multitasking is here to stay – marketers need to embrace

According to the Harvard Business Review, people now cram the equivalent of 12 hours of media consumption into 9 hours through the simple act of using, absorbing and consuming content via multiple channels, simultaneously. So what is the overlap between television and digital media consumption?  Mediapost worked with Yahoo to field a study to help understand this better. See 2012 Outlook Report

One interesting finding -  80% of people surveyed use their mobile device while watching television. With about 122 million mobile Internet users in the U.S., that means that there is a group of 98 million people demonstrating this behavior. They use mobile to do many different things but a full 26% used their device to look up a website related to a commercial that they saw and 24% turned to a search engine to find information on a product they saw advertised. Social is also huge with a whopping 40% using this time to review or update their social presence.

Simply put for marketers – a well thought out and connected mobile web experience can make TV investment work much harder.  Use the messaging from TV as a jumping off point, reward mobile users to learn more or engage more with the brand.  Get smarter at targeting  paid and owned mobile and social experiences to dovetail with  TV.  Multi-taskers are great – lets embrace them!

talking about bandwidth

Now surely is the time for regulators to step up to the plate and let users get high speed wired internet.  Countries like Japan, Portugal, Sweden and Russia are already well into replacing standard phone lines with fiber optics.  We see to rush to wireless as a panacea but it doesnt always produce what it appears to offer.  Now we have VIASat and WildBlue offering 12 Mbps satellite broadband in Colorado – can we deploy this everywhere please???  and why shouldnt we – are there perhaps other interested parties that dont think having ubiquitous broadband is good for us?  Oh did I mention the 12 Mbps service costs $50 per month?

cloud computing and m2m applications

Everything in the cloud and we now have the Internet of Things actually able to work.  Exciting times.  Major players are looking at what machines need to talk to us about – this is groundbreaking stuff .  So what would our machines like to tell us and what “things” will take over the communications volumes on the Internet?  The value of knowing the lifetime of information for any machine is HUGE.  A designer can at last review every living breath, every glitch, every fix – and review the historical data to design better machines in the future.  The machine can say – hi – I need maintenance – or hi – its time to renew a component.  My take is it is the machinery of high value that will truly show the benefit of the Internet of things.  Thoughts?

YouTube Partnership Program for original content revenue sharing

The Partnership Program is a revenue-sharing program allowing creators and producers of original content to earn money from their popular videos on YouTube. A partner can earn revenue from relevant advertisements that run against your video using Google’s proprietary technology.  This programme was launched in India in September, 2011 and has seen pretty good response since.

After the video creator has been accepted by the programme, ads start appearing next to their videos. The revenue from those ads are then split with the partner who gets the maximum share.

Patent litigation comes to Interactive TV sector

Invidi Technologies Corp filed a patent infringement complaint against Visible World and Cablevision.  They say these companies provide addressable advertising using Visible World’s “Connect” product.  Invidi says they have developed software that provides multichannel video provders with the capability to increase the efficiency of TV advertising.  This will be an interesting case to watch and its worth noting that  Invidi already raised $117 million from investors including;  Google Ventures, Motorola, GroupM and DirecTV.

SxSW movies with storyline driven by audience

This year’s  SxSW offered some brilliant new media start up demos, a wonderful film premiere that used the audience wearing sensors which changed the path of the movie – some very big brands watching this new happening and new music.  More attendees than ever and the first technology summit.

Canoe starting to paddle?

Canoe Ventures CEO, David Verklin, revealed at the National Association of Television Programming Executives (NATPE), that seven networks will allow advertisers to run interactive TV ads in over 20 million cable households in about 90 days, according to a report by MediaPost’s David Goetzl. Comcast-owned E! and Style and Cablevision-owned AMC are already selling a Canoe-developed platform enabling RFI spots, while Bravo, Discovery, History and USA will offer the platform by early summer, Verklin said. Verklin also stated that Canoe plans to add DirecTV and DISH Network households to its footprint of ITV advertising-enabled households; and he said that Canoe expects to roll out an ITV polling app by the end of summer that will offer sponsorship opportunities.

Mobile video advertisers up eightfold in 2010

The latest MediaPost research shows mobile video is gaining traction.  Dell, Toyota and Draft have all run campaigns.  Automotive and telecom as well as travel and hospitality are the key industry areas jumping in as early adopters

What was the real outcome of the cable interactive solutions event?

The recent Cablelabs and Canoe Ventures initiative on advanced advertising seems to have been a real hit with brands according to several blogs.  Twenty four companies participated (not clear if they were selected guests or an industry invitation was sent – also not clear who paid for what which usually shows if the event was meaningful).  Key interactive vendors (mostly long time cable suppliers) also demonstrated solutions.

The event lasted a week and Id love to see the agenda and what was actually gleaned from the event.  I believe these insights are what Canoe needs to be learning and sharing with their investors and advertisers.  Any clues from Cablelabs or Canoe greatly appreciated but the summary that vendors were enthusiastic about a common platform was a bit lame – well yes – one platform, one format, easy implementation – but I had over ten companies working with me on interactive applications in 2001 and the interactive world of cable got bogged down with cable supplier battles and ad agency myopia.  Will it be different this time?  Yes, yes, yes – roll on interactive cable apps!

Walled Gardens are coming to free content online

The latest round of content acquisition by the major cable companies will shortly end the era of free content online in my opinion.  Walls will soon be created and a toll booth will be constructed to make consumers pay for much of the online content that has previously been offered for free.  The new business model of pay per view will emerge in 2010 – well that’s my prediction.  Having worked in interactive TV since 2000, we had a model that offered viewers choice and suggestions based on profile information as well as making some content less expensive or free if the viewer agreed to watch advertisements.  It made sense then and it looks to me as though the major cable guys are gearing to own any of the current online video sites that will still be around in the coming years and set themselves up as the gate-keepers for video content on the TV and online.  The set top box makes the TV smart and there are huge opportunities for new applications and services for both online and TV.  I for one am looking forward to intelligent TV!