About Television and Social media

An interview I did with C21 a while go finally got shaped into an article. Yay!
read AETN’s ABC of social media @ c21media

AETN’s ABC of social media

RE-vision 2009: Rather than sit back and watch audiences flock away from the television set and on to the net, AETN International has embraced social media. Director of digital media Fabienne Fourquet (below) tells Katie Jacobs how.

Last autumn, US cable company A&E Television Networks (AETN) launched a game on Facebook based on its factual series Parking Wars, about the men and women of the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

The game, in which each player owns a street corner and can ticket their friends' cars and become a Parking Mogul, was the only marketing support behind the first season's launch.

AETN International director of digital media Fabienne Fourquet claims it was one of the most successful branded applications on Facebook, earning more than 1.2 million unique players, with 200,000 users playing and 100,000 tickets distributed every day.

On TV, she says, Parking Wars outperformed A&E's network average, was ranked seventh in its time slot out of all US cable networks among adults aged 18-49, and delivered a demo seven years younger than the network's average.

All of which was enough to convince the company of the value of the need to adopt "sensible and smart approach" to social media. AETN now has Facebook fan pages for its channels, such as History, plus specific programme brands like Paranormal State, and all can be followed on Twitter.

It can take a lot of time and effort to develop a strong presence in these spheres because, as Fourquet says, "a good social media strategy takes into account the fact that social networks are an earned media and not a paid one."

What this means is engaging the audience through games, blogs, forums and communities rather than bombarding them with ads. But using social media is essential for a traditional TV networks' survival, Fourquet believes. Programme choices on any medium - TV, online, mobile - are increasingly made through recommendations from the likes of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and others, she says.

"More and more TV content is consumed through social media recommendations that don't answer to traditional marketing tactics or paid media promotion. So the success of TV series and channels will depend upon a good social media strategy and approach," she explains.

Fourquet defines social media as the crossroads of social networking and media consumption. She quotes statistics that show two-thirds of the global online population is on a social network currently, and media consumption is continuing to rise - over 150 hours of video watched per person each month in the US alone.

"If you add to these numbers the growing trend of viewers watching TV and using the web simultaneously - Nielsen calls this 'mutually reinforcing media' - you begin to understand the opportunities and to see that more and more media is becoming 'social' in the sense that viewers are emailing, IM-ing or Twittering friends on a PC or mobile device while consuming video."

Not only are these forces shaping the way in which people consume TV content, they're also going to have an impact on the nature of that content. "Social elements such as rating and commenting about shows will become an integral part of the viewing experience. In the future users and fans will have more of a say in TV and social media brands' activities," Fourquet predicts.

But with even more new talent and content emerging online, can TV and social networks co-exist? Absolutely, she says, they already do: "The two mediums enhance one another's experience."

Discussing TV and creating communities online may facilitate the return of watching together: "We've seen it happen in the past year with the US elections and the Olympics."

Delayed watching is also a growing trend, and viral watching - commenting on and communicating about shows while watching them - is on the increase. This viral interaction is definitely something that producers and broadcasters should capitalise on, according to Fourquet.

"They should use social media as awareness and promotional tools to extend their brand and reach more eyeballs," she says. "It should also be used as a test bed or incubator for new programming ideas. Social media sites are a great way to target niche audiences and develop new content."

The economic meltdown means people are spending more time online or watching TV, so social media may become an indispensable part of media consumption. This, in turn, should lead to increased advertising revenue, but social networks are still struggling to crack this one.

"With social and media activity growing, advertisers will have to turn to these growing audiences and find the magic bullet to grab their attention," says Fourquet.

But this is something that hasn't happened yet. Simplifying and finding common ad formats, educating publishers, advertisers and ad agencies about the possibilities and advantages of the different platforms and connecting with viewers are some of the issues she says need to be resolved. Measurement and research tools that help demonstrate and aggregate digital campaign ROI across all sites, services and media are also developments she would like to see.

These remain more than minor kinks to be ironed out before the ecosystem becomes ideal for all parties, but Fourquet believes that ultimately video content will become "a more seamlessly integrated experience to our favourite social networks, the way music has become an integral part of MySpace."

Katie Jacobs
30 Apr 2009
© C21 Media 2009

About Global Business Models, Googling Yourself, and The Sustained Growth of Online Advertising $$

~ Apparently there is no answer to my earlier post about how to be successful with a global online strategy. NYT writes a good article this week about how hard it is to monetize global traffic now that US advertisers get smarter and only want to buy US eyeballs on websites... So are YouTube, Veoh and all going to start geoblocking their videos? Not very web-friendly that's true but at the same time, this traffic does have a cost...
From NYT:: In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit
~ Who has ever googled their names?? I do :-) Not to check out my popularity rank but also to know what people see when they look for me. A company had already jumped on that bandwagon and built a service around people search called Pipl (Read from Jon's blog about it) and now Google is also jumping on its own bandwagon and allows you, me, all of us to build their online profile and to manage themselves the way they display their persona on the web. read about it here and see how it works by doing your name serach on Google...
~ Good news of the week. Advertising is down but video advertising is still up and the announced increase this year is 32%. Good news for those in this industry!
read it at ClickZ

On Apple vs. Microsoft on the advertising front

A new take on the battle of titans between Microsoft and Apple: Very different advertising strategies. Read this great article from CNET in Technically Incorrect

Year 2009: The Coming of Age of Digital

I know it isn't the time of predictions anymore, but a few announcements and reports this past week made me realize that 2009 will be remembered not only as the year of the first real global economic and financial crisis, but also as the year of the Coming of Age of Digital. Meaning when Digital Media REALLY are becoming mainstream AND finally -hopefully- monetizable…

A few rolling milestones can explain why we are (to my mind) reaching this tipping point:

- spread out, commoditized, soaring consumption of TV (see Accenture's report) and particularly long form online video, see the article from video business with 23% more time spent watching online video YoY in February 2009.

Hulu in the US and the iPlayer in the UK have generalized catch-up TV on the internet. People are not only watching stupid videos on YouTube any more or music videos on MySpace, they're actually are more and more to watch long form shows on the internet (see The Office, Lost, House on Hulu - iTunes – announced recently, long-form videos on YouTube as well, etc) full screen

- Declining marketing budgets across the board mean CMOs need to show higher ROI and hence spend more on digital. Hence relatively speaking, digital ad spend is growing double digits, and in absolute flat or growing a little. Think about 2010, when, crossing fingers, the economy comes back up, digital advertising will be at a whole new level in terms of the digital spend

- social networks have taken over internet time. Just announced this week by Nielsen Online, that time spent on social networks have surpassed time spent on online e-mail systems. Why is that? Because people now use Facebook to send e-mails, twitter to send text messages. Now that FB is a country of 200MM people and that Oprah Winfrey is on Twitter, we are really talking about mainstream media. As the article above mentioned says ‘and this is driven not by the young, but by the middle-aged’.

- the birth of the apps. As Apple announced this week their one-billionth apps downloads, mobile content has gone mainstream too. This progress was previously hampered by the variety of devices, sizes, and exploitation systems. Apple was genius enough to create one device, with one size, one system, a business model common to all content providers, and to make it a success. And as we all know, blackberry, Nokia and Samsung are coming with their own version of the App Store, which will make mobile consumption of content, mainstream, commoditized, and advertiser friendly, as well.

All these growing global digital indicators: media consumption, social networks, advertising spend, mean that both eyeballs and engagement are shifting platforms (from traditional television, newspapers, magazines, to the internet and convergent media) and that once the economy recovers, and the business models and analytics standards get clarified, we will see major holes in the traditional media spend model. And digital & convergent media will start driving some revenues, after having only gathered eyeballs… At least this is what the company who will spend an outrageous amount of money buying Twitter thinks.

Exciting times ahead…

More DIGITAL BREAKTHROUGH THINKING AND NEWS SUMMARY @ Flypaper.TV

For my Digital Marketing Friends

A few good overviews on how to improve your Digital Marketing activities:

~ Top Ten Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails:
TopTenList It is better to fail after trying something new, than to fail because you're not even trying.

The definition - content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

It's the opposite of interruption marketing. You create great content that attracts customers and prospects, educates them, and potentially engages them in a conversation with you.

With that in mind, here are Top Ten reasons why your content marketing strategy fails:

The rest @ ConversationAgent

~ If you are really desperate: Hire someone who knows what they're talking about... How to hire someone with strong & real digital media skillset
@ MediaPost

~ Most CMOs are not happy with their company's digital marketing efforts and rely on agencies or hiring specialized staff. New survey from Heidrick & Struggles.
To read @ Brandweek

~ Great article on 'Making Social Networks Pay' with a good analysis of the current ROI issues marketing groups are facing and some new measurement tools to gauge the success of social marketing campaigns. It's not about measuring effectiveness but exposure'
@ Ecommerce Times

YT to create a safe zone for movies

Safe zone created by YT for movies and TV content. The battle of David and Goliath between Hulu and YT for premium content and higher cpms is heating up. The YT safe zone is very blend and underwhelming if you ask me.

~ Read a good article about YT vs. Hulu @ wsj

See if for yourself and check out the brand new YT movies section

State of the Land

Some great summaries and overviews of the state of the new media landscape, advertising business et al.

~ Sir Martin Sorrell from WPP MIPTV one-hour speech summary on trends and issues for new media consumption and advertising revenues: Go green, branded content and think about media habits from younger generations: @ mobiadnews

~ Good summary of a new report from IBM called 'Beyond Advertising: Choosing the path to the digital consumer' @ mobiadnews

The World is Looking Bleak...

Everyday, the news are bad for newspapers, magazines, and not too great for 'classic' TV either:
~ Free Sport magazine ceases publication
~ Cable TV threatened by online video? From AdAge
~ The come-back of the pay model or newword: "Freemium": See how many seasoned media execs it takes to come up with a brand new idea: Charging for content

If you have anything else in the old media bleak media landscape, let me know!!

Android for More Than Phones

Interesting move on the mobile operating systems side. Shows that mobile devices are broader than phones and a good mobile OS could as well be powering a netbook in the future, or a STB to go... read @ CNET

The world is Receding but Internet Usage is Growing

~The same day that global ad spending is announced to be dropping at ~7% from last year, Nielsen announces that online video usage is soaring at more than 40% increase from a year ago and US people now spend more than 3 hours watching videos online.
On Nielsen Online Video report:: read an article in Mediapost

Europe Logs On:: TV on the TV or on the PC? or anywhere through the Internet?

I strongly believe that consumption of video over the internet even has a stronger appeal internationally. Outside of the US, multichannel homes penetration is much lower than in the US where ~95% of the homes have access to cable TV with more than 100s of channels, and broadband penetration is much higher (more than 80% is Northern Europe). In France, the UK, or Italy for instance, there is still a large % of the population who only has access to the terrestrial channels and who wouldn't mind having access to a wider choice, at the right price, over their broadband connections.
Microsoft just published a report going in that sense as it predicts that "Internet will take over TV as the most consumed form of media by the middle of next year".
Read the article @ReadWriteWeb.com
Download the report here

On Electric Cars

What our streets will start looking like in the next few years. From the papomobile to the James Bond-like Tesla. From TBI

On Social Networking and Video

When social networking meets TV and people realize that Facebook is the 5th largest country in the world
** Facebook EMEA's Commercial Director on 'connecting' with the iPlayer. Would make pave the way for even more mainstream social TV integration
** Facebook now 5th largest country in the world. From SA Insider with a cool map
** and someone put the words in my mouth explaining what's wrong with the recent Facebook changes and why Facebook trying to be twitter can't work. To quote the GigaOm article: "Twitter allows almost anyone to follow (or discover) anyone else based on their celebrity, interests or location. Twitter is about infinite affinity circles. Facebook is not. By allowing a torrent of status updates into our Facebook pages, the company has destroyed what made it special: its ability to construct a constantly updated newspaper about us."
** Facebook CEO on FB monetization, T&Cs, latest changes, young CEO, etc. From Business Week