Posts filed under 'Mobile'
By Ben Haber
After having a ratings bonanza during the Beijing Olympics, NBC is blazing a new trail in the upcoming television season.
NBC has come to an agreement with Hulu to air five shows on the popular video site before they are broadcast on TV during their regular time slots, in attempt to build buzz around the shows and their premieres.
While NBC has clearly realized the value of the internet, it will be interesting to see if this approach will build a larger television audience for these shows (Lipstick Jungle, Chuck, Life, Knight Rider, and 30 Rock). Out of these five, 30 Rock is the only one I watch, and I will definitely take a look on Hulu once it’s available, but I’m unsure if I will watch it again in its regular spot. Does this help or hurt NBC?
For the new and/or struggling shows, any extra viewership or buzz has to be beneficial, especially now that mobile and online video are so huge. The ability have someone watching the season premier of Chuck on their train ride home from work is a great idea from NBC, and one that can surely pay off as online video has taken off.
So get ready for the 1 hour season premier of the Office on the 25th, but until then enjoy some other shows at your convenience.
September 3rd, 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 Philip.
I met Ronnie Wood this week. He sat down next to me in a bar and bought me a drink. That ranks him in my book as a very nice chap. And I got a 90 minute window into living life as a globally famous rock star, an insight that confirmed my relief, as if the situation could be otherwise, that I’m not a ‘celebrity’…
- “Is that Ronnie Wood? Ronnie Wood? Rolling Stones? Ronnie Wood?”
- “I don’t believe it… is that really you? We’re big fans of……”
- “I’ve got all your albums.”
- “Could I have your autograph and a picture with you?”
- “I don’t believe it, is it really you?”
Although Ronnie has had four decades to come up with witty ripostes, I particularly liked his response to the last one… “Actually, I only came fifth in a Ronnie Wood lookalike competition.” From what I saw, he has a lovely way in dealing with the countless people that approach him; what the rest of us would call invading our space.
We got talking about my line of work having danced through the ages of music technology, from the vinyl and 8-track of the mid-60s, through compact cassette and CD to mp3. Not unexpectedly, Ronnie mourns the passing of the physical format, but loves the idea that music has returned to the 60s notion that it’s all about the music, having been distracted in between times by the huge music marketing machine. The 80s and 90s were all about shifting massive volumes of records and CDs, and gigging was just a distraction.
Once our conversation arrived at the digital age, it turned inevitably to the mobile phone / mobile infotainment device. And Ronnie loves his phone. “F***ing brilliant” to quote him verbatim. So I thought I’d charge his enthusiasm by talking about the latest innovations, and particularly location based services. Interestingly, it had the opposite effect.
I guess of everyone I’ve spoken with about the opportunities, convenience and dangers of location based services, Ronnie Wood is the best placed of them all to understand what personal privacy truly means. He showed his disgust for the ideas I presented by shoving his phone away from him down the bar. Not quite the phone smashing violent remonstration you might stereotypically expect from a rock star, but demonstrable revulsion nevertheless.
Technologists, marketers and society in general have some interesting and controversial choices to make right now. Location based services, and other privacy and technically related innovations such as identify cards, face recognition, RFID tagging and extensive customer / citizen profiling, impact the dynamics and may reshape the foundations of our society.
If you’re interested in these aspects of the digital world, and the commercial and fun aspects to, join me at Being Digital in London this June 10th. I’ll be speaking on the Location panel.
Wikipedia informs me that The Rolling Stones penned “Get off of my cloud” as a reaction to their sudden popularity following the success of “(I can’t get no) Satisfaction”. Following Ronnie’s dissatisfaction with the possibilities of location based services, could we be listening to “Get off of my phone” anytime soon?
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Photograph by Mike Johnson, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
May 16th, 2008
By Ben
As the summer Olympics are approaching and the torch is making its way around the world, advocates for a Free Tibet are leveraging public relations to help make their cause known.
As soon as China was named as the host of the Olympic Games seven years ago, Tibet supporters began planning an aggressive PR strategy to use the worldwide event as an opportunity to have its message heard.
Kalaya’an Mendoza, a coordinator for Students for a Free Tibet, told The New York Times, “At first there was a profound sense of despair after the Chinese government was awarded the honor. But after five minutes passed, we realized this would be a monumental opportunity for the Tibetan people to be put in the international spotlight.”
China was has been slow to react, but there are reports that the government recently began a PR search, to help them manage this growing problem.
The New York Times reports:
Students for a Free Tibet, a member of the international organization, sends out its own talking points, press release templates and protest plans to its 650 chapters. That is supplemented by two Students for a Free Tibet Facebook cause pages, which now have about 37,900 members and a YouTube page where organizers post reports and footage from protests.
Every other month, Students for a Free Tibet holds conferences for members of pro-Tibet groups, where media training is a focus. The sessions cover everything from giving a good sound bite to answering reporters’ questions artfully.
The Olympic torch has been a focal point of the Tibet protests. From large banners hanging across the Golden Gate bridge, to a protestor trying to steal the torch – it has been an aggressive campaign aimed at calling attention to Tibet and human-rights issues in China.
In fact, security around the Olympic torch has become such an issue that when it reached Pakistan on Wednesday, the government elected to close off the torch relay from the public.
China – which recently blocked YouTube because videos showing protests in Tibet were posted on the site – has said that the problems with Tibet are internal issues.
April 14th, 2008
By RJ Bardsley
This week I’ll be blogging from CTIA, the U.S. mobile industry’s leading conference. This show is particularly exciting from a media perspective, because there’s always a ton of very exciting product and technology news breaking.
OK – let’s get things started off with a little news from the big boys – specifically Microsoft. Microsoft today unveiled the long awaited Windows Mobile 6.1, the first major update release for the Windows Mobile 6 wave. Major improvements include a variety of new features and platform enhancements to increase productivity, improve the web surfing experience, and make it just plain easier to get up and running on Windows Mobile devices. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
A New Place to Call Home….Home Screen, that is…
With the release of Windows Mobile 6.1 comes a new plug-in based home screen layout. Microsoft is calling this user interface a Sliding Panel. Plug-ins will include clock, e-mail, calendar items, notifications (such as voicemail, missed calls, text messages), and Windows Live. If you’re a Windows Mobile 6.1 user you’ll also have the option to add in music and photos to that list. Here’s a sneak peek at the new homescreen courtesy of pocketnow.com.
Threaded SMS
This might be arguably the most productivity enhancing element of 6.1. According to Microsoft, Threaded SMS enables messages between a user and a contact to be grouped into a thread for that contact. This enables phone users to view an inline thread of conversation while typing a new message. No more flipping back and forth between screens, and no more forgetting what you were responding to mid-text.
Zoom With a View
OK – full disclosure here. Zumobi is one of my clients, and one of my favorite mobile technologies to come out over the past year. So, I’m a little partial to the whole idea of a zooming user interface. That said, it looks like Microsoft has done an admirable job at bringing basic zooming functionality to its mobile browser.
Users can now get a “zoom” view while browsing Web pages in Internet Explorer Mobile, letting them zoom into particular parts of a Web page to improve readability and overall usability. The zoom feature offers five viewing sizes—largest, larger, default, smaller, and smallest. These are available in all three views— desktop, fit to screen, and one column.
More Goodies
There are a host of additional new features on Windows Mobile 6.1, including improved time settings, alarms, cut & paste functionality, auto complete for email, multi-select options, an improved task manager that lets users actively manage memory allotment, improved connectivity to open wi-fi networks, and a nifty Getting Started Center that helps first time users make the most of their devices. Bottom line – more cool, helpful stuff to make life on the road with a Windows Mobile device a lot better.
April 1st, 2008
By RJ
The third screen is just the beginning – the beginning of something totally, completely new and old at the same time. Check out Perez Hilton before you left the house today? Paid your bills while you were waiting for the bus? Messaged a friend to meet you for lunch, did your grocery shopping online once you got to the office, caught up with your mom, watched the latest episode of TorchWood? All of these activities could be a part of your daily life – and all of them could be done across a variety of devices. We are truly living in a world of converged technology where we’re connected to the content we consume, create and transact across a variety of networks. We do the same things that people always did – socialize, conduct business, shop – but we now have the freedom to do them wherever we like when we like and on any device we like.
How will all this freedom change the media? We’ll continue to see more content creators emerge and they’ll produce greater quantities of material; the Mobile Web will boost the expansion of the greater Social Web – social search, the blogosphere, and social networking; and people will get what people crave – more access to each other on more devices. Additionally, the balance between paid and unpaid perspectives will continue to shift – as soon as one ecosystem is consumed by commercialism another will emerge to take its place – i.e. the blogosphere emerging out of Web 1.0. Lastly, and most importantly, more and more power will continue to shift to the consumer. Because of this, brands will search for new ways to reach consumers – not just across new devices, but through building communities, providing value through outreach – in both cultural (games, information) and monetary (coupons, loyalty programs, etc.) terms. Old-line media will also look for new ways to reach audiences – through V-blogs, Twitter feeds, Mobile Video, and many more yet-to-be-imagined ways. It’s truly a time of change, and to be part of this change is – as they say in Boston – Wicked Pissah.
September 27th, 2007
By Philip
The attention economy is alive. Interruption marketing is dead. But are we getting permission marketing?
Tony Fish (the Mobile 2.0 man) and I debated the impact of mobile technologies on the attention economy at last week’s Mashup Event. We are particularly intrigued, although not entirely convinced, by the Blyk business model. Having been started by the former president of Nokia, Blyk could not have much better credentials for a new UK mobile phone service, but what are its prospects beyond the initial novelty value?
The concept of the attention economy is that human attention is a scarce commodity and therefore the approach to getting information in front of them is subject to economic theory. This scarcity is amplified by the increasing control we have over the media we consume. For example, simply interrupting the transmission of TV and radio programming with advertising is increasingly frustrated by the features designed in to consumer electronics allowing us to skip the ads.
The cure for this apoplexy of the advertising industry has consisted of product placement, procured content and permission marketing - a term defined by Seth Godin in his 1999 book of the same name. In simple terms, permission marketing seeks the target’s permission to advertise to them. Obviously, the advert has to have real value to the recipient for them to give their permission.
So back to Blyk. The idea… give free SIM cards to 16-24 year olds with which they can make free calls. In return, the Blyk customer must complete a personal profile questionnaire which is used to determine exactly what products and services he or she might like to know about. Blyk then sells this channel to advertisers and forwards the adverts to their customers’ phones.
Is this permission marketing? Godin talks about developing a relationship with customers, “turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers”. To me, Blyk is not primarily about adding value through the content and information, but fundamentally about buying airtime. It may not be paying cash, choosing instead to make a payment-in-kind, but ultimately it is just buying a new kind of media space. I’m into digital photography, but with the day I’ve just had if you sent me an ad for the latest camera it would simply have got in my way.
Advertisers must ask themselves whether this is simply hyper-targeted advertising (of no insignificant value of course), or permission marketing. Isn’t it just simply that young adults want free calls? That’s where the primary value lies, not in the ads.
Interestingly, Blyk may have some big competition soon. Whilst Google has not publicly disclosed any intention to launch a mobile phone service, the fact that their job boards advertise for mobile engineers might betray their ambitions. Could a GPhone follow the same business model?
September 27th, 2007
