The PrimeSense Booth at CES

Every January, the Consumer Electronics Show becomes the center of the tech universe, and geeks and gadget lovers from all over the globe flock to Las Vegas for four days of sensory overload.

This year, Pravda Media Group was at CES, too.

Sort of.

One of our clients, PrimeSense revolutionized the living room experience at CES,  and we had to be there too.  Right there, in the PrimeSense “living room.” At CES. In Las Vegas.  On the other side of the world.

But since we haven’t yet figured out a way around the whole space/time continuum thing we did the next best thing:

We created a Live Room,  a real-time marketing operation that allowed us to engage with our target audience as if we were directly on the floor at CES.

The War Room from Dr. Strangelove ain't got NOTHING on Pravda Media Group

We used Tra.cx and TweetDeck to search the internet for relevant people and discussions related to the event.  Then, we were able to engage with them on various social media platforms in real-time.   In addition to this, we also had a camera at the PrimeSense booth rigged to send images directly to us so we could post the photos and videos online on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, as well as add them to the Live Site we created to feature real-time PrimeSense and CES coverage.

Our Live Site offered real-time updates, photos and videos of PrimeSense and CES.  We combined live  news, video, Twitter, and Instagram feeds to create a virtual experience for anyone who wished they could be at CES and couldn’t, or who were at CES and wanted an effective way to see everything that was happening at the event in real-time.

@GoPrimeSense is at #CES 2012!

And so it went, on into the night: While folks in Las Vegas drank their coffee and traipsed the halls of one of the biggest tech shows in the world, all of us at Pravda Media Group pounded our keyboards and scoured the internet for interesting material to share about our client and provide value for our target audience.

(And we drank coffee, too. After all, it was after midnight in Israel.)

In Yiddish, there’s a saying “you’re tuchus can’t dance in two weddings at the same time.” Well,  it turns out, you can.   Through solid team-work both internally at Pravda Media Group, and with PrimeSense, we made it happen.  And the numbers also reflect the success of this operation: PrimeSense was mentioned over 1600 times on Twitter, and using our various monitoring platforms along with our rapid response time, we were able to increase engagement on Twitter by almost 300%.

And, at the end of the day, (well, um, the beginning of the day, because of the time difference!), we all enjoyed the challenge of being in two places at once.

Last week, the online video world rejoiced. For the first time, Hulu, the online premium video provider, had more viewers than Time Warner Cable subscribers. Pro online video folks all around gathered to support the revolution as it unfolds.

The only thing missing is, well, like in most cases, money. Hulu is making small time money compared to Time Warner Cable.

The paradigm of digital cents is very simple - services are much cheaper on the internet, and the value of goods is diminished when they are distributed or sold digitally. The full phrase states that the media industry is facing a challenge - as it transforms from analog dollars to digital cents. This issue is affecting advertisers who are asking agencies to shift dollars from expensive TV spots to cheaper online advertising, which in return hurts the media business.

Hulu, though delivering the same shows as TV channels, is not making as much money as the traditional providers. This is a major challenge to the whole media industry. But it is not alone.

The slow demise of the walled garden adds another pressure, to a different section of the value chain - the operators. The mobile market is a great example how technology is threatening the old world order. Early in this decade, when GPRS launched all over Europe, operators believed that the answer of their declining voice ARPU would come from selling content, such as ringtones and wallpapers.

The basis of this strategy was the operators controlled the availability of content to users - whatever an operator put on its portal could be sold - but nothing else. This way, by creating scarcity, the operators could gain revenues and control the subscriber's experience.

Then came Apple.

And Google.

And Nokia.

And all these companies decided to break operator's hegemony and tear down the garden's walls. Android, iPhone and Ovi challenge the mobile operator's ability to control the content and customer experience.

While media companies such as NBC and HBO don't have a choice but to be a part of the digital cents game, operators have some ways to leverage this market disruption to their advantage.

Services are, in my opinion, a key to change the cents to dollars. Some of them are clear but still not done well, such as three screen syncing - allowing users to start watching a show on their TV set and continue to watch it on their mobile phone.

Some are based on cutting deals with the devil - and tightly integrate web services with traditional TV content. Several companies unveiled such services, such as TV and Twitter integration.

And some are downright evil, such as disregarding net neutrality and providing differentiated quality of services to content providers, based on deals with preferred content providers.

If operators will succeed in finding the right services and implement them in the near future,  we might see that they will rise to play a more significant role in  the media industry.

Twitter is, by far, the most engaging online platform today, and represent a huge opportunity for traditional media and brands - read on to see the numbers.

In the last couple of months, Pravda Media was working with Israel's biggest TV News Company, Channel 2 News, on integrating Twitter in their ongoing operation.
We looked at twitter in two ways:
1. Distribution Channel - Channel 2 News website is populated with video news section, both pre-recorded and and live. We wanted to use Twitter to drive more traffic to the site and increase video viewership.
2. Interaction Channel - We chose one TV show, called Meet The Press, and interacted with the audience via Twitter. Viewers were asked to send questions to the host before the live broadcast of the show, and twits were displayed on TV screen during the live show.

Twitter, though still a small network in Israel, proven to be the most engaging online platform today, with highest click through rates , and responses from TV audience

Let's look the the figures:
1.  Users are clicking on links on Twitter  more than on  any other platform: the Average click through rate (CTR) of twitter links is 10% - X70 times more than banners, X10 times more than links in forums and items on Channel 2 website. According to Eyeblaster's research, the average banner CTR of  is 0.14%.  Channel 2 News generate around 1% CTR in their items and in online forums. When considering the fact that twitter is a time based medium, meaning that users see  twits in a specific time window, these numbers are even more significant, as they represent a higher engagement.

2. Level of engagement of TV viewers is much higher in Twitter than in other media channels. Meet The Press offered viewers to ask their weekly guest questions via Twitter, in addition to the show's forum and comments on their site. Twitter generated tens of questions and responses, much more than any other platform.

3. On  June 14th 2009, Israel's prime minister gave an historical speech at Bar Ilan university. The speech was broadcast live on all TV channels, and online in all major news sites. 10% of all traffic reaching channel 2 news site to watch the broadcast originated from Twitter, an amazing number considering that Channel 2 started engaging in twitter only a couple of months before this event.

4. Long term involvement in twitter  provides clear benefits for the company. Channel 2 sees a constant increase in amount of interaction with their Twitter user, while all other interaction channels don't show any growth.

Possible explanation of these figures

The numbers above show that Twitter users are more engaged in conversation and clicking more links than on other mediums. In my opinion, two important factors are causing this behaviour:

1. Twitter is all about instant gratification. 140 charecters and rapid life-streaming encourages users to click on links in order to get additional media. This experience is fundamentally different than forums, blogs and other longer formats.

2. When users connect to twitter, they already intend to engage. While banners are trying to divert reader's attention from the content he or she wanted to consume (the site content itself), Twitter users are there for the interaction.

Would every twitter campaign generate the same CTR? No. One should remember that Channel 2 is a leading news  company, so their content  is relevant to time of the tweet, and well produced. These factors might not exist in other cases.

However, one thing is certain - Twitter, and probably Micro-blogging as a platform, is engaging and interactive. Now it is up to us to find new creative ways to use it.

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After long negotiations, ABC are becoming a stake holder in Hulu, the Internet TV company funded by NBC, Fox and Providence Equity Partners. This deal further strengthens Hulu's position as the leading premium online TV provider, with 27 partners, and newly extended 2 years exclusivity of the main players' content.

Hulu is proving that great content is king. The site, that was launched a little more than a year ago, has shown meteoric growth and is the third largest online video site in the US. However, as Jeff Zucker, NBC's President,  mentioned in his NYC Media Summit interview, the site is still not profitable.

This deal has a profound effect on YouTube, the queen of video UGC. The site, which is losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually, is facing a huge challenge, that puts it in a collision course with the TV networks' prodigy.

UGC videos are less attractive to advertisers, as many of them do not wish to associate themselves with acts of stupidity caught on video. This leads to lower CPM in these sites. However, video streaming is still an expensive operation. This is why I believe that UGC is not a viable business model in the video world, and this equation is the biggest challenge to YouTube today.

YouTube is trying to change the equation, by introducing premium content on its platform. Some of the first moves in this direction was the introduction of HD player, and hosting videos longer than 10 minutes. The company also announced a deal with MGM, a major move in this direction.

After creating the online video revolution, and empowering users across the globe to broadcast themselves, YouTube has to play the big media game.

And in this game it is facing the biggest challenge of all - beating the TV networks in the online market.

Would they succeed to leverage their huge user base? Time would tell...

Daisy Whitney from TVWeek interviewed some of the key people in SXSW, which basically said the same thing:

Online video was hit by the economic climate, and web shows are feeling the heat, BUT

More ad dollars are moving online.

This resonante with feedback I heard from many of my friends - many of SXSW goers were looking for partnerships in order to pursue business together.

Here is the report:

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Chuck Norris's Birthday was yesterday!

And if you are following this site you know what they mean about his legendary power!

As Barney Says - True Story

Have a great day!

(Via Web TV Hub)

In one word - nothing.

Wallstrip was, for the last couple of years, a success story in the world of Internet TV. The show raised half a million dollars, and was sold to CBS for $5M - a X10 on the initial investment, which is the factor of successful startup exits. This was my favorite example for investors in Internet TV shows.

Today we were informed that the show is canceled, which is sad. However, saying that its cancellation means that Internet TV can't make money is like saying that the fact that some mobile startup closed its doors means that there is no money in mobile innovation.

Sad as it may be, we shouldn't look at it as if this is a clear sign that well produced Internet TV shows can't make money. How many startups are closed every day? Some stats are claiming that startup success rate are less than 10%. But still, no one says that the whole idea of startups is flawed.

Let's put things in perspective. Yes, independent Internet TV, especially high end productions, is still a young market. many production companies will not survive, especially with the latest economic slowdown. But, the vector is positive. We see more and more technologies bridging the gap between the TV set and the Internet. Online video is reaching more people than ever, on more devices. So we are in the right market - we just need cash and air to be there when the market will have enough money for all of us.

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Image by via CrunchBase

This post is a part of a series about media, regulation and technology. It is aimed to encourage conversation and exchange opinions, and is not a legal advise or a single comprehensive article.

Regulators are facing new and complex challenges in the recent years, when new technologies are changing the way people consume media.

In The Past Things Were Simple

In the past years, Media and Medium were one. In this post I define media as the type of content being delivered (TV show, Radio Show, etc), and medium as the carrier technology (Broadcast TV, cable, RF, etc). In this environment, regulators that were in charge of the medium, in a way of providing licenses, could control the content itself.

Also content had one main format - all TV shows were moving pictures seen on TV sets. All radio shows were audio delivered via the air, based on regulated spectrum regime, and so on.

Another important angle was that cost of delivery was relatively high - broadcasting requires considerable investment in technology and licenses. The requirement for such an investment was an automatic filter that enabled only large companies to play this game.

Types of Regulation

Media regulation could be divided to two:

1. Competition - regulators are protecting the citizens from monopoly, by stopping one from forming, and in most cases, restricting existing ones.

2. Content - regulators are protecting citizens by prohibiting specific types of content from being broadcasted in specific hours or in specific channels, as well as require tagging specific content as appropriate to a specific age or population.

The New Paradigm

Technology changed fundamentally the digital media landscape. In short it decoupled media and medium. One can view a TV show over the Internet, with services such as Hulu, buy it from iTunes, or view it on a mobile phone.

This major change created the following regulatory challenges:

1. New players are providing media . But it is not the whole picture. Telecom companies are gaining ground in this area with services such as BT Vision. In many countries, telco companies are regulated separately, through telecom regulators. Therefore regulators face challenges when telecom companies become media companies, which leads to convergence of regulation.

2. Some of them were not regulated in the past, at least not as a major market player - iTunes is a great example of a product from a computer company that changes the viewership habits of consumers, by selling music and TV shows. The same goes for Netflix's and Blockbuster's move in this area - brick and mortar retail comapnies are changing their focus to digital distribution, while Aamzon turns into media distributor as well.

3. Smaller players can distribute media - look at company such as blip.tv. It has 20 employees, but it is a video network with 40,000 shows that release a new video episode every week. By using tools such as blogTV and ustream everyone can open his or her own live broadcasting operation. As the barrier of entry for media delivery is being lowered (though it still costs money), smaller players can be a part of the media market. And as new marketing paradigms, chiefly social media marketing, offer low cost alternative to the expensive traditional marketing, which in turn enable smaller companies reach their consumers. Is it possible at all to regulate such players?

The Result - Complete Mess

Laws are general, and aimed are creating frameworks. The reason is simple - legislation is a very long process. Therefore it is based on concepts and wide definitions. However. this area is being disrupted as well. Here are some example:

1. What is a broadcaster? If one will see every person who streams media as a broadcaster that needs to be regulated, then every 16 year old boy in BlogTV should have a lawyer by his side. by the way, this issue is problematic not only in video content. One can look at podcast as a radio on demand application - should every podcaster get a broadcasting license?

2. What is a TV station? If I am creating a video playlist on my computer and broadcasting it to the world - does it make me a TV station? If I am opening a VOD service - am I a TV station? If so - YouTube is a TV station, as well as blip.tv, and every other video hosting solution.

3. What is TV content? Is it a creative format? Is it determined by the first medium which the content was presented?

4. What's linear program has to with it? Is there a difference between on demand services and linear services?

5. Is there a difference between regulation of TV content when it is being watched on TV or through the Internet? In other words, should there be a difference between the regulation on Hulu and the regulation on NBC?

A lot of questions, and many conflicting answers.

In the next posts about regulation we will review how the EU, UK, and US regulators tackle these issues.

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