The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - May 26th Edition

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

Open Files: Nine Digital Trends for the Future

Every day a new social network is born and yet another dies. This makes spotting digital trends and tracking them to be challenging at times. However, I have found a system that works really well called Open Files. It was developed by George Stalk at the Boston Consulting Group (an Edelman client). It's become the framework for my latest talk, which I have been giving around the world. (For more on the research process behind it, see my post on deliberate practice.)

Stalk tracks trends by breaking them down into three distinct buckets - faint signals, a watch list and hallucinations. He talks about this at length in this great podcast (mp3) with the Harvard Business Review. In a nutshell, faint signals are here and now trends with real consumer movement and business models. The watch list is exactly that - new directions that are emerging but may not be ready for primetime. Finally, hallucinations are flashes that, if you squint, they might vanish.

Below is the deck I have been using for my talks. It covers what I am currently tracking in my personal Open Files. I have summarized these below...

http://www.edelmandigital.com/blog/2008/05/open_files_nine_digital_trends_1.html

Online Video: Follow The People

I think there are two important implications for measurement.

The importance of duration. Video is fundamentally different than page consumption. Our metrics are going to have to evolve to reflect the way consumers interact with video content, and quite specifically, that interaction occurs with respect to time. Buyers and sellers want to see video content aggregated into meaningful entities that allow for cross-media comparison, which will invariably mean that — at least for long-form, ad-supported program content — we will migrate to duration-based metrics that look a lot like traditional broadcast metrics (maybe even demographic quarter-hour ratings.)

The emergence of online video will serve to hasten a continued shift in online metrics toward duration-based metrics for all online content types. Advertisers and publishers won’t be able to use Page Views (or, for that matter, number of streams) to compare the audience engagement of an online newspaper article, a stream of an NCAA basketball game, a gaming environment, a social network, and a widget. But all these content types accrue duration.

Video hastens the migration to duration-based metrics for all online content.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/metrics_insider/?p=61

@Facebook @Shark: jump?

Facebook should have asked — pardon the plug for the book — WWGD? If they had thought like Google, they would have tried to figure out how to use what they had built — an organizing system for friendship — and turn that into a platform we can use — and control — anywhere on the internet.

Google has quite cleverly done that as they explain on their code blog. They used Facebook’s API by all appearances legitimately. They give us control of how we use our data (and our friends are our data). They also kluged it a bit so they don’t retain data (which also means that other sites can really manipulate it, losing some potential functionality but keeping Google on the safe site of the line).

People find the relationships they’ve built on social networks really valuable, and they want the option of bringing those friends with them elsewhere on the web. Google Friend Connect is designed to keep users fully in control of their information at all times. Users choose what social networks to link to their Friend Connect account. (They can just as easily unlink them.) We never handle passwords from other sites, we never store social graph data from other sites, and we never pass users’ social network IDs to Friend Connected sites or applications.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/05/19/facebook-shark-jump/

Brett Ratner Launches Branding Consultancy

He's worked with divas, mutants and mismatched cops. Now TV, music-video and movie director Brett Ratner is wrangling marketers.

The Hollywood heavyweight behind the "Rush Hour" trilogy and "X-Men: The Last Stand" is launching Brett Ratner Brands, a consultancy to help brands infuse entertainment and culturally relevant ideas into their marketing strategies.

His first client is Activision's mega-brand "Guitar Hero." The first of what is planned as many-to-come creative executions aired as two 30-second spots during last night's "American Idol" finale on Fox. The dueling Davids -- Cook and Archuleta -- each starred in similar takeoffs of the dance sequence from "Risky Business" (think button-down shirts and underwear). Each singer performed in his own style of jamming on a "Guitar Hero" axe while lip-synching to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock 'N Roll" a la Tom Cruise. The ads were produced by Omnicom Group's DDB, Los Angeles, and His Productions.

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127279

Microsoft: Don't Cut Off the Long Tail

Why take such a drastic step? The most concrete answer that Next-Gen got out of Whitten is that because Xbox Live Arcade's library, at 130 titles, is just too confusing. I'll give him that: XBLA's interface is a mess. Guess whose fault that is? Hint: It's not the fault of developers for making too many games. It's the fault of the people who designed the interface in the first place. "Solving" this problem by deleting games is a ludicrous, cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face solution.

Look at iTunes. Know how many songs Apple's service has? About 6 million. Are they going to start deleting the ones that don't sell? Of course not.

There are zero benefits to the Xbox Live owner to have games deleted from the service, no matter how Microsoft tries to spin it. Hit especially hard will be anyone who's already downloaded and paid for a game that gets deleted. Microsoft hasn't said what will happen if those users' hard drives fail and they need to re-download the game they paid for.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/05/microsoft-dont.html

Resistance Is Futile

When Disney died in 1966, Mr. Miyamoto was a 14-year-old schoolteacher’s son living near Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital. An aspiring cartoonist, he adored the classic Disney characters. When he wasn’t drawing, he made his own toys, carving wooden puppets with his grandfathers’ tools or devising a car race from a spare motor, string and tin cans.

Even as he has become the world’s most famous and influential video-game designer — the father of Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda and, most recently, the Wii — Mr. Miyamoto still approaches his work like a humble craftsman, not as the celebrity he is to gamers around the world.

Perched on the end of a chair in a hotel suite a few dozen stories above Midtown Manhattan, the preternaturally cherubic 55-year-old Mr. Miyamoto radiated the contentment of someone who has always wanted to make fun. And he has. As the creative mastermind at Nintendo for almost three decades, Mr. Miyamoto has unleashed mass entertainment with a global breadth, cultural endurance and financial success unsurpassed since Disney’s fabled career.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/arts/television/25schi.html?ex=1369281600&en=ba45b9fad6e8e092&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Eisner Talks Story, Predicts Video Future

Michael Eisner spoke at the Microsoft advance08 conference Tuesday, delivering what the Seattle PI called his “Internet Content Manifesto.” The former head of Disney (and the guy who begat Prom Queen) talked about YouTube’s place in the digital landscape, the length of web programming and how storytelling is the next killer app.

On YouTube:

“YouTube is celebrated as a completely revolutionary concept — and it is. The ability for anyone, anywhere to create and distribute short-form entertainment that can be seen by anyone else, anywhere else is an extraordinary development. But in many ways, YouTube is very old news. It is to the Internet what the nickelodeon was to the movies — a very preliminary installment of what is to come.”

http://newteevee.com/2008/05/21/eisner-talks-story-predicts-video-future/

Hulu Leads Network Sites, Adds Partners

Hulu just broke into the top 10 of all online video sites, according to Nielsen’s April measure. The site, which has only been public for two months, is now seeing more than 63 million streams and 2.4 million users per month, with each user viewing more than two hours of video. That beats out all network TV sites — including Hulu’s parents, FOX and NBC.

Hulu also said today it had signed seven new distribution partners, the first additions to that list since before the company even had a name. While Hulu content is embeddable and as a result, available just about everywhere, these sites have direct deals for the library (as AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo have had for the last six months). Today Hulu content and advertising debuts on TV.com; TVGuide.com, Break.com, Zap2it.com, BuddyTV.com, Flixster.com and MyYearbook.com are on the way. Hulu also said it’s working with Facebook to send alerts about what users are watching directly to their activity feeds.

http://newteevee.com/2008/05/20/hulu-leads-network-sites-adds-partners/

The 'Mother' of All Web Series

Just a few months after the bomb that was NBC's Quarterlife appeared to kill the idea that the Web could foster TV development, the broadcast networks have effectively stayed the execution of the concept by announcing plans to appropriate popular Internet series for their prime-time schedules.
Last week, ABC announced plans to pick up for midseason In the Motherhood, a mom-targeted series produced by MindShare Entertainment for MSN. Meanwhile, CBS inked a partnership with EQAL, the indy production firm behind the ubiquitous viral video series lonelygirl15.
Those moves could signal the start of a trend, as cost-conscious broadcasters look to reduce their reliance on pricey pilots by tapping inexpensively produced shows that have already built an audience online.
"We've always talked about the potential for online to be a proving ground," said Gayle Troberman, global general manager, branded entertainment at MSN.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3i9b83c368b14067226eef9f9bc536bb64

To see the future of the internet, look East

One example illustrates this clearly. Earlier this year, The Economist published an article on social networking and boldly concluded that while these sites will become a ubiquitous feature of online life, ‘this did not mean it is a business’ (2). It concluded this after examining Facebook, MySpace and Bebo (all based in the West), whose business models all revolve around advertising. No mention was made of any of the leading social networking sites in Asia, despite the fact that the most cursory glance at these (particularly CyWorld and QQ) would reveal the very opposite: namely, that they are massively profitable and little of their revenues are generated from advertising.

In 2007, QQ reported annual revenues of $523million. This was close to four times the revenues of Facebook. Their operating profits, however, were $240million while Facebook recorded a $50million loss in the same year (3). While Facebook’s results might justify The Economist’s pessimism, QQ’s certainly do not. While QQ has over 300million active accounts (which is 50 per cent more than the total number of people online in China which means people have multiple accounts) the remarkable thing is that only 13 per cent of these revenues are generated through advertising. It is users buying and exchanging digital goods with each other that generate the vast majority of QQ’s revenue (4). These digital goods range from background music for their profiles, avatars, fashion items to dress their avatars and personalised spaces to weapons in virtual games. In a similar vein, CyWorld reports that it generates almost $300,000 a day similarly selling digital goods through its site.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5166/

Google's 'Analytics Evangelist' Explains Why Websites 'Suck'

The point of Mr. Kaushik's candor is that he wants marketers to start thinking more about the "why." To get at that, he espoused the use of more online surveys of site visitors to find "segments of discontent."
He advised marketers to create conversations with consumers using a simple, short and free online survey created by Iperceptions.com, an online research firm. The survey asks: Who is coming to your website? Why are they there? How are you doing? What do you need to fix?
The surveys "get customers involved in fixing things," he said.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=127251

At Sci Fi Channel, the Universe Is Expanding and the Future Is Now

“It’s not just aliens, spaceships and the future,” said Dave Howe, who was promoted to president of Sci Fi from general manager in January. “It’s about asking that simple question, ‘What if?’ ”

The changes evolved over several years. One result is a widening audience, especially among women. In April, for example, Sci Fi ranked sixth in cable networks in the 25-to-54 age group. Growth in female viewers outpaced that in men; 43 percent of Sci Fi’s viewers are female.

The network has been a boon for its corporate parent, NBC Universal. The channel, alongside its corporate sibling CNBC, the business network, has quietly become the focus of NBC Universal’s global expansion efforts.

“For an international standpoint, we really have two global brands,” said Jeffrey Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal. “We have CNBC, which is in 400 million homes worldwide. And Sci Fi. Business is universal. And science fiction is such a well-known global genre.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/business/media/19scifi.html?_r=1&8ad&emc=seiab1&oref=slogin

Finding cracks in Facebook

Late last year Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of social-networking phenomenon Facebook, got onstage before a Madison Avenue crowd and declared that he was leading a once-in-a-century media revolution. Long story short: The revolution hasn't panned out. Six months later, advertisers could be forgiven for mistaking Facebook for a smaller MySpace or a much larger Friendster (remember them?). And far from changing media as we know it, the virtual home of Superpokes, Funwalls, and other such time wasters is showing cracks in its foundation.

User growth remains impressive. Since September 2006, when Zuckerberg opened Facebook to nonstudents, the site has grown 12-fold, making it one of the fastest-rising dot-coms in history. Visitors tripled after Facebook expanded internationally last year, and they continue to spend more time on the site: 20 billion total minutes in March 2008, vs. 6.4 billion a year prior. But the number of U.S. visitors has leveled off, fluctuating between 30 million and 35 million, according to comScore. And that's not all. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the adults who signed on last summer to see what the fuss was about are done with their social-networking experiment. The company also delayed its much-anticipated redesign, originally due in April, in deference to third-party developers that have complained that Facebook has become a frustrating partner. "Developing on Facebook is like playing a game where the rules are changing all the time," says Jia Shen, co-founder of widget maker RockYou. He's turning his attention increasingly to social networks like MySpace that use the OpenSocial standard promoted by Google.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/12/technology/cracks_facebook_hempel.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008051308

Helping an Agency (and Clients) Branch Out Into Content Space

M&V: What is your impression of branded entertainment today?
Mr. Murphy: If you are marketing your brand through any kind of entertainment, then you are in branded entertainment. Clients are demanding more and more from branded entertainment, because that's how people are living.
From a brand standpoint, what is important is being able to control their destiny in the world of entertainment, which wasn't always possible before. If branded entertainment doesn't do that for them, there is no point. They're the ones who are putting the money down.
Brands need to think about how they fit organically in what they are trying to do. You have a sophisticated consumer population out there. If you are transparent and organic, they will welcome you. If not, they will tear you apart. In some cases, the product may not be in the entertainment content created at all.

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127201

Mother Births First Feature Film

Eurostar -- the train service that links London to mainland Europe -- provided financial backing for the film (Mother does not own a stake in it). Eurostar's landmark London terminal borders the Somers Town area, so the brand fits seamlessly into the film without ever being mentioned by name. Eurostar's marketing chief, Greg Nugent, got an executive-producer credit on the film.
Interestingly, Eurostar is not a Mother client. In fact, the "Somers Town" project began when Mother was eliminated early on from a pitch for its ad account. The agency's original idea had been to create a series of episodes that would add up to one feature film but would also work on their own. After the agency was eliminated, Mother founder Robert Saville, who spent much of his youth in the Somers Town area, developed the idea and persuaded Mr. Nugent to back it as a separate project, which eventually became "Somers Town."
Mr. Saville, who is the film's other executive producer, said, "It's incredibly subtle; the terminal and the connection to Paris just happen to be in the film. But there is a halo effect on the brand, and this should eventually be a profitable piece of marketing with cinema release, TV and DVD revenues."

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=127165

The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - May 19th Edition

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

The Promise and Peril of Ubiquitous Community

As exciting as this is, the transition of community from a handful of big reach sites to a ubiquitous platform is incredibly disruptive for marketers. It essentially makes social network advertising, which according to anecdotal evidence is already a mixed bag, even more difficult. (And thus monetizing social networks.)

The end result is that marketers will need to shift the way they approach communities. Static advertising is no longer viable. The solution is collaboration. Marketers will need to tap these emerging social operating systems to build meaningful connections through their sites and others before competitors do.

Participation is no longer optional and the fist movers who dedicate resources will win.

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/05/the-promise-and.html

In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time?

This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers?

That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. Each of the major broadcast networks, save for Fox, has seen its audience decline this season. The ratings for hit shows like “American Idol” and “CSI” have approached record lows.

Where some of last May’s 44 million viewers went is not a mystery, according to the networks. The writers’ strike this winter deflated the ratings and accelerated the flight of viewers to cable channels.

But the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12ratings.html

In Reversal, Microsoft Proposes New Deal to Yahoo

Microsoft has proposed a complex new deal with Yahoo that would involve collaboration between their online advertising businesses but would not involve a full takeover, Microsoft said on Sunday.

Microsoft released a brief statement on Sunday disclosing the renewed talks, a surprising reversal just weeks after Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo and said it had “moved on.” The statement hints that Microsoft may later seek to reenter merger negotiations.

In the statement, Microsoft said it was “considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo.” Microsoft provided no additional details.

People involved in the confidential discussions said the talks center on a partnership or joint venture for search-related advertising to compete against Google. When Microsoft first made its unsolicited bid of $31 a share for Yahoo in February, it said it was doing so as part of its battle to increase its relatively small slice of the search-related advertising market against Google, a behemoth with more than 58 percent of the market.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/technology/19yahoo.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

Free for All

Bob Pittman made music videos free for consumers when he found­ed MTV 27 years ago. And now he’s pretty sure music in all formats should be free. No more $15.98 CDs. No 99-cent iTunes. Instead, he says, artists should use recordings to build a brand so that they can make money on concerts and T-shirts. Sitting in his New York office, a foot-tall MTV astronaut statue behind him, he says, "Maybe get a sponsor to pay a million dollars and just give the album away."
Pittman has nailed the future of music.
It's fun to watch the flailing going on now. Producer Timbaland—this generation's Phil Spector, though less weird—has cut a deal with Verizon Wireless to produce songs to be sold exclusively through the company's cellular service. Nine Inch Nails released its latest album only on its website. And those Radiohead guys will try anything. Last October, they released their album In Rainbows on the Web—asking, essentially, for tips in return—and have made the raw tracks for one song available on iTunes so fans can mix their own versions. Any day now, I expect to find a flash drive with a Radiohead song on it inside a specially marked box of Cap'n Crunch.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/2008/05/09/Trends-in-Music-Distribution

Impaneled, and Some Hospital-Grade Online Video by Serious Producers

Last night the funny and fairly studious crowd at NYWIFT seemed to want a cram session. I should have anticipated this. To TV and film people, the television-Internet convergence — around the corner, not around the corner, I give up — looms like a final exam. How do you make a video work on YouTube? How do you create a broadband network? How do you get hired to produce broadband shows? How do you get hits and views and advertisers and money out of any of this?

Next up: some answers from Paul Kontonis (of For Your Imagination), Peter Kay (of MTV), Steven Mendelson (of BrandX) and Christopher Barry (of the Sundance Channel).

In the meantime, please ponder the work of these distinguished gentlemen, legitimate proposals about what Web TV might be. I’m impressed. These are ambitious and diverse projects, the kind of broadband stuff that entrepreneurs, networks, venture-capital people and even artists with the stomach for extreme commerce are betting the farm on. Watch, and be surprised.

http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/impaneled-and-some-hospital-grade-online-video-by-serious-producers/

It's No Gossip, Ratings Slip Threatens CW Network

Despite the buzz about "Gossip Girl," a prime-time soap opera about a group of rich kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the network has lost about 28% of its target audience of 18 to 34 year olds so far this season. Its ratings during this month's "sweeps" period -- the all-important measure upon which future advertising rates are set -- are down about 22%.

Advertisers eager to reach a young demographic initially clamored to sign on to the CW, but have since cooled to the network. Steven Kalb, director of broadcast media for media-buying firm MediaHub, owned by Interpublic Group, says there were high hopes for the network when last year's lineup was unveiled. Now, he says, "It has collapsed."

Part of the problem is that the CW's young audience is most prone to spend leisure time on the Internet. Last winter's Hollywood writers' strike, which forced scripted shows off the air for three months, hastened the defection of viewers to the Web.

Increasingly, people in the industry are asking whether this coming season is the CW's last chance. One person close to the situation confirms that without significant progress in the next year, at least one of the network's owners is likely to abandon the venture.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121089546043097065.html

comScore: 11.5B Video Views in March

Nearly 139 million unique U.S. viewers watched an average of 83 videos each in March. The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes with the average online viewer watching 235 minutes of video. Notably, the average duration has remained relatively flat since September, moving only slightly, between 2.7 minutes and 2.9 minutes. But the number of videos per viewer jumped to 83 in March from 75 in February.

YouTube continued to stomp the competition with 84.8 million viewers watching 4.3 billion videos, or 50.4 videos per person. To compare, second-place Fox had 47.7 million viewers watching 400 million videos on MySpace, or 8.4 videos per viewer. Altogether, Google/YouTube sites accounted for 38 percent of all video views, gaining another 2.6 share points over the previous month.

http://newteevee.com/2008/05/12/comscore-115b-video-views-in-march/

Forever Chasing Its Action Demo, Mountain Dew Rolls Out Street-Skating Film

Unlike its last cinematic foray into boarder culture -- the feature documentary "First Descent," which followed four snowboarders on their journey to climb and surf a mountain, with gentle Mountain Dew placements here and there -- the brand completely refrained from any product integration in the movie.
"We hope to get inside the culture and tap into the influencers," said Frank Cooper, VP-flavors, Pepsi-Cola North America. "But in marketing to this subculture that is skating, we'd rather err on the side of being non-intrusive."
Although the production cost was offset by using Mountain Dew's infrastructure to market the movie through its databases, websites and agencies, as well as leveraging its long lists of partnerships for print releases and initial screenings and tours, the brand still ponied up a six-figure budget for the principal photography and post-production of the film with "absolutely no creative control" over the project, Mr. Cooper said. In fact, the directors retain full rights to the movie.
"We want the Mountain Dew brand to not only symbolize the culture, but to participate in it by having something of value to say and to bring," Mr. Cooper said.

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=127061

Why Twitter Matters

To ramp up, San Francisco-based Twitter appears to be positioning itself for another round. A Cnet (CNET) report in April said the company is raising $15 million to $20 million. Twitter won't comment on funding, but Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, an investor in the first round, doesn't deny the rumors. "Where there's smoke, there's fire," he says.

So, I set out to delve into Twitter. And on May 8-9, I looked to Twitter's own community for help, asking the following questions:

• Is Twitter a fad, a feature, or a growing giant?

• How are businesses using Twitter?

• What is Twitter worth?

• A fourth question, implicit in the whole exercise: Should we all be Twitter

http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/may2008/tc20080514_269697.htm

Brands and Worlds. Who’s the Daddy?

Will this trend continue into environments tailored towards older consumers? More than likely, but not as quickly as it’s happening in the kids and tweens space. Playstation Home is an early illustration of a company creating their own branded and controlled platform. There’s also early reports that Playboy is considering their own virtual world.

In interesting nuance in this area though is brand tie-ins - in other words brands creating their own world and they ‘inviting in’ complementary, not competitive brands. vMTV is the benchmark operator in this instance.

As explained, both brands and worlds have reasons to work together. However, for the foreseeable future, it’s the brands that have the controlling power over the worlds. Until of course, a virtual world comes along that’s so compelling, so different and so ’sticky’ that brands have to queue up to get it (or eve not be allowed into the world full stop). This hasn’t happened yet, but it will. Some may argue that Club Penguin is in this bracket. I’d say it’s nearly there but not quite.

http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=1948

What keeps viewers glued to the tube? Disney wants to know

The Burbank-based entertainment company, with its profitable ESPN and ABC entertainment networks, said Tuesday that it was developing an "emerging media and advertising research lab" to try to figure out why people watch the shows they do.
ABC made the announcement as part of its "upfront" presentation to advertisers in New York to kick off the industry's springtime television sales season. ESPN entertained advertisers Tuesday morning, and ABC unveiled its fall schedule in the afternoon.
The new research center will be based in Austin, Texas, and will test a variety of advertising practices to discern how receptive consumers are to products that are integrated into shows, whether people pay attention to split screens and how they watch programs on mobile devices. Disney hopes to have the center running by November.
The effort is part of a companywide campaign to bring Disney's advertising sales strategy into the 21st century as behavioral research is more plentiful in the digital age. Now, television networks have second-by-second viewing data available, through Nielsen Media Research, TiVo and cable television operators.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-abc14-2008may14,0,3472001.story

Broadcast TV Product Placements Up Almost 40%

The Nielsen Company reported that product placements for the first quarter of 2008 rose 6% on primetime programming for the 11 measured networks on broadcast. Broadcast television placements rose 39%, while cable television was essentially flat at -1%.

There were 117,976 brand occurrences on cable and broadcast networks in the first three months of the year, according to Nielsen Product Placement Service. The most prevalent placement type on broadcast television was "foreground," which represented 35% of all product placements. On cable television, "wardrobe" placements were most common, accounting for 32% of all placements.

Prime-time product placement occurrences on broadcast networks increased overall by 39% during the first quarter of 2008. The top 10 programs featured 15,404 occurrences in the first three months of this year-compared to 8,893 occurrences in the same time period in 2007.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1707

MySpace, Facebook and Google: Racing For Web 3.0

MySpace, Facebook and Google have all recently made "major" announcements regarding the future of how their platforms will play with the rest of the Web. I put major in quotes because a majority of the functionality announced isn't yet available to the average Joe app/Web developer. Regardless, the trend seems to be the movement into Web 3.0 that is making the entire World Wide Web into social media.

If Web 2.0 was all about social features and community formation, Web 3.0, it seems, will be about personalizing an individual's entire Web experience -- not just through data portability, but through community portability. In Web 3.0 your personal data will follow you from destination to destination, allowing you to experience the entire Web in a far more social manner. In order for this to work you need to have a centralized place to store your data -- a "home base" of sorts -- in a Web where you (and your data) may live in a lot of places. Facebook and MySpace both want, very very badly, to be your home base for Web 3.0.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1298

The Hyperconnected vs. 84% of Everyone Else on Earth

Meanwhile, a separate white paper from IDC/Nortel (via Jackie Huba) - this one spanning 17 countries - found that 16% of the information workforce is already "Hyperconnected" and that another 36% will be joining us soon. Definitely download the PDF. It's an interesting read.

All of this data is consistent with what Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff talk about extensively in their new book, Groundswell. If you play with Forrester's Technographic profile tool, you can zero in on just how wide the divide is within your target audience. They peg 52% of the US online population as largely passive.

Net, this leaves me convinced that despite all of the buzz around the growth of new media and/or digital advertising, neither will replace existing modalities for some time to come. Yes, Scoble, that's why Google News still rules. Digital media is going to be additive in the near to medium term. However, in a decade - perhaps sooner, perhaps later - it will be a different story.

The data bodes well for businesses like the TV nets that live off the 30-second spot. Some have written the :30 off for dead. However, that's a bit premature.

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/05/the-hyperconnec.html

Bebo Pursues Distinctive Original Programming Model

Bebo, the social networking giant being acquired by AOL for $850 million, is pioneering a new programming model by mixing original online-only video series, community engagement and brand integration. While in LA last week I attended an invite-only session in which Bebo VP of Marketing Ziv Navoth provided an overview of its approach and elaborated on its upcoming plans.

Since its inception in 2005, Bebo has quickly mushroomed to 40 million+ members with a core audience of 16-24 year olds, concentrated in the U.K. While a distant third to Facebook and MySpace in size, the depth of Bebo's user engagement is significant.

I think Bebo has cleverly grasped the notion that by offering original online video series, it is providing valuable, relatively inexpensive fodder for its members to engage with. So valuable is this programming to serving Bebo's larger corporate mission that its "Open Media" model allows content partners to keep 100% of revenue generated.

http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2008-05-14/Bebo-Pursues-Distinctive-Original-Programming-Model/&id=1849

The Entertainment Development & Programming Weekly - May 12th Edition

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

Five Rules to Engaging a New Breed of Consumer

1. Authenticity Trumps Celebrity - Consumer 2.0 responds to honest, relevant messaging from peers over marketing speak and celebrity endorsements
2. Niche is the New Norm - Consumers 2.0 do not form a mass market. They relish in choices and look for products and services that speak to them personally
3. Bite-Size Comunication s Dominate - Consumer 2.0 digests short, personal and highly relevant messaging in bulk while growing increasingly adept at blocking out noise
4. Personal Utility Drives Adoption - Consumer 2.0 chooses to consume what they find useful in their lives over manufactured marketing needs
5. Consumers Own Brands - Consumer 2.0 will speak about, repurpose and associate with your brand as they see fit

http://ypulse.com/images/Consumers2%200_April08.pdf

A season to forget for TV networks

If all that weren't bad enough, programmers are nervously eyeing the possibility of another strike, as contract talks between the Screen Actors Guild and the studios appear nowhere near a resolution. A work stoppage could shut down production during the summer, throttling the networks' comeback efforts. That threat gives extra leverage to advertisers, who can argue that they're not about to spend top dollar buying advance ads for shows that may appear months late, or never.
Meanwhile, executives are often having to make their decisions about which new fall shows to pick based not on completed pilots, but rather quickly thrown-together "presentations" that are roughly half the length of a normal pilot.
OK, that's a lot of glumness. But it's a safe bet that viewers will slowly filter back next season, as long as the networks give them something compelling to watch. Even as the general picture is one of decline, each network does have hidden strengths -- some of which suggest a shifting long-term dynamic for the industry. More of that in a bit.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-channel5-2008may05,0,4064534.story

Gore Verbinski to direct 'Bioshock'

Universal and Gore Verbinski are going into "Bioshock."

Studio has signed a deal to turn last year's hit videogame, which won numerous awards and sold more than 2 million units worldwide, into a film.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" helmer is attached to direct and produce. "Aviator" scribe John Logan is in talks to pen the screenplay.

"Bioshock" publisher Take-Two Interactive is getting a multimillion-dollar advance against gross points on the pic. It's believed to be the biggest videogame-to-movie deal since 2005, when U and Fox signed onto the since aborted "Halo" pic, for which Microsoft got $5 million against 10%.

http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=126792

You may be on Facebook, but the money's in the Long Tail

It turns out that it's not just the experience that's better on the smaller, more focused sites: the economics work better there, too. Yesterday MySpace's parent company, News Corp, released quarterly financial results and although traffic was up on MySpace, they're having trouble making money. COO Peter Chernin said:

We remain incredibly optimistic about social media. But there are specific challenges 1) Tons of inventory. Lack of scarcity creates a liquidity challenge. Working on bringing big brands aboard. 2) People who are visiting social networks there for different reasons, different uses. Figuring out how to target. 3) What's the value of a "friend"? Trying to figure out new metrics to communicate with marketers.

Indeed, last I checked, display ads on MySpace were going for a rock bottom $0.13 CPM (price per thousand views). Meanwhile, although Ning isn't disclosing its revenue across its entire network, I can give you a sense of it from my own robotics site hosted there, DIYDrones. The AdSense ads we run there (mostly accelerometer and other sensor parts, as per the example above) generate an average "effective CPM" (CPM after Google's cut, which can be as much as 50%) of $3.60. Before Google's cut, that's as high as $7.00.

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/05/you-may-be-on-f.html

Hollywood Blockbuster: Bebo Has One Billion Videos Views Per Month!

Bebo, the fast growing social network which was sold recently to AOL for $850 million, is driving an extraordinary amount of video consumption. Ziv Navoth, Vice President, told Beet.TV that Bebo is driving one billion videos views a month.

Bebo doesn't require that publishers use its video player. It provides an open platform which accommodates many players. So, it doesn't host or serve these videos.

The company is also distributing and producing original content. KateModern, produced by EQAL, received 50 million views over the past 10 months on Bebo, Ziv says.

http://www.beet.tv/2008/05/hollywood-block.html

MTV Plans to Increase Its Blending of Ads and Shows

The cable television company is promoting podbusting as a way to persuade viewers not to skip over or drift away from the advertising that interrupts the programs — an increasingly crucial aspect of the television business where the price of advertising is now being measured in how many people are watching the commercials, not the shows.

“We’re looking to redefine the commercial experience,” said John Shea, who runs the integrated marketing division for MTV and VH1.

Dario Spina, who handles the same job for MTV’s entertainment channels like Comedy Central and Spike, said of countering the digital video recorder, “That’s the idea here; we want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content.”

The ideas MTV has hatched go well beyond the more pragmatic product placement that has become the most common counter to commercial avoidance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/business/media/08mtv.html

SuperDeluxe Sinks into Adult Swim

This is no joke. PaidContent wrote last night that Turner will fold comedy site SuperDeluxe into Adult Swim and lay off much of the SuperDeluxe staff. Turner sent us the following statement this morning:

“Effective immediately, we will begin transitioning the content of Super Deluxe.com to Adult Swim.com and merge the operation of both sites. This move allows us to grow more strategically and create a richer, stronger platform that builds on Adult Swim’s number-one position with young adults.”

The move isn’t a surprising one (we predicted it back in November) given that Adult Swim was a much stronger, edgier brand for Turner. Why compete against yourself when you’re also trying to fend off the likes of College Humor, Funny or Die and Comedy Central? Not to mention upstarts like My Damn Channel and 60Frames and all the sitcoms the network is putting online.

http://newteevee.com/2008/05/08/superdeluxe-to-sink-into-adult-swim/

SAG-AMPTP talks end without deal

SAG has run out of time to make a new feature-primetime deal with the majors and has been pushed aside in favor of AFTRA -- probably until late May.

The failure of SAG and the companies to make a deal after 18 days of talks will ignite fears that SAG will strike when its deal expires June 30. SAG president Alan Rosenberg told Daily Variety that SAG will now "take the temperature of the membership" and may seek a strike authorization from members as early as next week but he also portrayed the guild leadership as wanting to avoid a work stoppage.

"Our negotiating team is prepared to work around the clock for as long as it takes to get a fair deal," he said. "We want to keep the town working."

Rosenberg said the two sides were within reach of a deal on Tuesday -- an assessment in stark contrast with how the companies portrayed the collapse of the talks.

http://www.variety.com/VR1117985165.html

Is 2008 the Year of VOD?

For all of you too lazy to drive to the video store or too impatient to wait for your DVDs in the mail, 2008 is shaping up to be a banner year for you. The video-on-demand (VOD) space is heating up, which means you have one less reason to pry yourself off the couch.

The Wall Street Journal writes that as the cost of distributing films theatrically keeps rising, movies being bought up at festivals like Tribeca are actually going to VOD platforms. For example, Mark “online video gloom and doom” Cuban’s HDNet acquired the rights to the dark comedy Finding Amanda, starring Matthew Broderick, but will release it on VOD before putting it in theaters. At last year’s Cannes, IFC picked up seven films to fill its VOD pipeline. Lots of indie movies get small theatrical releases, and in fact most of the movies acquired from Tribeca last year went straight to DVD or cable. But the economics of widespread theatrical distribution don’t hold up any longer.

And VOD isn’t just important for the art house set, either. Big names have also jumped into the on-demand pool lately.

http://newteevee.com/2008/05/05/is-2008-the-year-of-vod/

Is your target audience using social media?

There is a great article in AdAge today that asks "Is your consumer using social media?". While this may seem like a natural question for marketers who are thinking about executing a social media campaign, you'd be surprised by how many neglect to ask themselves (or their marketing/PR firm) that simple question from the get-go. After all, if you're marketing the latest version of the Jitterbug phone (a cell phone designed specifically for seniors; my Nana loves hers), perhaps a Twitter campaign isn't the best use of your budget, right?
So if you have a few minutes, I'd encourage you to read AdAge's article. The author includes profiles of specific demographics (i.e. divorcees, stay-at-home moms, first-time home buyers, etc.) and how much they actually use social media. While your target audience may not be included in their list, don't be dismayed. Just take this as a friendly reminder to do a little of your own social media due diligence before you take that leap into social media marketing.

http://groundfloormedia.blogspot.com/2008/05/is-your-target-audience-using-social.html

Your Chance to Finish a Movie Microsoft Started

That geographic clue gives away the sponsor: the Microsoft Corporation, which is underwriting an online movie-making contest in an effort to stimulate sales and burnish the reputation of its Windows Vista operating system. The product has met with mixed reviews since its introduction last year.

The contest is another example of the popular marketing trend known as user-generated content. It is intended to promote the higher-end version of Vista — Windows Vista Ultimate — among videophiles, early adopters of technology and filmmakers.

The contest, which is to begin on Thursday, is called the Ultimate Video Relay and has its own Web site (ultimatevideorelay.com), a spinoff of the Windows Vista Ultimate Web site (ultimatepc.com). The relay reference comes from the invitation to computer users to complete a story titled “The Cube” in several stages. The tale, a humorous cross between “The Matrix” and “The Office” (or “Office Space”) begins with a six-minute clip that can be watched on the relay Web site. The clip is directed by Kyle Newman, the director of “Fanboys,” a coming movie about “Star Wars” aficionados.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/business/media/08adco.html

Inside Microsoft's War Against Google

For Ballmer, however, the game is far from over. Even before yanking the Yahoo offer, he had begun laying the groundwork for a strategy to compete with Google in online advertising. He's convinced that getting the online ad business right is essential to Microsoft's future. The reason: Consumers and businesses increasingly are switching from desktop software like Microsoft's to free online services that do the same things. "We are absolutely committed to be the leading player in that endeavor," Ballmer told employees at a recent gathering.

It may be impossible to catch Google in search advertising. The company dominates the market, taking in 77% of the revenues from those little text ads that show up alongside the results for Internet search queries. Microsoft, after years of trying, is at 5% of U.S. search revenue, according to search marketing firm Efficient Frontier.

But Microsoft has a fighting chance on several other fronts. Perhaps most important is display advertising, the colorful banner and video ads that run at the top or along the side of Web pages. Microsoft is among the leaders in the fragmented field, while Google is a bit player. Although the display market is smaller than search, it's expected to grow faster over the next few years because of a surge in video ads. Market research firm IDC figures that by 2012 the display market will double, to $15.1 billion; revenue from search will reach $17.6 billion.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_20/b4084036492860.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Indie Marvel Gains Superhero Status

Marvel has put it all on the line as an independent film producer, devising complicated but beneficial financial arrangements handled through its Film Financing LLC. Among other things, Marvel must generate three self-produced films yielding more than $350 million in related proceeds before it can begin tapping the cash balance to underwrite future films–a strict financial formula that would benefit others in Hollywood. Its unique early-cash distributions include a producer fee representing 5% of all revenues and retaining all merchandising and consumer products revenues generated from its self-produced movies.

The two cash streams are designed to get Marvel through future production. Since it emerged from bankruptcy in 1997, management has embraced a conservative, tightly contained hold on comic-book publishing and films. Rebuilding from the bottom up has given Marvel what every content producer wants: The luxury to control its characters, story lines and destiny, and retain greater financial upside from its films.

Marvel also is in the sweet spot of future media spending, able to leverage its content stable in all areas of alternative media (video games, mobile and online advertising, word-of-mouth and search marketing), which are expected to grow 20% to $88.24 billion this year and nearly doubew to $161 billion by 2012, according to PQ Media.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=165

Scrabble surges back with Scrabulous

Adding to the confusion, the lawsuit may not be the intellectual property slam-dunk it appears to be. According to a legal analysis by attorney Michael Norwick that appeared in Forbes Magazine, the "complete overlap" between the idea of Scrabble, which cannot be copyrighted, and its expression as a game, may put it into an unprotected legal arena.

Now, in the latest salvo, Mattel and a partner company just launched their own Facebook version, setting the stage for a Scrabulous-Scrabble smackdown — but the new game is available only outside North America.

The result? The "official" game has fewer than 5,200 players a day, and it's drawing complaints about slow speeds and dictionary issues.

"Why Mattel is taking this approach is mind-boggling," says new-media expert Rodney Rumford. "The Internet doesn't have state borders or boundaries. They obviously aren't understanding that."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_9156037