Quite a few interesting posts below, to pique your interest. Click on the source links for the complete article and additional information on each topic. Enjoy!
- Report: Orange Eyes Project Kangaroo Technology (WorldScreen): France Telecom’s Orange service is said to be considering the acquisition of the technology behind Project Kangaroo, the VOD venture from ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC that was nixed by British competition authorities. ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC reportedly invested £20 million in the technology for the now-defunct broadband TV venture, which was blocked earlier this year by the U.K.’s Competition Commission. The partners now hope to recoup at least a part of that investment by selling off Project Kangaroo assets…
- BBC Tests Live Mobile TV - With Threat Of Prosecution (PaidContent): The BBC has quietly launched a beta test for a live mobile TV and radio service. The corporation’s broadcasts were already available on-demand via mobile and all stream live over PC web; now Auntie is taking them to UK mobile users at http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/live/tv/ - but they will need a WiFi handset. The service is said to be available on only a small number of handsets at present. The BBC blogged that “We are looking at a selection of WiFi-enabled handsets from HTC, Motorola, Palm, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The iPhone doesn’t support streaming, which is why its not a featured device … The purpose is to test uptake and quality and assess how we might be able to stream live services to an increasing number of mobile devices in the future, but we are some way off this becoming a full BBC service.”…
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt to newspapers: Innovate your way out of it (LA Times): Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt delivered a closing keynote at the Newspaper Assn. of America annual conference in San Diego, conjuring up visions of an open, interactive future to the audience of newspeople. In order to move themselves forward, he said, newspapers will have to get used to the idea that they are not just generators of trusted, professional content, but also aggregators of the new kinds of information the Web has enabled — the collectively edited knowledge structures like Wikipedia, and user-generated information like blogs, images and online video….
- Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson Tells Marketers They Should Not Buy Media but ‘Earn’ It (AdAge): What do earned-media campaigns look like? A lot like Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” effort on Facebook, which resulted in 234,000 “killed” friendships; like Disney’s building a following for the Jonas Brothers online and not on the radio; or like the gourmands behind the Kogi BBQ trucks in Los Angeles, which have 14,000 Twitter followers who are alerted when the Korean taco truck is in the neighborhood. The challenge for marketers and agencies, then, is to engage with social media in an authentic way, and know they are going to be punished by its denizens for any perceived spam. Indeed, controlling spam or unwelcome marketing has become a huge expense for Google, Twitter, Facebook and others. “One of their biggest costs is ‘environmental mediation,’ or keeping the bad people at bay,” Mr. Wilson said. Once a niche phenomenon, social media has achieved mass, network-TV-like scale. Mr. Wilson predicted Twitter could reach 50 million users, or one quarter the size of Facebook today, by the end of 2009…
- Is behavioral targeting breaking online publishers’ business model? (eConsultancy): The recession is hitting publishers hard. This is true online and offline as advertisers aren’t limiting what gets put on the chopping block. Many believe that the trackability and accountability will keep online publishers in good stead and despite declining online ad spend, it’s easy as an online publisher to look at the woes of the newspaper industry and feel pretty confident about the future. Ben Kunz, director of strategic planning at media planning agency Mediassociates, wrote an interesting guest piece on BusinessWeek that suggested online publishers may be in more trouble than they think. His argument: behavioral targeting technology is giving advertisers the ability to reach their target audiences for less and this is squeezing publishers, especially those at the high-end….
- Netflix Streams Old MTVN Content to TV (Contentinople): Netflix Inc. subscribers will soon be able to stream previous seasons of Comedy Central’s South Park, Nickelodeon’s iCarly, and other programs from MTV Networks directly to their televisions, after the programmer expanded an agreement with the TV and movie rental service. But while Netflix rivals Amazon.com and iTunes allow consumers to download current episodes of South Park and other MTV Networks programs to their computers, Netflix customers will only be able to stream previous seasons of the MTVN programs to their TVs….
- TV’s Web Revenues: $1.63B in 2008 (NewTeeVee): TV networks made $1.63 billion on web advertising last year, according to a new report on the U.S. content market by Convergence Consulting. We like any web video stats that involve the term “billions,” but let’s dig a little deeper. Web revenue amounted to 2.4 percent of total U.S. broadcast and cable TV advertising revenue, which Convergence pegged at $66 $67.6 billion. The web figure increased from $1.27 billion in 2007, and it includes both display and video advertising on everything from local news to full-episode viewing of prime-time shows….
- Is Time Warner finally going to unload AOL? (CNET): There’s been chatter on the Web (and Wall Street) for years now about whether Time Warner should spin off its AOL subsidiary. Now, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, it looks as though Time Warner’s management is looking to tweak the requirements that prevent it from unloading AOL. So it finally might happen. On the other hand, AOL’s slow drift away from its parent company has been at about the speed of plate tectonics; these “fresh start for AOL” moves are nothing new. It was way back in 2003 that Time Warner reverted to its old name from AOL Time Warner, changing its stock symbol back to TWX from AOL. The company relocated its corporate headquarters to New York in 2007, conspicuously not moving into Time Warner’s own headquarters…..
- Q&A: Online Video Not a ‘Catch-Up Service’ for Discovery (Contentinople):Unlike Hulu LLC and Websites owned by the major broadcast TV networks, Discovery Communications Inc. doesn’t distribute many full-length shows on Discovery.com, TLC.com, AnimalPlanet.com, and other sites owned by the 25-year-old media company. But that hasn’t prevented it from becoming one of the most popular Web publishers, with Discovery-owned sites averaging 33 million cumulative unique monthly visitors last year. In an interview with Contentinople, Discovery Communications senior vice president of digital media distribution Rebecca Glashow discusses the company’s strategy for growing Discovery’s Web properties while protecting the subscription fees Discovery charges cable and satellite TV subscribers for its pay TV networks…
- Yahoo Music opening pages to YouTube, others (CNET): Yahoo plans to fire up a revamped version of its Artist Pages on Tuesday, a service that lets people add content from iTunes, YouTube, and other sites to the Yahoo Music site that previously only had Yahoo’s own content. The site publishes information including tour dates and music videos for more than 500,000 artists and lets people download and purchase music. Now the site will blend in information from non-Yahoo sources, the company said, part of an effort to make the site a better starting point. First come modules from iTunes, Amazon.com, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Pandora, YouTube, and Yahoo itself, Yahoo said. (Last.fm is a part of CBS, which also owns CNET News.) Later, people will be able to create their own artist pages…
- AP To Cut Rates More, Offer New Content, Patrol Internet (WallStreetJournal): The Associated Press’ board announced significant additional rate reductions and new content options for member newspapers and said it would seek to protect news content from misappropriation online. The AP has seen a drop in subscribers as newspapers have discontinued the service amid a severe downturn in advertising as readers migrate to the Internet for ads, news and entertainment. The changes announced Monday will reduce rate assessments for 2010 by another $35 million and come on top …
- Five Brands Doing It Right, Doing It Wrong: From Bounty to Wendy’s, We Looked at 10 Case Studies to Offer Marketers These Dos and Don’ts (AdAge): So what lessons are out there for marketers in this recession? We looked at 10 brands from a variety of categories — packaged goods, video gaming, luxury, automotive — to see who’s making it work and who’s in need of do-over. What are some basic dos? Offer consumers some assurance (see: Hyundai) in these dark days, make sure those ads are aggressive (offering value? Then say so) and be innovative with your product. What you don’t want to do: Be without a unique message and ignore brand-oriented ads (that’s you, GM). Getting it Right: Bounty, Hyundai Motor America, Miller High Life, JetBlue, Xbox. Getting it Wrong: DeBeers, Ebay, General Motors Corp., Stein Mart, Wendy’s
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May 3rd, 2009 at 7:56 am
Sweet! I feel like I just dug up gold