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
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.
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
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
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
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?
• 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
The new research center will be based in
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
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
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.
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