Delving deeper into original content, Hulu just unveiled three new series and seven exclusively licensed TV shows previously unavailable to U.S. audiences. Premiering throughout the summer, the half-hour shows include " Spoilers," the movie ‘revue’ for movie lovers hosted by filmmaker and geek god Kevin Smith; "Up To Speed," Richard Linklater's travel series, and "We Got Next," a scripted comedy from producer Kenya Barris, which follows a four-man pickup basketball team. “We want to offer exclusive shows,” Andy Forssell, SVP of content for Hulu, said. ”In an on-demand world, viewers are going to actively choose to watch TV shows that they really love.” U.S.-exclusives include “Rev.,” “The Yard,” “Pramface,” “Derren Brown: Inside Your Mind,” “The Promise,” and “Little Mosque,” along with the second season of the sci-fi thriller, “The Booth at the End.” The additional offerings come on the heels of Hulu’s upfront, during which it revealed a slew of performance metrics. In February alone, U.S. consumers watched 2.5 billion videos on Hulu -- which amounted to about 1,000 videos a second -- according to Jean-Paul Colaco, SVP advertising, Hulu. Along with representing 20% of the overall online video marketplace, Hulu now claims a 40% share of the premium video market, he said. The original Hulu service continues to ramp up users and content, while Hulu Plus -- the company’s U.S. subscription service -- surpassed 2 million paid subscribers in the first quarter of the year. During its second-ever upfront, Hulu showed off several original projects, including “Battleground,” a drama with comedic moments set in the world of political campaigns, and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s “A Day in The Life." Hulu also debuted several new products in development, including “Don’t Quit Your Daydream,” based on a documentary by Adrian Grenier that features a cast of famous musicians traveling across America in search of could-have-been musical artists, and “Flow,” based on the life of a hardworking kid from the wrong side of the tracks who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Following HBO and more recently, Netflix, Hulu broke into original programming this past January. Soon after, the online TV service ordered “Battleground,” 10 new episodes of “A Day in the Life” and “Up to Speed” -- a six-part documentary from Richard Linklater, director of “The School of Rock” and “Before Sunset.” Original content is seen as a way to complement Hulu’s ad-supported model. While Hulu Plus exceeded the company’s expectations in 2011 -- reaching a reported 1.5 million paying subscribers -- ad revenue was lower than estimated during the second half of the year. (Overall, Hulu said it had $420 million in revenue in 2011.) Securing its status as a natural go-to for advertisers, Hulu just committed to only bill brands and agencies for ads that viewers watch in their entirety. The 100% completion rate commitment includes all ads sold by Hulu itself, and will apply to both Hulu and Hulu Plus. In beta for several months, Zenith Media, General Mills and Horizon Media helped Hulu test the new model. More recently, Hulu introduced its ad swap product, which allows viewers to replace existing ads for those they feel are more relevant. Since the launch of ad swap, Hulu has seen over 9 million substitutions, according to Colaco. Despite such innovations, recent reports suggested that Hulu was considering withholding its services from non-paying TV customers. The would-be move by Hulu toward the new model -- dubbed “authentication,” because viewers would have to log in with their cable or satellite TV account number -- was reportedly behind the recent decision by Providence Equity Partners to cash out of Hulu after five years. Hulu, for its part, has yet to address the “authentication” rumors.
A judge has ruled that software developer Carrier IQ must face claims that it violated California's relatively stringent privacy laws by allegedly logging keystrokes on mobile devices. U.S. District Court Judge Gary Allen Feess rejected Carrier IQ's argument that federal wiretap laws trump California state laws about privacy. Feess said that congressional reports about the federal wiretap law show that it was meant to "establish minimum standards and not to preempt state laws that meet these standards." Feess added that the "long-standing view" of other courts is that "states are free to enact legislation that is more restrictive than the federal law." The decision marks a setback for Carrier IQ, which has been on the defensive since last November, when a researcher posted a video clip that appears to show the company logging keystrokes on a mobile phone. Several weeks after the clip emerged, Carrier IQ acknowledged that its software sometimes logs the contents of messages, but said that the data is encoded. Carrier IQ characterized the logging as a bug and said the messages were not human readable. The company also said that its software was intended to help mobile carriers to discover the source of network problems, like dropped calls. Still, the company was hit with dozens of potential class-action lawsuits. Many of those cases were filed in federal court and later consolidated in the Northern District of California. But two consumers, Cindy Leong and Carey Eckert, filed suit in state court in California. Leong and Eckert allege that Carrier IQ violated California's invasion of privacy law, which prohibits anyone from intercepting communications without the consent of all parties. That law is seen as more favorable than the federal wiretap law for the consumers who are suing. Carrier IQ attempted to bring the Leong and Eckert lawsuit to federal court, arguing that the state claims were trumped by federal law. But Leong and Eckert opposed that effort, and Feess sided with them, ruling that they could proceed in state court. That decision, quietly issued late last month, has left Carrier IQ facing two separate lawsuits -- one in federal court and one in state court -- for the alleged keystroke logging. The decision is notable because a different federal judge came to the opposite conclusion in a lawsuit against Google about its collection of WiFi data. In that case, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware dismissed claims that Google's Street View cars violated California law. Ware ruled that those claims were foreclosed by the federal wiretapping statute. Feess said that the decision in the Street View case "ignores the great weight of authority holding that one of the principal purposes of the federal statute was to establish minimum standards." A Carrier IQ spokesperson said the company would not comment on individual lawsuits, but belived the claims were "without merit" and will continue to defend itself in court.
Clear Channel Airports has partnered with SapientNitro to launch a new version of its “FlySmart” mobile travel app, which CCA unveiled today. The new FlySmart is an improved and expanded version of SapientNitro’s “goHow” airport app, and provides a variety of information including flight status, gate location, baggage claim, current weather conditions, parking availability, security wait time and ground transportation options. Its new features include customized content from participating airports, flight push notifications and detailed information from Bing Maps to help travelers navigate restaurants as well as retail, terminal, gates, and baggage claims. On the social front, FlySmart provides travelers with consumer ratings about restaurants, shops and services at the airport. The new app also monitors multiple flights across various trips in real-time and notifies travelers when they need to adjust their travel plans. The new FlySmart is available in 96 U.S. and international airports, including official partner airports in Boston, Denver and Minneapolis. Clear Channel’s U.S. airport network also includes Atlanta’s Hatfield-Jackson, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix Sky Harbor, Seattle-Tacoma and Lambert-St. Louis, among others. The FlySmart app is available for free on iTunes, Google Play and BlackBerry App World. The original FlySmart mobile app, created by CCA and Geodelic, debuted in August 2010. The unveiling of the new FlySmart app comes not long after CCA got some new competition. In April, Titan announced the launch of Titan Air, also dedicated to out-of-home advertising in airports. The new division is being headed by Michael Riley and Sam Hart, both veterans of CCA.
Expanding its daily mobile traffic by 10%, local mobile content and ad platform Verve Wireless announced a number of additional media partners this week. The mobile sites and apps for NBC-owned TV stations, Digital First Media, Hearst Newspapers and Hoak Media will now run on Verve. The company provides publishing tools and ad management for over 3,500 local publishers that reach 94 million uniques each month. Verve says that it currently serves 6 billion impressions a month and expects its inventory to double in the next six months, partly as a result of these new deals. Individual publishers use their own sales force to bring local advertisers onto mobile programs, and Verve’s sales force adds large national clients. Digital First Media encompasses the Journal Register Company and the Media News Group. NBC Owned Television Stations include 10 stations in major metro areas like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Dallas-based Hoak owns more than a dozen TV stations throughout Colorado, Texas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. Hearst owns 15 daily newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle.
“You have to put this into a column,” my wife insists as the ER intern is stitching her index finger. “I should write about your slicing your finger with a hand blender?,” I snarked as I filmed the procedure with my iPad. “But I think you will get points at least for delaying your self-assault until Mick Jagger was done with his second set on SNL.” “Noooo! You should write about how I married someone who brings his iPad to the ER thinking that this would be great to ‘get in HD.’” “The sutures don’t really come through in low-res.” That didn’t help…although the interns and nurses in attendance seemed to think that a husband filming these things with a mobile device was pretty much a given. While I have never been accused by anyone of being a standard-issue sports-loving, beer-popping, atta-boy type of American male, it is always good to have maleness as a cover for my antics. “Who are you sending this to?” “Well, your mother, of course.” “Nooo! She faints at the sight of blood.” And so begins what has now become a new ritual of everyday life, editing one’s own life broadcast. Self-branding, the arts of personal public performance and exposure are not inventions of mobility. Turning the private into public performance is an American theme of the last decade. A culture of self-esteem education, reality TV, and social media have all been accelerants in a cultural redefinition of selfhood that runs deeper than I can handle here. Like it or not. Want it or not. Facebook America is one where everyone is engaged in personal branding. Mobility is going to change personal “walls” into me-networks. With a new multimedia richness, mobile tools are here to make reality TV shows out of every one of us. But the device and mobility have made these trends all the more powerful. We are now all editor/directors of our own PBS (Personal Broadcasting System). Years ago, video network and search engine Blinkx’s CEO Suranga Chandratillake told me that at some point in the future we would have always-on portable cams recording every minute of our day. With the right search tools we would be able to find and review any aspect of our lives. In some measure we have the tools at hand now to do that. We carry with us the awareness that all and any moment is recordable and share-able. We are in a position of choosing what not to record or how to share and with whom. Interestingly, it took all these years for Facebook to move from an old media news paradigm of a “newsfeed” to describe personal posting to the more personable “timeline” metaphor. Too late. The weird linkage between personal communication and traditional media structures is unavoidable. We are all media companies now. We all are directors and managing editors deciding from the flow of normal events (the “wire service” of experience) what goes out and what doesn’t, what is “news,” what properly brands us, what is best left unsaid -- I mean, un-broadcast. A lot of journalistic ink (or pixels) has been expended on the private becoming public under this new generation of over-sharing youth, powered by blogs, social networks and “you-can-be-a-star” TV programming. I am sure it is bigger than this and runs much deeper than can be attributed to any single media platform or device. But the changes are significant. American cultural historians in the 1980s (during my stint as an academic) used to distinguish broadly (too-broadly) between a 19th-century American culture based on notions of personal “character” and a modern turn to ideas of “personality.” The former was grounded in an agrarian and mercantile economy where identity was tied to profession, craft, work ethic, behavior within a smaller community. “Personality” was an urban modern creation where self was seen as more presentational -- a function of corporate, bureaucratic relations, being personable in a world of strangers. One of the great bestsellers of the 1930s was Norman Vincent Peale’s religiously based The Power of Positive Thinking. In a similar vein, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was the first handbook for self-branding, a guide to building an image of yourself in the minds of others. Believe me, the culture of Facebook was not built overnight. The character/personality dichotomy is laughably oversimplified but still helpful in grasping how changes in attitudes and approaches toward “self” are tied to very complicated shifts in economy, philosophy, religion, work, and physical circumstance. Is it any coincidence that we see this emergence of self-promotion and self-branding at the moment when almost everyone in the American workforce must define himself and herself as free agents? In the post-union, service economy of startups we all are likely to have many jobs and even careers in the course of a work life. Of course we are always building our brand; we are always for sale. What does this mean to marketers, media and mobility? I am not sure yet. Actually, I am not even close to understanding it yet, but I am hoping to start some of that discussion in these columns in coming months. But there are some obvious points. The mobile device is a tool in a larger cultural shift involving selfhood, but it is the most intimate tool that may have the biggest role. From the time that ringtones became the first successful media form on feature phones, we knew that we were dealing with a technology of a different sort -- that people were leveraging phones as tools of self-expression, not just as platforms of content consumption. Understanding this basic aspect of mobile media suggests we can do a lot better than “sponsored stories” in Facebook feeds and interactive rich media ads that let us swipe and tap our way toward “engagement.” Surely the smartest mobile media and marketing will become collaborators in the project of self-branding -- not just commercial interruptions. “Shall I post this to Facebook?” I ask my wife. She is sporting a comic finger bandage that is so oversized, white and bulbous she looks as if she had been wounded in a Warner Bros. Merrie Melody cartoon. “You look like Wile E. Coyote after a run-in with the Roadrunner. I am already imagining the caption.” “Sure, wiseguy. Post it. What does it say about my husband that he spent his time with me in the ER filming my finger being sewn up?” “That I am a dogged researcher of the outer edges of mobility and modern self?” “Yeah, Professor. Brilliant. That is exactly what people will think. Run with that one.” Okay -- so I guess I have to think through my own self-branding acumen. Those who can’t do, teach.
Answering the age-old question of what’s for dinner is an outdoor and mobile campaign by Allrecipes running in Los Angeles. The "Fix Dinner" campaign uses pictures of the most popular local recipes in L.A. on Allrecipes.com during the month of May alongside a QR code. Snapping that code with a smartphone will allow users to open the recipe and create a shopping list accessed via phone or the Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner app. Here’s a look at the top 10 recipes in L.A. for May: 1. Actually Delicious Turkey Burgers 2. Lime Chicken Soft Tacos 3. Grilled Salmon 4. Yummy Honey Chicken Kabobs 5. T’s Sweet Potato Fries 6. Grilled Corn on the Cob 7. Chicken Tikka Masala 8. California Grilled Veggie Sandwich 9. Simple BBQ Ribs 10. Asian Lettuce Wraps The out-of-home campaign is Allrecipes’ first. The bus stop takeover is no coincidence: Allrecipes found that traffic (the online kind) to its site increases significantly at the end of each workday. Lisa Sharples, president of Allrecipes, devised the month-long campaign when she was standing at a bus stop after work, trying to decide what to feed her five children for dinner. Allrecipes is currently tracking the number of recipes accessed by QR codes by location and recipe, for some recipes appear in more than one location.
This brief has been updated on 5/23 to reflect attribution corrections brought to our attention. According to the hybris 2012 "MultiChannel Shopping Survey," even while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, consumers continue to turn to digital channels with 19% reporting that they browse their mobile device while in-store. 66% do so to compare prices with others, using mobile to compare product choices (27%) and online recommendations (7%).