It wasn't exactly the Big One, but when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit the bedrock of the media world -- including Madison Avenue -- Tuesday afternoon, it set off a number of aftershocks, including the evacuation of several big ad agencies, with at least one whose entire staff left for the day. Most of the evacuations were tantamount to a fire drill, lasting about a half an hour -- and were generally ordered by the management of the buildings the agencies work in, including Universal McCann in New York's Herald Square area, and MPG and OMD in the shadow of Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. While their building's management gave the all-clear, OMD shut its New York office permanently for the day as a precaution in case of aftershocks, and to give staff more time to get home in case there were mass transit disruptions. According to the City of New York, there were no significant transit disruptions resulting from the quake. MPG, which is located in the same downtown building -- 195 Broadway -- resumed normal business activity after employees were allowed re-entrance into the building, after about 20 minutes. "It was a little disconcerting," said an anonymous agency executive who works near the 9/11 site, who emphasized that the event didn't spark panic so much as "a little concern" -- not knowing instantly what was going on and New York City not being known as an earthquake capital. MPG Televisual chief Mitch Oscar -- who was at an off-site meeting at over-the-top TV developer Rovi in Lower Manhattan -- was struck less by a sense of natural disaster or potential terrorism than by economics, quipping that being so close to Wall Street, the rumbling had resulted from the "tumultuous" financial marketplace. Jeff Siegel, a senior vice president in advanced advertising at Rovi, who was hosting a contingent of MPGers and their guests, had just finished a presentation and was speaking with Oscar and a MediaPost reporter when he asked: "Is the floor shaking?" Realizing it was an earthquake, Siegel followed standard procedure by scooting underneath a doorframe. Then, as Rovi staffers evacuated onto Hudson Street, he was prepared for the worst, having grabbed a plateful of cookies and a soda. Siegel stood in the street offering the cookies around, although he found little interest. Media researcher and MediaPost regular contributor Charlene Weisler was also at the Rovi meeting and said at first, "I thought I was dizzy -- I thought it was me," but when she saw the doorframe shaking, she knew it was an earthquake. The team at online video advertising firm Tremor Video didn't exactly follow standard earthquake procedure. Instead of moving to a stable infrastructure like a doorframe or under a desk, much of the Tremor team gathered around the giant window in Chief Media Officer Jason Krebs' office, which has a picturesque view looking north at New York's Empire State Building. Krebs said the Tremor team wanted to see whether New York's tallest landmark was swaying due to the quake. It was not, he said, realizing after the fact that standing by a large piece of plate glass might not have been the best decision following an earthquake. That said, Krebs felt the tremor had some upside for, well, Tremor -- sparking a significant amount of chatter about the company's name on Twitter. "We view what we do as earth-shattering, but we did not orchestrate this particular tremor," Krebs quipped, emphasizing "and everyone is okay," before adding that the company remains committed to continuing the "industry's seismic shift into video." The enterprising new business team at New York City-based Targetcast TCM was also quick to draw a positive earthquake-related analogy when the tremors were felt during a client pitch in its offices on the 31st floor of 909 Third Avenue, which was particularly affected by some unsettling seismic swaying. While some agencies claim to move the earth for their clients, CEO Steve Farella quipped that Targetcast literally does. He said it was too early to tell whether the agencies won the account, but that he expects a positive ripple effect from the meeting. Wayne Friedman, David Goetzl and Steve McClellan contributed to this story.
Hoping to raise up to $50 million, online video platform Brightcove on Wednesday filed for an initial public offering with the SEC. While Brightcove has increased annual revenues since at least 2008, the company said it does not expect to achieve profitability until 2012. "We have incurred significant losses in each fiscal year since our inception in 2004," Brightcove explained in an S-1 form filed with the SEC on Wednesday. "Our operating losses will continue or even increase until ... the end of 2012." Debuted in 2004, Brightcove now has nearly 300 employees. It sets itself apart by helping both large and small content providers to publish video using HTML 5 instead of Adobe Flash. As of May, Brightcove was streaming 700 million videos a month, which the company said at the time placed it among the top five online video platforms on the Web. Along with standard video, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company has added live, on-demand and mobile offerings in recent years. Customers include AOL, Bank of America, Honda, Macy's, Oracle, Philips Electronics, Showtime and The New York Times. In 2008, Brightcove racked up $24.5 million in revenue, while in 2010 it earned $43.7 million. During the first six months of this year, the company earned $28.4 million in revenues, but incurred a loss of $9.7 million. However, Brightcove remains optimistic about the future of online video. "We estimate our total addressable market for online video platforms to be approximately $2.3 billion in 2011, growing to approximately $5.8 billion in 2015," the company estimated in its S-1 filing. In April, the U.S. online video audience streamed 14.7 billion videos, according to Nielsen, while the total audience was 141.4 million viewers. Also working in its favor, Brightcove was recently issued a broad patent for the "distribution of content," which covers the basic features of a professional online video platform. The patent, which the company applied for in 2005, describes some of the basic features of all professional online video players, such as customizable players, digital rights management and syndication. To date, Brightcove has raised over $100 million from Hearst Interactive Media, GE Commercial Finance, Accel Partners, Allen & Company, Brookside Capital and AllianceBernstein.
Future digital TV/video consumption will shift to tablets from PCs. Scottsdale, Ar.-based media researcher In-Stat says 65% of the U.S. population will own a smartphone and/or tablet by 2015 -- that comes to over 200 million people in total. The survey says this estimate will have an impact on how video entertainment is acquired and consumed. Other surveys suggest that laptops and PC business have already taken a hit because of new portable tablets. The In-Stat survey says 86% of smartphone/tablet users will view video on their mobile devices -- and that 60% of smartphone/tablet owners will also be viewing so-called over-the-top (OTT) video services at home. The survey also says there will be nearly two smartphone/tablet owners per OTT household. The dominant brand in homes in this context: Apple. The average Apple household will have four Apple devices, while the average Google Android household will have over two Android devices. Keith Nissen, research director of In-Stat, stated that the company's study, the U.S. Multiscreen Video Database, "quantifies consumption and interaction with video entertainment on mobile devices both outside and inside the home." He added that this complements its other entertainment database products, which track the online/pay-TV video market.
@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Just so you don't misunderstand me, let me start with the disclaimer that I love the idea of Internet-connected TVs. If the future is to have most things connected to the Internet, such as your toaster, refrigerator and washing machine, the TV is not a bad place to start. Earlier this year, ConnectedTVs were rechristened SmartTVs, probably as a way to draw some of the reflected light from the growing popularity of smartphones. For the first time in Q4, 2010, smartphone shipments exceeded PC shipments globally, and by 2012 smartphone shipments are predicted to surpass feature phone shipments in the U.S., according to InStat. This is a long journey for smartphones that were until very recently simply the purview of enterprise and business users. The term "smart" in the context of devices or gadgets alludes to advanced and rich in features or something that is elegant to use in functionality. The inflexion point in smartphone adoption happened with the iPhone. It immediately redefined the category of smartphones from a business work horse to the coolest, most fun gadget you could have with an online connection (and a mobile one to boot). The rest, as we all know, is history. Who could then resist the lucre of being in the smartphone business? The game is on with Android following suit, Microsoft waking from its slumber, RIM bearing the major brunt of this tectonic shift, Nokia losing its mantle as the leading smartphone platform and eventually discarding Symbian, and Palm getting acquired by HP. History is being written, folks, and the smartphone will forever change how we do things. Location based services being used for commercial applications, such as local promotions; finding friends and building spontaneous social networks; checking into venues; and all sorts of other seemingly useful and useless things are nevertheless transformational in what we do and how we do it. And this is just the start. Expect a lot more from the smartphone when we're out shopping, looking for things to do, using virtual reality to enhance our experiences of places we're visiting, using QR codes to get more information instantly and interact with advertising and such on the go, and the list goes on. Truly, calling these devices smart is appropriate nomenclature. Phones are first and foremost a communications and productivity tool. Despite all the fun stuff that is available for smartphones -- gaming and video included -- one cannot deny that the tremendous utility of the platform, applications, and location awareness is an important driver of productivity and connectedness. The TV, on the other hand, has mainly been an entertainment device. As the programming has evolved, so has the role of TV in our lives. We don't hear the term anymore, but for the longest time the lowly television was called the idiot box. Everyone can relate to Bruce Springsteen's lament of '57 channels and nothing on', at least until the arrival of DVRs. Even then, by the time the fall season ends, the TiVo library starts getting sparse. The TV has been credited as a contributor to the general dumbing down of how we spend our time. Whatever smart things could be done on a TV set in the past never took off. I am referring to things such as WebTV and Microsoft Media Center PCs. I am sure some of the rationale for that was consumer choice -- although those products coming from Microsoft may have had some bearing on it too, if you know what I mean. The smartest things connected to our TVs today are game consoles, and therein lies the dilemma of calling the TVs smart as well. GoogleTV still has a pulse, but just about, and AppleTV - well, that was dumbed down as well. So forgive me if the use of the term smartTV is going to take a little more getting used to compared to the smartphone. ConnectedTVs was an appropriate name - they are after all now connected to the thing that we all want to be connected to - namely the Internet. However, making the qualitative distinction that the TV is going to do smart things for us, or actually help us do smart things is yet to be seen. I am definitely in the camp that wants smart utility merged with the TV, but (despite being a marketer) I need it to be more than a marketing term before I can subscribe to it.
While more than $135 billion was spent in the last year on brand advertising in the U.S., marketers only allocated 3% of the budget to digital campaigns, which includes programs that leverage a promising mobile market. However, the latest industry stats reveal that advertisers will be dedicating $50 billion over the next five years to reach consumers through social channels, signifying a tremendous opportunity to interact with a target audience in new ways.To effectively reach consumers in the new social environment, brand managers need to learn how to translate their budgets into the digital realm, which also means understanding the advantages that digital can provide over television advertising. Here are five "Vs" to help guide the way as you shift your vision from television to digital.1. Opt-in video. Great brands are great storytellers. However, too many brands create compelling video without a captive audience to watch it. In other words, they have no idea how to tell who's actually paying attention. While commercials interrupt consumers' enjoyment of a TV program, social media allows video to enter the conversation between friends in a non-intrusive way with an opt-in choice. Brands such as Microsoft, American Express and Unilever are among the many advertisers who are mastering how to pick the right moments online to tell their story, and in turn, are able to gauge the attention levels of their target audience. By empowering consumers to choose when and with whom they would like to engage, brands are more likely to reach people who will embrace their message. Recent studies show consumers average over 60 seconds of engagement with brands when they willingly opt-in to a video ad experience.2. Value exchange. Consumers value their personal time and are loyal to those companies that make their lives more productive. Brands gaining some of the biggest successes in social media are engaging with millions of consumers through value exchange. By offering consumers something relevant to their online experience in return for their time and attention, value-exchange advertising is crucial to gaining a consumer's active attention in a mutually beneficial way. Broadcast television and radio pioneered the original media value-exchange model as networks provided consumers with free content in exchange for listening to a word from the sponsor. The digital media uprising has allowed the model to pivot, making value exchange, and its corresponding ROI, now possible on a 1-to-1 level. And now, with virtual currency (perhaps worth its own "V"!), moms seeking Facebook Credits to build their Zynga farms, office workers trying to read an article buried behind a paywall, or travelers trying to access WiFi at an airport can all be helped with value-exchange advertising - allowing brands to provide instant gratification.3. Virality. In the "old days" (as in, less than 10 years ago), a television commercial earned additional buzz at the water cooler. Today, these same conversations take place on Twitter and Facebook, creating the water cooler gossip of thousands. This distinction is important because 24% of all viewers now have a second screen open while they watch TV, whether it's a tablet, a PC or a smart phone. Clever brands like Kia and Best Buy are synchronizing their TV spend with social media ad engagements to speed the virality of their message. This synchronicity should be given special heed: consumers who share a brand's message as part of an engagement campaign typically share it with an average of 130 friends online. Earned media by way of the online water cooler is a vast multiplier of digital dollars spent, and greatly increases a brand's effective reach and conversion down the sales funnel. 4. Validity. Millions have been spent over the last half-century on research to justify the value of TV advertising. What social media may lack in 50 years of studies, it is making up in concrete and measureable results. According to a recent OTX Research study, about two-thirds of people use information they find through social media to influence their buying decisions, and over 60% trust information they find through social media more than traditional advertisements-pointing to the effectiveness of social media campaigns to change consumer behavior. Moreover, as social media migrates to the mobile environment, marketers will be able to track consumers' purchases at physical store locations, and social ROI will have irrefutable validity - making the current industry standard of 0.1% for display ad CTRs shameful and baseless. 5. Vision. What's really holding back billions of brand dollars from digital advertising? Vision. Most CMOs who are giving speeches about the power of social aren't backing up those words with budgets and smart execution plans. For brand dollars to migrate from TV to digital, brand managers are going to have to lead the way and prove the strength of this next generation of marketing. Those with the Vision today will quickly become the CMOs of tomorrow.