Posted by David Card in Media, Uncategorized.
Tags: American flags, Fourth of July, Media
They were showing this on broadcast TV recently and it reminded me to make it my patriotic plug. In realistic black and white as it should be, The Longest Day has epic beach landing scenes long before Saving Private Ryan, and an all-star for 1962 cast. Cornelius Ryan, who wrote the excellent straight-history book it’s based on, gets principal screenwriting credit.
I’m too lazy to track down all the stars and roles to see if any are Virginians. Most of the American stars are good ol’ corn-fed Midwesterners. Several of the cast saw action in the war, including Eddie Albert, Henry Fonda, and Rod Steiger. And Richard Todd helped lead the charge at Normandy.
This year’s flag landed at Omaha Beach.
Happy Fourth. Throw another burger on the grill for me. As usual, I’ll bring Mom’s potato salad (never tastes the same twice, but always good).
Posted by David Card in Uncategorized.
Tags: digital advertising, invisible network, Media, online media, Television network, visible networks
Back in the day, I used Time Warner as an example of an “invisible network.” That is, a reader of Time magazine or Sports Illustrated – or a user of their web sites – might not know that they were both owned by Time Inc., but big advertisers and sponsors did. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that TWX is considering spinning off most of its magazine titles, possibly into a joint venture with Meredith. It would keep Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, whose brands complement its TV business better, but People would find a comfier home next to Better Homes and Gardens.
It’s fairly obvious, but branded visible networks that try to drive audiences across related properties work best when the audience is common. Disney can cross-promote entertainment to families, but its audience and ESPN’s rarely need to meet. Meredith could create a good visible network for People. Yahoo’s making noise lately about zeroing in on fewer content topics itself, a refinement of its classic broad-reach, very visible portal strategy.
Time Warner used to be the biggest media company in the world. It never really exploited the potential of its invisible network in the physical or digital media era. As predicted, the invisible media networks like Google and Facebook changed many of the rules, but Time Warner never learned them.
Get an early heads-up on how the media industry will change next at our paidContent Live event in the media capital of the world, NYC, in April.
Posted by David Card in Uncategorized.
Tags: ad exchanges, ad networks, Advertising exchange, display-advertising exchange, Maxifier, Media, online ad sales, online advertising, online publishers, personal finance home page, real time
Last week, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft pitched the idea of a premium online display-advertising exchange to advertisers and brand-name publishers. The object would be to raise the value of their ad inventory and compete more effectively against Google and Facebook, which are both gaining share in online ad sales. Could this trio of portals pull it off and rejuvenate their sluggish businesses?
An ad exchange is a “network of ad networks” that allows advertisers to buy big volumes of “remnant” inventory in real time in a highly automated fashion. Online publishers reserve their best ad spots, like large-format rich-media units that run on topic home pages, to be sold directly by their sales force. As I write this, Yahoo is showing a top-of-the-page banner plus related a rich-media unit from Transamerica on its personal finance home page.
Ad networks and exchanges can suffer from quality problems by mixing in mediocre content sites and not giving advertisers control over where their ads run. That matters a great deal to brand advertisers who want the halo effect of associating their messages with classy content.
How they could make it work
To address that quality issue, topic specialists and traditional media companies like NBC Universal and IDG have created private exchanges. But much of the industry momentum is toward the big, automated offerings like Google’s DoubleClick Exchange. So how could this trio succeed?
Outlook
Google claims it already offers a premium exchange. But if that’s the case, why does it have to buy AdMeld? Most of Google’s display prowess doesn’t come from brand advertising but from cost-per-click DoubleClick and AdSense network sales. Facebook doesn’t have an ad network yet, so it keeps every dollar spent. But Facebook’s strength comes from volume rather than price, due to the huge amount of time its users spend online.
If the trio could put such an exchange together within six months, they would have distinct advantages over Google and Facebook in servicing brand advertisers: similar or better reach, high-quality inventory and potential bundles with direct sales and sponsorships. Right now, the advertisers do not seem to be blown away. But few have actually heard the pitch yet, and no doubt the trio is still working out a lot of details.
Besides solving technology and governance issues, it’s always difficult for online publishers to manage an ad network alongside its sales force. The trio themselves — as well as their potential partners — will have to apply sales management and analytical discipline to make a premium exchange work. They’ll need to double down on page yield management processes and tools from companies like PubMatic, Maxifier and Microsoft. And they should consider protecting sales bonuses from “competitive” network sales to designated customers. If the portals can deliver the premium platform as described, advertisers and other publishers won’t ignore it. That could shift several hundred million dollars and two or three percentage points of market share per year away from Google and Facebook.
How do you rate the portals’ chances?
Posted by David Card in Uncategorized.
Tags: Advertising, consumer electronics, consumer electronics manufacturers, cross-media entertainment check-ins, entertainment media, Media, michael wolf, News, online advertising, snarky fan site, Social, social media elements, social network, social television, Social TV, Think Passenger
Remember when social media was going to re-invent the entertainment business? Back in 2007 and 2008, Viacom’s MTV Networks tried to tie its shows together into the since-abandoned Flux social network, and even launched a short-lived TV channel driven by user-generated content. About the same time, NBC Universal’s Bravo network bought snarky fan site Television Without Pity, but has done nothing with it since. But that was then, and recent news suggests the social entertainment space is far from dead.
Last week, two big old media companies made acquisitions that signal new life: Warner Home Entertainment, home of the movie studio’s DVD efforts, acquired Flixster/Rotten Tomatoes, and News Corp.’s IGN bought Hearst’s UGO. Warner’s move hints at Netflix-envy: It said it wanted to use Flixster’s Facebook-driven user reviews and Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregation of professional ones to “grow digital content ownership.” Meanwhile, by doubling down on video game info sites, News Corp. is constructing a traditional aficionado-magazine model, but with lots of social media elements (user blogs, friend-following, points for participation). Most think News Corp. will spin off the combination.
Given these moves, has the industry finally figured out how to add social media to traditional entertainment for fun and profit?
Extending and Enhancing Entertainment Formats
Excitement about tablets and apps, lots of startup activity and Facebook’s role in distribution and audience acquisition are combining to create new opportunities to extend and enhance traditional entertainment forms. Expanding on Michael Wolf’s analysis of how this is working in social TV, here’s what TV and other entertainment media can do to capitalize on social media:
- Discovery and user-based curation: GetGlue is the early leader in cross-media entertainment check-ins, smartly using Facebook and Twitter (a check-in auto-generates a topic hashtag) to amplify the promotion.
- Extension: Forums and discussion boards give a fan a dose of his favorite TV show more than once a week, and book clubs are migrating online.
- Shared experience: VH1 showed a slick app last week that, in addition to adding user commentary to live viewing, acts like a “DVR for tweets.”
- Gamification: Entertainment check-ins deliver the ubiquitous participation stickers and leaderboards; they should offer virtual currency for loyalty.
- Commerce: Apple’s Ping social network doesn’t seem to be boosting iTunes sales yet, and Facebook’s only just begun to dabble in video rentals.
- Analytics and fan feedback: FOX Broadcasting and others use Think Passenger’s private communities for audience analysis. Who will figure out if simultaneous Twitter traffic means anything?
What’s Still Missing?
While the check-ins have stickers and can act as a launchpad for Twitter conversations, by and large, companies try to deliver the six objectives above via separate apps or experiences. Would they be more effective if they were integrated? I always thought digital music could blend discovery, retail and consumption, but Rhapsody combined them better than iTunes long before Spotify, and Rhapsody failed to catch on. Likewise, while a friend’s reviews and curation could emerge as valid components to an entertainment recommendation engine, by themselves they don’t appear to be as effective as the collaborative filtering approach of Netflix or Amazon, or Pandora’s professionally and algorithmically curated recommendations.
Perhaps the experiences should remain seaparte, but the business engine behind the apps and sites can benefit from roll-ups like News Corp.’s game-site play, or from formal partnerships and licensing. Some are emerging now: Time Warner already owns a piece of GetGlue and is responsible for many of the paid promotions that run on the service. Yahoo scooped up video check-in service IntoNow and is using audio recognition to track TV advertising. A handful of publishers are building a new digital book club and looking to tap AOL and Starbucks for ad sales and distribution.
It is inherently easier and more efficient in terms of audience reach, segmentation and analysis to offer advertising displayed on a network rather than an individual title or show. That means big media companies are best positioned to package and deliver social entertainment experiences along with advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
How can traditional entertainment companies implement social media strategies?
Silicon Valleywood 