company Nettwerk Music Group, based in Vancouver on the BC mainland and which manages some of North America’s biggest artists such as Sarah McLachlan and Avril Lavigne, has also gone up against the RIAA.
From Ars Technica, we learn that the BBC brought consumers together with industry crusties to discuss life on their respective planets …
The BBC News website recently gave the public an opportunity to submit questions to several music industry executives. Questions were entered from the UK, the US, and several other European countries, and the BBC selected the 8 best for submission to the panel. Although some of the results are understandably UK-centric and all of the experts stayed squarely on the party platform, it makes for a pretty good read, and the exchange does shed some light on the industry’s stance toward downloading, DRM, and the future. I’ll take a look at a few of the more interesting responses and try to put them in perspective.
I feel guilty for not having (quite) lived up to my promise of regular posts and casts during my stay at the global music event Midem in Cannes. The truth is that there wasn’t a whole lot that was truly newsworthy, in terms of the remit of this blog, which is to uncover innovation news and trends in media.
The industry itself toed the line it always does, insisting on holding its place as the biggest little brother in Big Media. One day the business will wake up and realise that its stance on artist contracts, copyright enforcement and, well, the way the world works, are keeping it on the wrong side of the fence from 10’s of billions of extra dollars of revenue. If online ads - a business that only got motoring 3-4 years ago - can come in in 2005 with a global value of $21bn - already over 50% of the estimated value of the music industry @ $40bn - isn’t the writing on the wall?
Compare the cozy hum at Midem with the uber-hive buzz at CES just 2 weeks before. The big guns in Las Vegas were declaring changes in the global media game, huge investments and repositionings to fuel their land grab into Media 2.0. Even Intel and Cisco are heading for the playing field with new boots and brandings. Cannes, in contrast, felt almost sleepy, as the mobile operators and online distributors - surely the most critical outlets in Music 2.0 to come - talked more of their frustrations in getting music to dance with them to a post 1950’s tune. I came away feeling that again players from outside the industry - a few years ago Apple, now Starbucks - are showing the way here.
While I had a ‘good Midem’ and met some fascinating new people and I think future partners and clients at Midem, not one of them was a label or a publisher. I tell a lie, the folks from Sunday Best and Just Music - both pioneering British indies, both (coincidentally) generating serious funds from TV synch deals alongside their traditional retail bucks - impressed the hell out of me.
Otherwise? A little depressing, to be honest with you. But we’ll be there next year.
PS: No brands (that I saw), and no agencies (except for the excellent Frukt guys). But watch out for the MusicWeek Brands and Music event this June in London. It’ll be a killer.
Good summary from the excellent Publishing 2.0 blog:
The news that Google is testing rich media supports the view that traditional brand advertising is not about to go away. Having wrung every penny from smaller advertisers with more transactional businesses — which are the ones that work best with text ads — Google is aiming now at the BIG advertisers who have BIG brands and need rich media to grow, manage, and maintain their brands.
This from Adrants:
“We’ve pretty much stopped with TV ads or radio ads or branded ads. It just wasn’t worth it anymore. Online, there are just many more possibilities.” That’s a refrain we’ve hearing more on more over the next few years as marketers realize traditional advertising ain’t all it’s cracked up to be anymore. Amsterdam Tourism Board Internet manager Sebastian Paauw uttered that phrase when commenting on the Board’s deal with BlogAds under which the Board, in connection with BlogAds, will send 25 bloggers to Amsterdam in exchange for ad space on their blogs. While the bloggers are not required to write anything about their trip, bloggers being bloggers, there will, no doubt, be a litany of posts covering their escapades during their five day stay.
Buy the (UK only?) edition of The Economist this week and read an astoundingly wrong account of Big Media’s prospects in digital … with no account at all of the impact of the consumer experience, and with an almost unbelievable rap along the “Content is King” theme. Just when we thought we were making some progress in getting the message across!
Brief report on Starbucks Entertainment president's interview at MidemNet
Interview at Midem with Richard Bron of Blueprint, the developers of the ORG music system for artists, labels and retailers.
Phew, that’s all right then.
Some outstanding Cheney-bollox from CNN …
NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program Thursday, calling it an essential tool in monitoring al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
Ning may be on the way out … from TechCrunch:
The idea of Ning, which launched in October 2005, is brilliant. Let people easily create social applications tailored with difference web services. Allow others to clone those applications and take the code from them directly into whatever they are building instead of building from scratch. Watch everything evolve as better and better stuff gets built, which in turn is used to build even better stuff. Ning leverages the platform by aggregating the applications and selling advertising and premium tools/features.
Another great store bites the dust … as much as I love what’s happening at the sharp end, I mourn the end of this …
LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) — They’re throwing a wake of sorts for the Rhino Records store Saturday and Sunday.
Founded in 1973, the venerable record shop officially closed its doors after the turn of the year, hard on the heels of the folding of crosstown competitor Aron’s Records.
… and I say RIP to this great, great performer. Listen to “Land of a Thousand Dances” very, very loud, try to do all or some of the dances at the same time, and then say a prayer for the man. My heart hurts. More here, and here.
Michael Bayler introduces a short series of podcasts from MidemNet, beginning with some thoughts on life beyond copyright and the infinite promise (so far unrealised …) of brand/rights owner partnerships.
… by Richard Macmanus in handy ZDnet piece.
A lot of the features and functionality of so-called Web 2.0 sites are now common elements in most current web apps and sites. It’s really gone beyond what was labelled ‘Web 2.0′ last year, because so many mainstream websites are now using these elements. It’s no longer a niche trend. For your reference here is a summary of some of the popular elements in use by modern web sites and services:
Just found this (quite new I think) blog called Publishing 2.0 … check out this nice and brief note re the advertising explosion (or is that implosion?).
Here’s another reason why the blogosphere’s vision of the web as an open marketplace likely won’t come to pass: the BIG advertisers won’t finance it.
Let’s face it, the Googlenomics revolution has been financed by the little guys, who have profitably grown their businesses with pay-per-click ads. For small companies, brand management is secondary to driving sales. Not so for the big, bad corporate advertisers.
And this piece, debunking the marriage of Web and Media 2.0, is critical reading. Not sure if I agree with it all in terms of detail, but the POV is important and seems robust.
Here’s the problem — Web 2.0 is not a great platform for helping the average person consume media.
Consumer-created media is transforming the content landscape for the better, and consumer-controlled media is undoubtedly the new paradigm. But the average person does not have much time (if any) to spend creating media and has patience for only a finite amount of choice. Bloggers and others who put a lot of time and effort into media consumption and media creation are outliers — people may want something more customized than the morning paper, but they still want the simplicity and leisure feel. Media based on Web 2.0 is just too hard.
Ethan Stock clears the air …
I continue to be fascinated by everyone’s determination to wrap user-created content into their new web services, despite their flamboyant display of ignorance as to *why* users actually create content. Here are three distinct models that can help you think about why users create:
