The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - February 17th Edition

Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…

Strike's End Starts TV Production Frenzy

Under the tentative agreement, writers would get a maximum flat fee of about $1,200 for programs streamed on the Internet in the deal's first two years and then get 2 percent of a distributor's gross in year three - a key union demand.

Other provisions include increased residual payments for movies and TV programs downloaded from the Internet.

``These advances now give us a foothold in the digital age,'' said Patric Verrone, president of the West Coast guild. ``Rather than being shut out of the future of content creation and delivery, writers will lead the way as television migrates to the Internet.''

Michael R. Perry, a writer for ``Persons Unknown'' and other TV dramas, said the deal made him hopeful the guild and studios could be ``partners in a growing pie'' of Internet revenue.

``I want them to be fabulously, filthy rich. I just want my piece,'' Perry said.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/apnews/story/0,,-7307158,00.html

Must Widget TV: Nets Move From Web To 'Distributed Content'

TWO YEARS INTO TELEVISION'S ONLINE video revolution, the industry's biggest players are still grappling with the basic infrastructure of the business, trying to understand how viewing habits are changing, how advertising should be formatted, delivered and valued. That was the takeaway from a half-day seminar hosted by Havas' Media Contacts unit Wednesday in New York, where top executives of the major networks and online video portals debated the status of the business overall, and the way each of them are approaching it in particular.

One thing was clear from the discussion, and from the findings of a Media Contacts and comScore study released at the event: Consumers like watching conventional network TV programming online, and they are still loath to watch much of the advertising that accompanies it.

Despite that latter challenge, the major TV providers are moving aggressively online--and not only to their own online destinations, but in an array of "distributed" online content options to deliver their programming directly to consumers regardless of where they are on the Web.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=76518&Nid=39333&p=334375

Jake Sasseville's Mission

Jake would be just another broadband personality except that now he's self-syndicating The Edge to 40 local ABC stations, paying them somewhere between $150-5,000 per half hour to get his show on the air. He's also been able to convince these stations to give him some on-air promotion and not to list him as paid programming.

Trying to respect his audience's distaste for advertising, he's cut the number of minutes of ads time from 8 to 4 and tried to find sponsors who really want to reach this audience and are willing to be a part of The Edge journey. On board so far are Ford and Overstock, with others in the pipeline. Jake insists that he's not going to get caught in selling on CPMs, but instead is trying to offer sponsors new and creative ways of getting their brands noticed, through additional product placement and multi-platform insertions.

Though he concedes to being short on the specifics of how programming will now flow between on-air and broadband, he's committed to experimenting to figure out what works. For now he understands that TV is better suited to full-length while broadband is better for clips. He has commitments from the 40 stations to do two 13 week series, so the show should be on through the fall. For the first year he doesn't see any big financial gains, rather, it's all about building his brand's awareness with every tool at his disposal

http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2008-02-13/Jake-Sasseville-s-Mission/&id=354

The World's Most Innovative Companies

We canvassed the experts, analyzed the products, and crunched the numbers. From visionary upstarts to storied stalwarts, here are companies that dazzle with new ideas -- and prove beyond a doubt how business is a force for change. We call them the Fast 50.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/the-worlds-most-innovative-companies.html

MTV’s Game Plan & The Kids’ Rejection Of Ads

In the Feb 18 08 issue of Business Week, the magazine places two related articles back to back - to good effect. The first is an article that studies the moves by MTV to get into the gaming business. Gaming is where the eyeballs are these days MTV believes and that’s where they can therefore sell ads:

No Old Media company has placed a more far-reaching bet on gaming. MTVN operates more than 5,000 mobile, console, and online games and virtual worlds—many of them based on TV shows such as MTV’s The Real World and Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.

…MTVN doesn’t break out its gaming ad revenues but says it has signed up dozens of advertisers… What started as a “test” for Pepsi two years ago is a growing part of its ad strategy, says John Vail, director of interactive marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America. “We can count on that audience being baked-in,” says Vail. “If they are engaged with us in the virtual world, we know they will be engaged with our products in the real world.”

http://www.psfk.com/2008/02/mtvs-game-plan-the-kids-rejection-of-ads.html

EA Sees Indie Talent As ‘Blueprint’ For Gaming Success

The biggest news on the casual gaming front this week seems to be Electronic Arts’ latest commitment to casual and social gaming, with the creation of EA Blueprint. The big idea for Blueprint seems to be finding and supporting independent developers, supplying them with funding and project management (cash and managers, two things EA has a nearly endless supply of), to produce games based on EA intellectual properties for Facebook and other social networks.

The group is being run by Neil Young, EA’s former Los Angeles general manager, who was also the brains behind EA’s Majestic, which was an ARG back in 2001, before ARGs were cool. Also onboard is Alan Yu, EA Los Angeles’ director of artists. EA has also partnered with Hollywood mega-agency CAA (which represents stars ranging from Anne Hathaway to Zac Efron), to add some star power to the project.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/gaming_insider/?p=91

Branded Entertainment Will Continue to Grow

The branded-entertainment marketing sector is expected to continue seeing double-digit growth through to 2012 despite a slowing economy, according to PQ Media. By shifting their ad dollars to alternative channels, more marketers will seek to maximize their value in the face of faltering traditional media and elusive audiences.

Branded entertainment, which covers event sponsorship and marketing, paid product placements, and advergaming and webisodes, has seen spending nearly double since 2002 to an all-time high of $22.3 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest growing segments of the $254 billion marketing services sector. Spending in the category is expected to reach $40 billion by 2012, according to PQ Media's "Branded Entertainment Marketing Forecast: 2008-2012," which was released Feb. 12.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=125056

MTV Likes Hulu, Not YouTube

Om and I just got back from a long meeting with MTV Networks about their digital strategy. I did a video and he’s going to follow-up on the mother ship with a longer post, but there were a couple quotes about video hosts I thought I’d share now.

Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group, specifically asked us what we thought of Hulu, calling it “sleek and simple.” Will MTV content be showing up soon? “We’ve been talking to them since the beginning, and we like it a lot,” he said.

On the other hand, the MTV execs were much less friendly about YouTube, though they referenced the site in every chart of their slides about the future of social media. “Did you know we sued them?” joked Toffler.

http://newteevee.com/2008/02/12/mtv-likes-hulu-not-youtube/

Yahoo Confirms Maven Acquisition

As we had reported was in the works two weeks ago, Yahoo has bought Maven Networks for $160 million.

Yahoo explained the deal as a play for the fast-growing video advertising market. Maven has technology for creating interactive and clickable ads, the hot new video formats.

In addition Yahoo will now service Maven’s media customers, for which it also provides video distribution services (that was its main business). Maven clients include Gannett, Hearst, Fox News, Sony BMG, the Financial Times, Univision, and TV Guide.

http://newteevee.com/2008/02/12/yahoo-confirms-maven-acquisition/

Gen Y Unravels Global Branding Efforts, But Apple, Nike Triumph

But another big issue is that younger consumers--especially Gen Y, with its passion for cheap airfares to any place off the beaten path--"are increasingly cosmopolitan. These are consumers who embrace products because they are unfamiliar, not because they are familiar."

In its survey, based on cultural "fluents" in 17 world markets, Iconoculture identified a few brands that had become "nowhere" brands --so universal that most consumers don't perceive them as having a national identity. Coca-Cola, of course, falls in this category, Yang tells Marketing Daily. "But so does Visa International, and consumers really do believe 'It's everywhere you want to be'."

In addition, the report isolated five brands--Apple, Disney, Harley Davidson, Nike and Starbucks--that have bucked the trend, and are somehow seen as brands that exist on an entirely different global plain, appealing to core values that transcend national identity. "Apple has come to stand for self-expression, for example," Yang says. "Nike has come to mean the ultimate in status, in achievement, and in victory. Harley Davidson is about rebellion."

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=76300&Nid=39259&p=428882

Strike's over, but viewers may be looking elsewhere

The 3-month-old strike officially ended late Tuesday, when members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to go back to work. One question that lingers is whether viewers will return to broadcast TV after many became tired of repeats and turned off the tube.
During the writers strike, people watched a record number of online videos. Teens spent more time primping their pages on social networking websites such as MySpace. Online game-playing surged. Cable networks attracted more channel surfers. And even DVD sales, which had been in slow decline, ticked up in January.
These shifts in leisure activity can't necessarily be pegged to the walkout. But the network TV doldrums created by the lack of new shows accelerated the splintering of the audience. It illustrated the myriad entertainment choices available and the challenges ahead for the broadcast networks as they try to woo viewers back.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-habits13feb13,1,5774009.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

NBC and MTV band together to promote "quarterlife"

Television networks NBC and MTV unveiled an unusual plan on Thursday to promote a new TV show, "quarterlife," that will premiere on MTV, but air weekly on competitor NBC.

The deal between the two rivals comes as broadcasters like NBC compete with the Internet, video games, DVDs and other forms of entertainment for viewers' attention.

"We are all vying to get our programs and ideas exposed," said Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. "You hope to get shows seen in as many places as you can and having it sampled online or on a sneak peek on cable is great."

"Quarterlife," which portrays struggling artists in their 20s living and working in a big city, will premiere on MTV the afternoon of February 26. That night, it will have its first airing on NBC. Regular episodes begin March 2.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080214/tv_nm/quarterlife_dc;_ylt=A0WTcSSPE7RH5Y8AoiFpMhkF

Nielsen to Track Online Video Use Through Its TV Panel

With more consumers starting to consider the idea of watching TV programs and other video online, Nielsen said it would "introduce measurement of TV viewing on the PC screen in our TV panel by the end of 2008."
"The clients want it," said Jim O'Hara, president of media product leadership for Nielsen Co. "Our ultimate goal will be to bring full internet measurement to the TV panel for both streaming and navigation."
Nielsen's effort is part of a strategy to measure all kinds of video consumption, whether it take place on the traditional TV screen or on smaller video perches such as mobile phones or iPods. The effort is not an easy one, however, primarily because people don't watch programs or video content in the same way across different venues. And yet, with the number of online video viewers projected to rise to 183 million in 2011 compared with 114 million in 2006, according to statistics from eMarketer, the need to link audience behavior as viewers travel from one medium to another is becoming more pressing.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=125012

The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - February 10th Edition

Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…

Sharing Notes about Collective Intelligence

This year's report profiles the following technologies:

• Grassroots Video -- "virtually anyone can capture, edit, and share short video clips, using inexpensive equipment (such as a cell phone) and free or nearly free software."
• Collaboration Webs -- "collaboration no longer calls for expensive equipment and specialized expertise. The newest tools for collaborative work are small, flexible, and free, and require no installation."
• Mobile Broadband -- "each year, more than a billion new mobile devices are manufactured -- or a new phone for every six people on the planet....New displays and interfaces make it possible to use mobiles to access almost any Internet content -- content that can be delivered over either a broadband cellular network or a local wireless network."
• Data Mashups -- "mashups-- custom applications where combinations of data from different sources are 'mashed up' into a single tool -- offer new ways to look at and interact with datasets."
• Collective Intelligence -- "the kind of knowledge and understanding that emerges from large groups of people is collective intelligence."
• Social Operating Systems -- "the essential ingredient of next generation social networking, social operating systems, is that they will base the organization of the network around people, rather than around content...Social operating systems will support whole new categories of applications that weave through the implicit connections and clues we leave everywhere as we go about our lives, and use them to organize our work and our thinking around the people we know."

http://henryjenkins.org/2008/02/last_week_my_travels_took.html

Report: Online Video Traffic Booming Amid WGA Strike

Although reports like this hint at a bright future for online video, the real issue is whether events like December's bump are effectively increasing ad revenue for these video sites. In the meantime, here are some of report's metrics for the number crunchers:

• 7.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer).
• 40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer).
• Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34-percent gain since the beginning of 2007.
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/02/report-online-v.html

New Agreement on Strike Brings Out Web Video Particulars

Possibly nearing a conclusion of the ongoing writers’ strike, the Writers Guild of America has released the terms (PDF) of a proposed agreement for the review of its members. A particularly contentious topic, according to United Hollywood, is the proposed window before residuals kick in: 17 days, or 24 days in certain cases such as the first season of a series.

This is a key point in the negotiations that was at least partially resolved last weekend. Under the proposal, writers will receive a fixed fee for the first two years after the contract is signed and 2 percent of gross in the third year. The fee is $654 for a hour program and $360 for a half-hour program in the first year, and $654 for an hour program and $373 for a half-hour program in the second year. (You might have seen people quoting $1,200 as the two-year payment, which comes from summing up the hour-long figures.)

Also, we have our answer on how much a webisode should cost, that is if you want the WGA contract to cover it. The proposed contract says content made for new media should cost at least $15,000 per minute, $300,000 per program, or $500,000 per series order to be covered.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120166655575528043.html?mod=mm_media_marketing_hs_left

After the Writers’ Strike

The tentative deal officially announced early Saturday morning between striking writers and Hollywood studios, networks and production companies — all but ending a three-month-old strike — has already made the threat of an actors’ strike this summer less likely. By Saturday afternoon, a pair of warring actors’ unions were trying to make amends with each other and prepare for joint contract negotiations that could suddenly prove smoother than most had dared predict a few days earlier.

Movie and television writers will almost certainly be back at work on Wednesday, pending the results of a Tuesday vote, in person or by faxed proxy, on whether to lift the strike. On Sunday, the governing boards of Writers Guild of America leaders unanimously approved the provisional deal with production companies, making approval by members likely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/arts/television/11stri.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Brainwave sensors get Nielsen’s attention

Nielsen, the company that measures ratings for television programmes and commercials, wants to peek inside viewers’ brains.

The company announced it had taken a stake in NeuroFocus, a company that uses brainwaves, skin conduction and eye-tracking techniques to determine people’s emotional reactions to advertisements, pilot television programmes and consumer products.

The investment, of which the amount was not disclosed, underlines the urgency in the media world to craft ever-more precise adverts at a time when consumers face a glut of messages, and can use digital video recorders and similar devices to skip past commercials.

Nielsen, whose ratings are the industry standard, has come under particular pressure to improve its measurements. The company once relied on sample families recording their viewing habits in a diary.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0dbddb64-d5b4-11dc-8b56-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Bewkes: Everything Should Be VOD

After stirring up the market with plans to possibly spin off its cable and AOL online units, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes aimed his sights at the media giant’s cable networks, telling analysts that he wants to be aggressive in making video on demand programming available across all of its networks.

“We and others in the industry need to be a bit more revolutionary than evolutionary in this area,” Bewkes said on a conference call with analysts Wednesday to discuss fourth- quarter results. “For some time I’ve had the strong belief that all linear ad-supported networks should make their programming lineups available on demand and on television sets, not just on broadband. It’s a win-win for consumers and networks alike. We’re going to be aggressive in putting our own networks on demand so we can show the industry the benefits of this model. We think it will cement the long-term prospects of these businesses.”

Bewkes has said this before, at the CTAM Summit in Washington, D.C. last July and at the National Show in Atlanta in 2006 -- but it was the first time he said it as CEO of the company. And that could mean that it will actually be done.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6529826.html

Fox plans to cut back TV pilots

Hollywood studios and the US broadcasters were already looking at ways of streamlining the costly annual cycle of developing and piloting dozens of scripted comedy and drama pilots as the growth of digital media eats into the traditional network TV advertising model.

However, the production hiatus caused by the writers' strike seems certain to speed up the restructuring of the network TV production business.

Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer of the Fox TV network and Hollywood studio owner News Corporation, yesterday said he was looking to cut costs in production. With the dispute estimated to have cost Hollywood studios $500m (£254m), Chernin said that the Fox network would make savings by producing fewer pilots.

"We were moving toward probably making fewer pilots and trying to get some waste out of the system before the strike," Chernin told journalists at News Corp's presentation of its financial results yesterday. "We will continue to look at that."

Chernin's comments come just weeks after the NBC Universal chief executive, Jeff Zucker, vowed to cull extravagant pilots for new series, saving around $50m a year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/feb/05/television1?gusrc=rss&feed=media

Our Video Baby Is Growing Up!

The next item is syndication; how do I syndicate my video content across the Web to where the users are watching, manage the video distribution and manage the monetization of those videos with video advertising? Last week there was lots of press about the launch of Freewheel, which was led by a bunch of ex-Doubleclick people. The company offers a product that allows you to manage the monetization of your syndicated advertising alongside your syndicated content to any site on the Web, and with any combination of the targeting and delivery tools offered by Broadband Enterprises, Tremor, YuMe, QMeCom and Scanscout. What they are not doing is handling the syndication of the content itself, which is something you still need to work with a content delivery network to handle. Companies like Akamai, Limelight Networks and CDNetworks still appear to be the three leaders in this space, but there are many more to go around. Our baby is getting ready to drive a car and go to the prom now!

The last area of the space that needs to be addressed is the P2P networks. These are never going to go away, so at some point someone will come across and demonstrate the old adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”. Someone is going to come along and work out a proper way of inserting video advertising into the copyrighted content in the P2P space, and at that point a publisher will be able to control the monetization of ALL their online video content.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1227

How To Avoid Death By Free

Kevin Kelly has a detailed (and important) piece about the oncoming world of ‘free’ and how businesses can still sell in the environment. Some readers might remember Kelly’s previous essay on copyright that argued that technology will over come any barrier a rights holder will try to use. In this new thought piece, he argues that our new economy is fueled by duplication and sharing and that anything that can be copied will be copied and those copies will forever be available. He says:

The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports — that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

http://www.psfk.com/2008/02/how-to-avoid-death-by-free.html

Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up

Uh-oh. Social networking was supposed to be the Next Big Thing on the Internet. MySpace, Facebook, and other sites have been attracting millions of new users, building sprawling sites that companies are banking on to trigger an online advertising boom. Trouble is, the boom isn't booming anymore. Like Heritage, many people are spending less time on social networking sites or signing off altogether.

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore. MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says. The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that's down sharply from past growth rates. "What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising," says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_07/b4071054390809.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_technology

Is Facebook the Future of Search?

That brought to mind the brief history of search-engine domination. If we trace the roots of our Internet behavior back to the Net's wild-west days in the mid-to-late '90s, most of us were probably launching into cyberspace from a portal page like Yahoo's, or through Excite or Lycos (remember them?). And by the new millennium, search engines, especially Google, had become the place to begin and end our Internet days. Then came Generation Y and the social network. What began as a younger-user phenomenon quickly caught on with 25-to-34-year-olds and older, and now social networks are changing the way we use the Internet in our daily lives (if only businesses could find a way to make money off that traffic). Is it any surprise, then, that search engines are no longer the most popular sites in the U.S.? Those bragging rights now belong to social-networking sites like Facebook — sites that as of June 2006 surpassed search engines as the most popular category by market share of visits (Facebook is even more popular than porn).

Do social networks herald the end of search? I wouldn't go that far. What may be in danger, however, is the serendipitous nature of search — for example, the gratuitous queries that we type into Google while we're on hold with India, waiting for tech support to solve our issue du jour. But, now, when we have idle time, we don't go to Google anymore; we go to Facebook. And on Facebook, we don't have to seek information. Instead, information just comes to us.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1710493,00.html

The Problem With The Trends (Business)

As some of you know, PSFK began as a website project where Simon King and I wrote about the interesting ideas we were noticing around the world. It was something we did for the love of it. And one day a company phoned us up (Anheuser Busch) and asked us for our advice. That really started PSFK LLC - the trends and innovation company that fuels this site. As we have developed our offering for PSFK consultancy over the last few years, the more we have learned about the market we work in and the reaction that buyers have to trend services.

The key learning has been this: there’s something wrong in the trends business. It’s broken. It’s broken by lack of imagination, lack of collaboration and secrecy. Below we’ve listed some major areas that need fixing, not for our competitive sake, but for an industry to evolve and become useful enough to inspire its clients to make things better.

http://www.psfk.com/2008/02/the-problem-with-the-trends-business.html

The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - February 3rd Edition

Here are the most interesting articles that came across this week…

TNS Aims to Take Bite Out of Nielsen

"I think this is the year to really improve TV's accountability," says Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video innovations director at Publicis Groupe's Starcom Worldwide, a media firm. "We shouldn't continue to justify doing $70 billion of business off of 12,000 homes when the data exist. So let's explore it," she adds.

Starcom is looking at how it can use the nationwide second-by-second data to land future ad deals.

Unlike Nielsen, which requires its audience panels to use a measurement device, TNS will be tapping into viewers' set-top boxes for its second-by-second data about which TV programs and commercials they saw live or through digital video recording. (Nielsen's data are minute by minute.) Supporters say set-top box data are more useful to marketers -- and less burdensome to participants. They also point to a 2009 deadline for eliminating over-the-air analog transmission that they say will likely increase the number of set-top boxes, which are already in more than 50% of U.S. households.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120174340644030665.html

WGA, AMPTP May Clear Internet Hurdle

Both the New York Times and Associated Press are reporting that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have reached tentative agreement on Internet distribution (or “electronic sell-through”) terms, based on information from unidentified sources.

Since online distribution was the major sticking point in negotiations, this could be the breakthrough in talks Hollywood has been waiting for. A formal deal, subject to WGA member vote, could be announced within days — but as United Hollywood points out, going from informal talks to formal legalese might not be so easy, citing its own anonymous sources who say no draft language exists yet.

http://newteevee.com/2008/02/02/wga-amptp-maybe-clear-of-internet-hurdle/

Is the Tipping Point Toast?

Yet, if you believe Watts, all that money and effort is being wasted. Because according to him, Influentials have no such effect. Indeed, they have no special role in trends at all.

In the past few years, Watts--a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) --has performed a series of controversial, barn-burning experiments challenging the whole Influentials thesis. He has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs. He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend. And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random. Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

"It just doesn't work," Watts says, when I meet him at his gray cubicle at Yahoo Research in midtown Manhattan, which is unadorned except for a whiteboard crammed with equations. "A rare bunch of cool people just don't have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There's no there there."

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html

Open is King - The Future of Media beyond Control

On the top layer, Open Systems win, all around

• In the networked economy, visibility, transparency and compatibility are becoming a must-have standard
• Often, profits are generated more indirectly than before (i.e. the tollbooth may have been moved), and therefore the ‘Measuring-Success’ - Metrics must be adapted, too
• Much success will continue to come from disrupting existing products with commoditized open standards
• Openness is a risk that -if balanced carefully- is well worth taking

http://www.mediafuturist.com/files/gerd_leonhard_experience_economy_event_amsterdam_open_is_king_web.pdf

What Would a Combined Microsoft-Yahoo Look Like?

The real impact to Microsoft, though, is not visible in these numbers because Yahoo represents a new growth opportunity for Microsoft in advertising revenues and online services. During the last four quarters, Microsoft’s revenues for its online services (MSN, Windows Live, aQuantive, etc.) were $2.8 billion and it lost $949 million. So just combining Yahoo with that business, you get revenues of $9.8 billion, but Microsoft would still be showing a net loss for that business of $289 million.

But this is an advertising play for Microsoft. It wants to combine the scale of its recently acquired advertising networks with that of Yahoo’s, along with Yahoo’s vast consumer reach (which is appealing to advertisers, who see all those eyeballs as valuable inventory).

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/01/what-would-a-combined-microsoft-yahoo-look-like/

Big won't win

Yahoo, I've long argued, is the last old media company, for it operates on the old-media model: it owns or controls content, markets to bring audience in, then bombards us with ads until we leave. Contrast that with Google, which comes to us with its ads and content and tools, all of which I can distribute on my blog. Yahoo, like media before it, is centralised. Google is distributed.

It's appropriate, then, that Yahoo is being bought by what one could say is the last old technology company, Microsoft. For Microsoft still operates on a model of control: closed in an open era. They will get along well together.

This is not a deal about content. At an entrepreneurial conference in New York this week, OnMedia, a venture capitalist said that the "perceived value of content is approaching zero". That's a kick in the kidneys to us content people.

No, this is a deal about audience and advertising. After the big guys consolidated all the ad networks they could - aQuantive to Microsoft, Tacoda to AOL, Doubleclick to Google (the EU willing) - next they're buying up audience in bulk. That's what Yahoo is, really. They call it a firehose: people in bulk, us as masses.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeff_jarvis/2008/02/microsoftyahoo_young_dinos_mat.html

From Ads to Value Add

It’s the time of year when pundits make predictions. One that caught my eye comes from Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer. He sees the interruption-disruption ad model, where consumers accept advertising as a necessary evil in exchange for free content, dying off because of the Internet, social media and the DVR.

The prediction isn’t particularly surprising: almost everyone agrees this is the way we’re trending. What’s intriguing is his suggestion that marketers must turn advertising into content, something so compelling and entertaining that people will seek it out. I agree, but don’t think he goes far enough.

Marketers must shift their mindset and seek ways to engage, offer value-added services, and experiences that make consumers want to interact with and buy the brand. Widgets, those rapidly proliferating online applications, are a good metaphor. Unlike a traditional ad, which at best can only communicate and entertain, a widget like Forbes’ “Top Lists” directly engages a consumer and provides a value-added service.

http://backpocket.prophet.com/post/1462/from-ads-to-value-add

No breaking for commercials

These ideas all emerged lately from the workshops of MTV Networks, which, like most of its entertainment-industry rivals, is increasingly trying to help its advertisers find fresh ways to keep viewers engaged during the commercial "pods" between its shows and, through so-called integrated marketing, within the shows themselves. They also frequently involve shows, movies or games developed at other divisions of MTV parent Viacom Inc.
"The 30-second commercial is not dead, but it's dying a slow death," said Frank Zazza, head of consultancy iTVX and the marketer who famously placed Reese's Pieces candy in the path of Steven Spielberg's lovable alien, E.T.
Integrated marketing is a high enough priority at Viacom for Chief Executive Philippe P. Dauman to have mentioned it more than once in recent talks with Wall Street analysts as an important source of revenue growth.
All audiences are getting used to consuming media in new ways -- on computers and cellphones and via video-on-demand, for example -- but it's particularly true of people in the 12 to 24 age group, said John Shea, executive vice president for integrated marketing at MTVN Music & Logo Group, which, besides MTV and VH1, includes the country music channel CMT and the gay-themed channel Logo.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mtvads28jan28,0,7444663.story

Branded Entertainment is Upon Us

This new reality is a direct result of the audience-fractured, advertising-averse world in which we now live. Ms. Lazarus believes that for agencies, "the challenge as stewards of brands is to help them tell a better story." In fact, telling a better story (the traditional agency imperative, I would argue) is no longer sufficient, as Ms. Lazarus continued: "Now brands need to be a part of the content story."

As such, she envisions far tighter links between ad agencies and the Hollywood creative community. Drawing a meaningful distinction about these industries' respective roles, she explained to the audience of content types: "We need all of you desperately...we can come up with a brand idea, but we can't do programming."

http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/details.php?id=341

This Should Be Your Mantra: Be Everywhere

What newspaper people now need to understand is that not only are they publishing content to all the relevant platforms under their own brands, but they also need to adapt to publishing everywhere that they can under others' brands: blogs, social networks, news aggregators, map mashup sites, community sites, business' websites, personal websites, etc.
They have to embrace a profound change in media. What they produce can no longer exist as an island online, where they use marketing and hope to get people to come view the content that they produce, or sign up for e-mail, phone or RSS delivery. News organizations must develop strategies that pump out their content -- in bits and pieces -- to anyone who's willing to run it.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/stopthepresses_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003703433

The buzz on 'Gossip Girl'

The show's young fans have shown a similar affinity for new media, helping to consistently make "Gossip Girl" the most downloaded television program on iTunes. But despite the program's online popularity, the network hasn't been able to translate the Web buzz into substantial TV ratings. Even after a marketing push, just 2.6 million viewers on average tuned in to watch the show's first 13 episodes -- about 500,000 of them teens, its target demographic.

"It's sort of become the first show that has managed to achieve some level of cultural permeation and success in the new world order where ratings don't really seem to apply," said executive producer Josh Schwartz.

For the young network, however, which made "Gossip Girl" the centerpiece of its sophomore season, ratings very much matter.

When viewers watch on different platforms, "we don't make the kind of money we make when it's on the air," said Dawn Ostroff, the CW's president of entertainment. "That's something still being figured out: How can we take advantage of viewership shifting to different places?"

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/cl-ca-gossip27jan27,0,4600940.story

Facebook Apps On Any Website: Clever Move

Facebook announced Friday a new JavaScript client library that will allow Facebook apps to be displayed on any website.

The client library allows users to make Facebook API calls from any web site and create Ajax Facebook applications on that website.

Wei Zhu from Facebook explains the benefits:

Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML. An application that uses this client library should be registered as an iframe type. This applies to either iframe Facebook apps that users access through the Facebook web site or apps that users access directly on the app’s own web sites. Almost all Facebook APIs are supported.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/26/facebook-apps-on-any-website-clever-move/

MySpace Will Open Site To Outside Developers

The online community MySpace is introducing tools for developing games, media-sharing features and other programs that better integrate with the Internet's leading social-networking site.

Wednesday's announcement follows a May decision by its smaller rival, Facebook, to open its platform to developers, a move that has proven to be a boon for music-sharing startup iLike.com, photo-sharing service Slide Inc. and countless other companies.

Those applications, in turn, have helped make Facebook even more popular, although it still ranks as the second most trafficked social network behind News Corp.'s MySpace. (News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., which publishes The Wall Street Journal.)

MySpace will formally launch the MySpace Developer Platform next Tuesday with a kickoff event and workshop at its new San Francisco office. Although developers will have all the tools they need to create and test programs, they won't be able to integrate them right away. MySpace has yet to announce a start date for that.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120166655575528043.html?mod=mm_media_marketing_hs_left