• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, January 11, 2012

Harvey Kent, Chief Media Strategist for Donovan Systems, was one of the early pioneers in standardizing media pre-buying and Buy / Sell IT systems. And he has helped the industry adapt to the changing landscape in processing media data from its many sources to its many users. In this interview, Harvey talks about Donovan and MediaOcean, the introduction of Set Top Box Data into Donovan, media measurement and upcoming trends in the media landscape.

The videos of his interview can be viewed here. Below is an excerpt.

CW: Harvey, let’s talk about the rate of change in the industry. STB data is beginning to be processed by Donovan, even though metrics and standards are still being developed. What do you think about the rate of change?

HK: Disruption in the media ecosystem is accelerating so rapidly that it is blinding. In my career, which started in the mid-1970s, the first major disruption was Ted Turner who started something called a cable network -- a superstation down in Atlanta.

And look at what cable networks are today. That was the first major disruption to the standard newspaper, radio tv station / network environment. I would say that the next major disruption was local cable, which probably followed about ten years later.

What it meant was that we were consuming media differently, and getting advertising to those eyeballs had to change. And that was a disruption in systems and processes. Fast-forward through the digital age – changes are occurring much more rapidly. Instead of every seven to nine years it is more like every one to two years.

My favorite disruption is the iPad. At the IAB annual conference in 2010, the iPad had just been announced. It wasn’t out yet. The conference is in February. So fast-forward to the IAB conference the next year, and when quite a few speakers asked the people in the room who had an iPad, (and I understand that this is a special slice of the consumer market) about 80% of the people raised their hands. And when they were asked how many of you are using your iPad right now, over 50% of them still kept their hands raised. 

What an amazing disruptive change! And none of us know where it is all going.

So disruption is happening at a much more rapid pace.

When we first decided to take in the first set-top-box data at Donovan, we did not have a single request to use that data. It didn’t matter. Our whole approach has changed. We have to be slightly ahead of these curves which will eventually become regular business processes. We did this so people can start to dabble. So people can start to play with some of the data within the transaction systems themselves.

CW: What do you see on the horizon over the next five years?

HK: There is an inexorable movement of eyeballs from scheduled linear to non-linear. It is how they watch that will impact the future of media. There is a movement toward consumer control. The technology is out there. The companies that keep up with that – all of us, from media vendors like Donovan who provide systems, to the buy side, to those that provide systems on the sell side, the sellers, the buyers -- the people that keep up with that are going to succeed.