Traditional television outlets are under pressure as consumers look for, and now expect, great video content from the Internet. The efforts of these players to keep their consumers engaged in the online world offers general lessons for those looking to “monetize the audience, not the content,” as Fred Wilson has aptly put it.
Lisa Hsia, Senior VP, New Media & Digital at Bravo TV, discussed her efforts to build Bravo’s online presence while speaking at BRITE ’09
My job is to try to interact and engage our users before the program, during the program, after the program and always, and my job is not only to interact and engage but my job is really to monetize. ... When I was at NBC news you know it was like, “this is a higher calling.” No. This is about money.
And just how does she do this? Through “constant experimentation and trying to figure out the user.” Although it isn’t all experimentation, Lisa noted that there are constants that drive audience interaction: photos, videos and blog posts. Her experiments come through different treatments of these resources and how they promote actions, like text message polling and paid content downloads.
In addition, based on the success of online polls and chats that occur during broadcast re-runs of Bravo’s shows like Top Chef, Lisa went back to her advertisers and suggested the development of interactive features for their banner ads. She noted that this is a trend the advertising industry is moving towards, but by showing the audience's engagement with the shows, she helped push advertisers along.
To meet her “always” engaging the audience objective, Lisa developed affinity groups, e.g. “Bravo for foodies” and “Bravo for style,” which maintain a more constant level of interaction and permit additional opportunities for partnerships, sponsorships and advertising development.
An online audience needs additional content, so costs can be a concern, but Lisa noted that for a 7-part webisode series spun out of “Make Me a Supermodel” she spent a mere $2,000. (Note the audible gasp from the audience in the video.) This combination of online activities yields tens of millions of dollars of additional revenue to Bravo.
It is true that the reality TV shows which dominate the Bravo line-up are ideally suited to online engagement. Lisa’s efforts demonstrate, however, that by being efficient and creative you can excite your audience, and drive deeper connections that lead to additional brand or advertising revenue.
There is growing evidence that a company can strengthen its brand by listening to customers and even sourcing business ideas from the crowd. But just what does such an effort look like in action?
Entrepreneur Aaron Cohen used his speaking slot at the BRITE '09 conference to conduct a live crowdsourcing experiment with the attendees. Cohen described the basic concept and unique assets behind a new company he was about to lead, AnyClip.com, and then sought out suggestions that might turn these raw materials into a breakout media brand. Here is a video of this “crowdsourcing in action.”
Cohen assumed the role of CEO shortly after BRITE, and AnyClip is now moving forward along some of the tracks discussed during the conference. AnyClip (now in beta launch) lets users find, watch and share short clips of their favorite movie scenes online, and it has alreadysecured the rights to host films from most of the major Hollywood studios. The company won rave reviews for its recent demo at the TechCrunch50 competition, walking away with the coveted Audience Award.
One of the key ideas in Cohen's crowdsourcing discussion at BRITE was to open up the company’s film clip database to the software developer community -- so that anyone can build new applications, services, and revenue streams based on AnyClip’s platform. Cohen discusses this strategy in a recent piece he wrote for The Business Insider, including the use of an “open API” (application program interface). Opening a new platform up to development by other entrepreneurs has been a critical part of the success of both Twitter and the iPhone App Store.
Open APIs are unique to technology brands. But, whatever industry you are in, there are ways to solicit ideas from your stakeholders and strengthen your brand through collaboration with your customers.
Today Apple offered a sneak preview of the iPhone 3.0 operating system. This will be the next mobile computing OS for over 30 millions users of the iPhone and iPod touch worldwide. (Judging by my commute, 1 million of them ride the NY subways.)
USER INTERFACE
The new OS will offer a host of improvements for user interface and the core applications that come with your iPhone:
Copy/Paste: finally! Finally!! Finally!!! (Just yesterday, a family member asked "The one thing I haven't figured out is… how do I copy and paste on this thing?") With double-tapping and dragging, users will be able to copy, paste, and cut both within, and between programs (including 3rd party apps). Read something, highlight a paragraph, copy the text, open an email, and paste it in… ouala!
Global search: search your emails, search your calendar, even use Spotlight to search all your apps
Push: for the Blackberry enviers, push notifications finally arrive. Expected to save battery life.
Landscape Mode: the widescreen keyboard layout will now be available in all app's (not just the Safari browser)
Undo: shake your iThing to retract that last hasty command
Calendar synch: will now use CalDav (a widely supported open standard useful for sharing calendars) and subscriptions support for .ics formatted calendars. Spouses with different work calendar systems can get back in synch again!
Messages: new application for MMS will allow forwarding and deleting of individual messages
Voice Memos: new app for recording audio files with the built-in microphone will allow you to edit, trim, and share audio memos
More features, including: shake to shuffle, Stereo Bluetooth support, YouTube accounts and subscriptions, synch Notes to your computer, Wi-Fi auto login (yes!), encrypted profiles, auto-fills, VPN on demand, parental controls, and more.
DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
But the real impact of the iPhone 3.0 OS will be in how the developer community uses it to create new app's for the iPhone ecosystem. They've already created 25,000 third-party applications for the iPhone App Store – with 800 million apps downloaded to date.
That open approach to innovation led the iPhone App Store to win this year's BRITE Big Think Audience Award (narrowly edging out Twitter). The online nomination read:
This storefront for third party applications turned an "MP3 player plus 2nd-tier Blackberry" into a lifestyle-altering mobile computing device. Open source developers added games, maps, productivity tools, books, RSS feeds… but also applications that never existed before, because they'd make no sense for a large computer (identify that song on the radio, get food advice while shopping in the grocery). The Google phone and Blackberry are both rushing to emulate, with their own app stores. The mobile computing revolution has begun.
The iPhone 3.0 OS brings three huge breakthrough's for developers of third party apps: 1. New open APIs 2. Work with other devices 3. New business model for apps
OPEN APIs
The new version of the iPhone software development kit (SDK) will provide developers over 1000 new APIs. (Those who heard Aaron Cohen and Yaron Samid's talk at BRITE '09 this month understand the importance of open API's as catalysts for innovation.)
These open APIs include access to the iPod Library, proximity sensor, audio recorder, the battery, data detectors, text-selection, and more. The countless possible innovations include:
customizing music: e.g. game can also play music from the user's iPod library (choose your own soundtrack for Sims 3.0)
scaling video: an ESPN native app will automatically scale video quality to provide users with the best quality for their connection
embed maps in app's: the heart of the Maps application is being turned into an API so that developers can embed Maps into their applications
Bluetooth p2p location: will allow auto-location of devices in the same general area without having to use WiFi
WORK WITH OTHER DEVICES
IPhones communicate synch with your computer, but so far not with much else. The Nike Plus platform (linking a joggers iPod to their running shoe and to an online community) has shown the exciting potential of building a bridge from your mobile computing device to other devices. But that was developed as part of a special partnership between Nike and Apple.
Now, third party developers will be able to create applications that work directly with other accessories, and can "talk" to them through the iPhone dock.
This could include a digital equalizer app for a stereo, a channel-changer app for your television, or even an app to communicate with medical devices.
Anita Mathew of LifeScan showed off an application for diabetes management – which would allow users to check their blood sugar and transmit the data from their insulin meter to the iPhone (via the iPhone Dock Connector or BlueTooth). Gizmodo reported how she described
"…the scenario of a 15-year old with diabetes who tests herself 6 times a day and injects insulin many times a day. The insulin meter can transmit her glucose reading to the iPhone. She can then track her diet and how much insulin she needs after a particular meal... With the iPhone app, she can then let her parents know that she’s OK by sending them a message directly through the app that has her glucose level and how she feels."
NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR APP'S
Equally important, the iPhone 3.0 0S will open up new options for 3rd party developers to capture revenue for their innovations.
For the first time, users will be able to make app purchases from within the app itself (rather than going back to the iTunes App Store). This opens up a variety of new business models, based on selling new content within an application. Paid content subscriptions are possible. Add on selling could include a game where if you finish the first 10 levels, you can purchase the next 10 without leaving play. Content can be sold in bundles, like a City Guides app selling "City Packs" of customized cities. More business models will doubtless emerge from the developers.
START YOUR ENGINES
The new OS will be available to users in summer 2009 (free for iPhone owners, $9.95 to iTouch users). It is being released in beta to developers today, so they can start creating new app's to take advantage of the upgrade.
Dramatic changes in TV as a media channel are changing the environment
for brands.Audiences are aging, younger people are tuning in less,
and when they do, it’s often by streaming network shows over the web.Consumers still love TV content, but where is
the TV channel experience heading?
One clue may lie with a New York start-up named Boxee that is poised to
transform consumers’ expectations of what they can get when they sit down on
the sofa in front of a widescreen TV.
Boxee is a software platform that runs on a computer (so far only for Mac OSX and Linux platforms, but a Windows version is planned for launch this year) or Apple TV box attached to your big living room television. Remember the dream of the 1990’s that we would soon experience
“interactive TV”?That our TV’s would
connect to the Internet?Boxee finally
makes this real.
With an amazingly easy interface, Boxee allows users to access digital
video, movies, television, music, and photos, either from files stored on their
hard drive, or from the web.Zipping
over its luminous icons, the user can watch content from aggregator sites like
Netflix and Hulu, user-generated sites like YouTube and Flickr, web radio
channels like Last.fm, or network TV channels like Comedy Central or CNN.com.
I’m delighted to be bringing
Boxee’s founder and CEO, Avner Ronen, to speak at BRITE 09(see agenda), as part of our second theme of the day on March 4: “Social
Media, Mass Media, and the Prospects for Brands.”
I first met Avner in September, when he graciously spoke at a Columbia
masterclass on market innovation.Since
then, Boxee has seen a whirlwind of news:winning first prize in the iStage technology contest, raising
millions in venture capital, making a splash at the giant Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and news coverage on NPR’s Morning Edition,
and one of the New York Times’ most emailed articles of the week.
It’s easy to see why there’s so much excitement for such a small
company, whose product is still in “alpha” testing.Imagine if your Comcast cable menu were as
easy to use as your iPhone.Cool? But
Boxee doesn’t just provide the kind of on-demand access and media customization
consumers have been craving.Boxee is
also tapped into the social web by design, allowing today’s and tomorrow’s users
to share, comment, and experience media with their network of friends.Sounds like a couch potato’s dream come
true.This may just be the future of TV.
One of our four big themes for the first day of BRITE ’09 (see agenda) will be “Social Media, Mass Media, and the Prospects for Brands.”
I’m delighted that we’ll be joined for this segment by Lisa Hsia, Senior VP, New Media & Digital at Bravo TV. I had the pleasure to meet Lisa Hsia, when we were on a panel last summer as part of Internet Week New York (video posted here).
Lisa heads up all digital media programs for the Bravo network (part of NBC Universal). Her parent company sees the shift away from broadcast television and its ad revenue, and is tapping leaders like Lisa to aggressively develop new media (online voting, mobile, txt messages, videos at Hulu.com, etc.) to create new forms of customer participation with, and new revenue streams from, their television content.
With TV networks plunging into the digital space, they’ve clearly decided not to wait around for web video to do to TV what Napster did to the music industry. Consumers are willing to watch ads on Hulu, but fewer per show than on broadcast TV. Lisa's initiatives are paying off with revenue for Bravo, but it remains to be seen if new modes of engaging viewers with brands can yield higher impact for advertisers through the kind of media Lisa is developing.
Lisa will be followed by Steve Rubel, who is one of my favorite commentators on new media, social networks, the “attention crash,” and the prospects for brands. Like many others, I keep a regular eye on his top-ranked Micropersusasion blog, as well as his Twitter feed, and in his bi-weekly column for AdAge Digital.
A digital marketer with over 15 years experience, Steve currently serves as SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, where he helps clients identify key insights, trends and emerging digital platforms that can be applied in marketing programs. Rather than summarize his recent thinking, let me point you to a few recent pieces of Steve’s writing that are especially topical:
Like many mass media that dominated in the second half of the 20th century, television is dying a thousand slow deaths in the rising tide of digital media. (See also: print newspapers, recorded music, the adult movie business, etc.…)
I used to think that I was terribly retro because I rarely watch television, have only sporadically owned a set, and have paid for cable just one year of my life. But recently I realized I haven’t been living behind the curve of American media consumption, I’ve been ahead of it.
At a roundtable at the Ad:tech conference, I noticed that the participants who were 10 years younger than me didn’t have television service either. Who needs to scroll through channels of ComWarnerCast when you can choose on-demand from the vast menu of the Web -- with a side order of Netflix? Especially with sites like surfthechannel.com and pandora.tv streaming all the network TV you could want, for free, over web servers in South Korea and China. College students are increasingly watching tv on their laptops.
In our Center office, most of the under-30’s either prefer their TV content over the Internet, or are source-agnostic (“Wherever the game is” said Anthony, whose EuroCup viewing skipped from cable to web and back). Apparently, my in-office poll is not unrepresentative either, because…
It’s now official. Half of the people still watching live broadcast television are so old that advertisers won’t even pay to market to them. I just read the sobering facts on the Silicon Alley Insider:
The average age of the network TV viewer hit 50 years for the first time this year. Consider, for a moment, that advertisers don't pay the networks a nickel for any viewer older than 49 -- except during news programs, when they'll pitch adult diapers to those up to 54 years of age. So viewers' average age is now too old.
Lisa Hsia, VP of Bravo TV told me recently about the dynamic work they’re doing to put their content in new interactive media, from Hulu.com to online voting contests. She conceded that despite making money, the interactive outlets are still a small minority of Bravo’s revenue. But at least they’re moving in the right direction.
Broadcast as a mode for any medium (1-way, top-down) is a waning game. TV networks will need to aggressively embrace social media and disruptive business models if they’re going to avoid heading into the steep decline of the music industry. In the meantime, I’m going to pull out another episode of “House, M.D.” from Netflix. My media, my schedule.
Chris Bellerjeau here at Columbia Business School has kindly posted the video of last week's panel on “Mass Media in Transition” which took place as part of Internet
Week New York (see my prior posts on the panelists and key issues raised and the suggested reading lists of the panelists).
It's 74 minutes, RealMedia, and plays nearly instantly with a broadband connection.
Sree Sreenivasan (Dean of Student Affairs, Columbia School of
Journalism) Lisa Hsia (Sr. VP of Digital Strategy at the Bravo tv network) Moderator: Ava Seave (founder of Quantum Media) Jeremy Kagan (VP Strategy, Publicis Modem) me: David Rogers (Exec. Director, Center on Global Brand Leadership)
At the end of last week's Internet Week panel on "Mass Media in Transition" (see post here), the moderator Ava Seave asked us to suggest blogs, books, and other media for reading on the subject we had discussed -- social media, viral marketing, user-generated content, and marketing. Here were our compiled recommendations.
I assign Chris Anderson's the Long Tail as reading, and recommend John
Batelle's the Search and also Wikinomics. (Also, I co-wrote a small
article in The Online Advertising Playbook - -shameless plug.)
Events www.BRITEconference.com
– speaker videos & agendas for: a global series of conferences, workshops,
and leadership summits on branding, innovation, and technology.
I also
track a whole bunch of articles, stats and resources about the changing media
landscape at http://www.sreetips.com/landscape.htmlRequired
class reading: Chris Anderson's the Long Tail as reading, along with the
comments...
Yesterday, I took place in a panel discussion at Columbia Business School on “Mass Media in Transition.” The panel was part of Internet Week New York, a festival of events focused on online media companies and innovators in the Big Apple, supported by the Mayor’s office.
Moderator Ava Seave (founder of Quantum Media) posed the question of how media companies can maintain competitive amidst the growing threats of amateur content, digital piracy, and new online competitors.
Lisa Hsia (Sr. VP of Digital Strategy at Bravo) discussed how NBC Universal is using new media (online voting, mobile txt, videos at Hulu.com, etc.) to create new forms of customer participation with, and new revenue streams from, their television content.
Sree Sreenivasan (Dean of Student Affairs, Columbia School of Journalism) talked about the changing nature of journalism, and how the J-School is training “tradigital” journalists, who combine the practices and skills of traditional reporting with both a new media skillset, and a new media mindset.
I discussed, along with Jeremy Kagan (VP Strategy, Publicis Modem), the need for new models of marketing that account for the rising power of P2P communications (from bloggers, videos, and brand mashups). We considered how successful marketers and entrepreneurs are giving up a “command-and-control” mentality for their brands, and learning to embrace and leverage customer interactions and online communities. Examples: Coke & Mentos responding to the viral videos created by Steven Voltz (video of Steven speaking at BRITE); and why did Hasbro decide to sue the creators of Scrabulous (the #1 Facebook widget), instead of offering to buy them, and build on their enormously successful social media offer?
Columbia Business School’s Center on Global Brand Leadership played host again last month to the monthly meeting of the New York Video 2.0 Group.
At their prior meeting, I interviewed some of the speakers and participants about the hot new field of on-line video.
CLICK HERE for a 7 minute PODCAST, of Part 2 of that interview. In this half, we discuss: • The case of the “Mentos & Coke” viral video • How customers talk to brands with online reviews and video • When to invite customers to create content about your brand • Buffy the Vampire Slayer sues her core customers
NETWORK
BLOG
At the end of last week's Internet Week panel on "Mass Media in Transition" (
