• by July 29, 2005

By Jonathan Blum

Leading-edge technologies you should have learned about yesterday.

It's enough to make you wish you'd paid attention in physics class. In a business where the most technical thing used to be coordinating a film-to-tape transfer, or figuring out what the anti-lock brakes did on the luxury car purchased with that annual bonus, media has evolved into a game of technical one-upmanship.

Digital music players, satellite radio services, Internet/tv, local video storage, and more  the advent of new technologies is making media planning more challenging than ever. "What used to be the domain of the arts is segueing into the domain of the sciences," notes Tim Hanlon, senior vice president/director, emerging contacts at Starcom MediaVest Group.

In the perverse Darwinian logic of silicon and digital technology, the process of change only gets started once the first practical applications get to market. The avalanche of emerging technologies, gadgets, and new media trends is driven by the fact that tv and all media is going digital and will have the capacity to go mobile. These trends are likely to fuel a creative renaissance for media agencies, marketers, and media companies. "It'll be a trade-off between the complexity of the standard media and the simplicity of the new. The net effort will be the same," says Brian Wieser, vice president of industry analysis, magna Global.

Mitch Oscar, executive vice president at Carat Digital, says, "It'll be the three-button suit versus the four-button suit. I love all this tech stuff, but it's about evolution. It is not as monumental as the horse and the car."

So break out your pocket protectors. It's time to get comfortable with your inner geek. Here are a few of the top media trends you need to understand:

IP/TV What is it? ip/tv ostensibly stands for "Internet Protocol Television," but the actual technology it describes varies by entity, such as phone companies, cable operators, or satellite providers. It is basically 100 percent pure-digital television.

How does it work? ip/tv uses a massive set of digital instructions modeled on the language of the Internet. This set of digital dos and don'ts allows for the creation and transport of imagery and sound over just about any network. ip/tv does away with the traditional method of encoding and decoding, radiating energy from a tower, cable emitter, or satellite.

Why is it important? ip/tv lets the media business use the same cheap technologies that brought us the $400 pc and $4 led flashlight. Considering the efficiencies involved, it should come as no surprise that most every phone company, cable operator, and tv provider is betting big on IP/TV.

Here's what you can expect: >>Telecommunications companies will use ip/tv to enter the tv business and traditional media players like cable and broadcast providers will use it to offer more channels, higher data rates, and richer quality images.

>>It will also mean real change for local advertising, since the phone company will now be in the tv business. Expect "localized" national media spot and pressure on local buys. Internet search interfaces will also show up, as electronic programming guides essentially become search tools.

>>Expect truly mind-numbing applications that are likely to include Web-video-like media search for High-Definition tv content, interactive applications that actually work, and a concept dubbed "liquid media": Content that follows consumers from the house to the car and the cell phone in real time.

Notable and quotable: "[ip/tv] is the single most disruptive thing in television in the next five years," says Mike Bloxham, director of testing and assessment, Center for Media Design, Ball State University.

What you should hedge against: Telecom/tv is interesting, but it will take years for providers to solve the technical and regulatory issues to reach the scale of cable and direct-to-home applications. Also, ip/tv could ultimately turn out to be the same old tv. Consumers may not even know or care about the difference.

Bottom line: Regardless, ip/tv is what China is to the world economy. Either you have a well-defined strategy in this part of the world, or you're done.

FTTH What is it? Fiber to the Home pure optical data networks.

How does it work? ftth does away with old-fashioned copper lines found in cable, power, and phone systems. Instead, a single strand of optical glass runs end-to-end and is loaded with blinking bits of light that hold data that flows across the network.

Why is it important? How many colors are in a rainbow? Each of these millions of hues can carry a movie, or a hundred movies, as well as data and voice. Optical fiber networks have no limits in terms of their capacity. Since fiber is finally cheap enough to use commercially, slowly but surely (in a decade or so), this end-to-end optical network will become the norm, though plenty of copper will remain.

What you can expect: Pure optical fiber is the "new new" network advancement and should offer real advantages to marketers. These will be subtle to start  better picture quality and more robust service  but savvy agencies will find fiber a smart way to lure customers interested in advanced services.

Notable and quotable: ftth is currently in about 380 communities nationwide. Verizon is on-course to offer the technology to over 3 million homes by the end of 2005. "ftth will have many profound effects on life... True broadband will change the way entertainment is presented," says Michael C. Render, president of Render Vanderslice and Associates, which tracks the ftth sector.

What you should hedge against: Optical fiber could turn into just another means of delivering data. In fact, cable providers and some phone companies have made big bets that tweaking the current old-school hybrid copper/fiber network will do the job just as well. They could be right.

Bottom line: Put a big map on the wall and a pin in every community with pure fiber. These are your best new media customers.

Data Over Power Lines What is it? Broadband data that runs over operational power lines

How does it work? In what is likely the engineering feat of the last two decades, developers have managed to sneak digital information into the unused capacity in copper power lines both in the home and in the general grid, though that end of the technology can still be rugged.

Why is it important? Considering there are about 45 outlets in most homes, data via power lines has the potential to turn any house into a fully wired broadband data center with minimal obstacles.

What you can expect: A new range of products that can turn tricky data-challenged devices like digital tvs into plug-and-play two-way gadgets. Digital radio, in particular, should be affected first.

Notable and quotable: Nearly 50,000 people are now served data via their power plants. Vendor Intellon, for example, struck a deal with Comcast to roll out its 14-megabit-per-second (mbps) product data over power lines. An 85-mbps version is expected soon, so a 200-mbps isn't far behind. "I really do expect there will be a day fairly soon where products will have the connectivity built right in," says Cameron McCaskill, vice president of business development at Intellon.

What you should hedge against: This could turn out to be just another way to deliver data, which would make the sector more of a commodity, not less. Bottom line: Anything that offers even the hint of a plug-and-play interactive tv is something every agency should track.

Electronic Program Guides/Video Search What is it? Finding what you want to watch via interactive networks.

How does it work? No one is sure, since it's not operational yet. It seems as if a small army is working on such variants as text-based search.

Why is it important? With cable and satellite providers already groaning under the weight of hundreds of channels, managing the hundreds of thousands of bits of tv and radio information is expected to make interactive networks crucial.

What you can expect: We have virtually no clue, but we anticipate a hailstorm of applications and developers from traditional media players to Web-based search companies, all trying to be Google for tv.

Notable and quotable: Google's video search beta (video. google.com/), Blinkx (www.blinkx.tv/), and Singing Fish (search.singingfish.com), are working on these concepts. Comcast is expected to roll out a new electronic program guide later this year and has an early effort called "The Fan" at its Web site.

What you should hedge against: Total failure! Amazingly enough, even after almost 10 years of development, companies are no closer to finding the right blend of search and prompts for making video and music easy to find on a complicated network. Bottom line: Effective search is the last great take-down in the new media wars; pay attention to who's winning.

ZigBee What is it? A wireless transmission standard that turns devices into both receivers and transmitters.

How does it work? Part of the trend called mesh networking, ZigBee turns each device into a node that can retrieve information and broadcast it back out. It's like how peer-to-peer file-sharing systems such as Grokster and Kazaa handle content, except with wireless devices.

Why is it important? It's an inexpensive method of letting wireless devices and services connect, at far lower power rates and with an enormous range.

What you can expect: Battery-operated devices for the home that will last as long as the home does, and a backdoor wireless data platform that fulfills on the promise of Bluetooth, an earlier wireless network standard. This could be a big deal for the car.

Notable and quotable: InStat projects that 150 million such wireless devices will be shipped in 2009. "Operators are going to have to differentiate themselves somehow. We see this sort of service as part of that effort," says Bill Taylor, senior director of marketing at Motorola.

What you should hedge against: Wireless networks of all types are notoriously finicky, so this could represent another form of connectivity that nobody will want.

Bottom line: Anything that lets you install a humidity gauge and never change the battery should find a market.

RFID What is it? Radio Frequency Identification Technology.

How does it work? Small transmitters broadcasting tiny bits of information to a receiver nearby are placed on products. Think of them as really smart, really chatty bar codes.

Why is it important? A functioning rfid network will make Web log transaction data look like, well, Nielsen numbers. The technology promises to provide granular transaction-by-transaction data on everything from gas to hair-care products. It can also be used for national security, as dangerous items can be tracked in real time.

What you can expect: Ever smaller and cheaper rfid devices are on their way, matched by more-powerful receivers.

What you need to hedge against: It's hard to imagine a trend that raises controversy more than this one. You, as the gatekeeper of brands, can expect an almost certain battle over privacy and legality.

Notable and quotable: Wal-Mart began requiring 100 top vendors to ship items with rfid-tagged cases early this year. And in June, the state of California allowed the use of rfid tags on some of its documents.

"We have been doing [rfid] for about nine years at the pallet level, and we are tracking it for by-item deployment, but it is going to be a while before we get to where people begin to see a change," says Jim Sinegal, president and ceo of Costco.

Bottom line: Considering the stakes, everyone has to have a place at the rfid table, but this stuff can be dangerous.

Location-Based Media What is it? Watching what you want to watch, anywhere you want to watch it, at any time; as noted above, this is also dubbed "liquid media."

How does it work? Strictly speaking, in the ip world, wired telephone, cable, and ftth networks; wireless cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi, WiMax, and ZigBee networks; digital asset tracking methods; in-home and in-network storage; content rights management; positioning technologies like global positioning systems and cellular, are all actually just one network. It's a really complicated network, but one, nonetheless.

Being only an instruction set, there's no reason that digital movies, radio, and tv can't travel from one part of the network to another.

Why is it important? If you're looking for the next ad venue after the 30-second tv spot, location-based media is probably it. Digital technology is great, but it can be a royal pain to use and sometimes, it just won't work. This technology can create media consumers can use easily.

What you can expect: The chance to sponsor the delivery of content from the home to the car to the cell phone in a single gesture. The agency develops the lead, tracks the user, delivers the message, and measures the result  all for a commission. The agency should serve as the middleman among clients, networks, and customers.

Notable and quotable: Earlier this year, Motorola bought whole home video application provider Ucentric and has demonstrated pausing tv in one room and watching it in another. The company has also demonstrated ported content to cell phones. "We are in the process of reinventing the viewing experience," says Motorola's Taylor.

What you need to hedge against: Considering how grim the old world of peddling sequential media is getting, probably nothing.

Bottom line: Done right, the capability to create messages that follows folks no matter where they listen and watch is the future of the business. Of course, done wrong, it could be the end of the business, but that's the challenge. Good luck.