Archive for July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
Had the opportunity to share a quick chat and drink with Richard Edelman, CEO & President of PR-giant Edelman and Keith Reinhard, former CEO of advertising giant DDB yesterday evening at Brainstorm: TECH.
The two industry giants were worth a good laugh as they playfully chuckled about stealing each other’s clients at the conference.
Richard was chatting me up on the reason to be global and why PR is a scalable industry. He still feels like there is a true advantage in being a massive global agency over a mid-size shop.
Keith on the other hand couldn’t stop talking about DDB’s latest project with McDonald’s in reviving the “Big Mac” jingle, with its new digital campaign. Richard and Keith both had to actually let me know what the jingle was in the first place as it orignated in 1974, 9 years before I was born.
To celebrate the Big Mac’s 40th Anniversary, DDB helped with a campaign that calls for U.S. consumers to write their own songs using the exact words of the jingle, and submit them to a contest on MySpace.com.
Not only is the campaign succeeding by engaging in brand dialogue with consumers, but it also garnered coverage in the New York Times - Results that both men can appreciate.
BTW: Richard told me he was going to have a blog post up this morning at 6 a.m. (As he is one of the featured live bloggers at Brainstorm: TECH). Where is it Richard? I have five up already.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
I took in the “How Net Content will be Monetized Round Table (Wedding Table) at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH this morning. Hosted by Fortune’sAdam Lashinsky the round table included Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony; Neil Ashe, President of CBS Interactive; Robert Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks and Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost.
Here are some of the excerpts from the round table:
Adam Lashinsky: Good morning, we are going to be talking about “Net Monetization.” This is not the format that we planned on doing for a breakfast round table (straight table facing the audience). We had so many people sign-up we decided we’d do something like a head table at a wedding with you being the guests. However, we’re not going to talk to you we are going to talk with you.
Robert Glaser, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
- 600 million in revue last year. 2/3 of monetization comes through consumer purchases. 1/3 is from net carriers.
- Our goal is to create a balance in revenue streams.
- You look at what Google does with only one revenue stream and may think we are taking the wrong route, but you have to diversify.
- Behavioral targeting is an major opportunity, but there doesn’t appear to be an Overture type idea out there that goes beyond search.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony:
- eHarmony was founded 8 years ago to be a series match making site. It was a crazy idea at the time because the industry was dominated by the photo-clicking approach.
- We recently released Harris Interactive numbers, which found that 236 people marry each day (on average) through eHarmony.
- This has allowed the business to become very successful and over 200 million in revenues last year.
- Lashinsky - ”My best friend met his wife through eHarmony. He’s a serious guy, so I guess he needed a serious relationship site.”
- 96 - 97 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.
- Match.com and ourselves are really the biggest players in the space.
- We want to keep a “happy” churn rate - given our goal to match couples in serious long-term relationships (which leads to them leaving site). Usually takes a couple of months for that to happen.
- You can’t just create great content first and then say we’ll figure out how to monetize it later. I think people have this belief that good content will easily translate into ad revenue and that is just not the case when you are looking at scale.
Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost:
- Joost was created in October of last year and has slightly under 1 million unique visitors.
- We have a revenue share model that goes back to content owners.
- We’ve really been the first online video destination to use the 30-second in-spot ad that is seen on TV.
- Music has been really hard to monetize on our site because its hard to understand interests in music to target relevant ads at users.
President of CBS Interactive:
- Earlier this year I was the CEO of CNET Networks and now I am the President of CBS Interactive after the close of our sale to the CBS Corporation.
- We reach the 8th largest Internet network in the world.
- 80 percent of business is ad supported through sponsorships or advertisements.
- About 20 percent of our business is in major countries in Europe.
- We’ve found that you can’t out grow your category. The growth of advertising revenue has grown across the Internet but there is a cap in how it can grow within certain markets on the Internet.
- We’ve made mistakes along the way. We never could monetize Webshots. We could sell certain sponsorships but not for each individual page view.
Disclosure: eHarmony is a client of the Racepoint Group
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
I was out socializing on the patio at Brainstorm: TECH last night when Michal Lev-Ram of Fortune snuck up on me to ask me what I had in my pocket. On a patio full of “top-executives” I obviously had the least cool technology in my jeans.
Somehow my broken Motorola Q (this happens once a month) and my (actually I borrowed/stole this from my colleague Stephen Russell) 1980’s tape recorder made it into the segment. Unfortunately, so did I. Clearly the lesson here is to not go on camera after a 6 hour flight with no sleep the night before.
Check out the video here.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
A few other notes from the first few hours at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, CA:
- You can go home again: Just ran into Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch in the lobby. Schonfeld was chatting it up with some of his former colleagues from Time Inc. He previously worked with the now defunct Business 2.0, which was under the Time Inc. umbrella.
- Sometimes you can’t leave home: Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, didn’t make the trip to Brainstorm: TECH after all. He was a last minute drop from the Thinking Globally panel. Kirkpatrick made a slight joke (not really) that he was home in the U.K. closing another major acquisition. The truth is, he is. Word is that WPP will win the bid for Taylor Nelson Sofres.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
The second speaker / panel is underway at Brainstorm: TECH with a Q&A between David Kirkpatrick and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. A few quotes from Jeff that I picked up below:
- I love the fact that I can read one-handed (With the Kindle). As soon as you read with the Kindle for awhile it’s hard to go back to a regular book. It’s also a lot quieter to read with the kindle when you’re laying next to your spouse in bed.
- I believe that we are at the dawn of a new industry with the Kindle.
- We had a microwave oven that would beep every minute until I turned it off. I called it a self-important device.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle Austin
RaceTalk is live at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH where the first panel is wrapping-up and David Kirkpatrick is getting mad that the audience is turning the conversation to Tesla.
Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com made an interesting statement on the first panel before it changed tunes saying:
“Web 1.0 = Transactions, Web 2.0 = Collaboration, Web 3.0 = Innovation.”
Already hearing some buzz in the press room from bloggers that are complaining that they can only watch through the live feed and don’t have access to the Ballroom.
Kara Swisher of BoomTown just stopped into the press room (even though she has a pass to the Ballroom) and noted:
“We don’t do that at D”
July 22nd, 2008
