Week of July 28, 2008

Another Win For the Consumer

Friday, August 1, 2008

Two years ago we outlined the requirements of today's media companies: They must give the consumer what they want, where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it. There really are no exceptions. NBC underscored the importance of this concept today by announcing they were going to present Olympics coverage completely on demand and in HD video. Again, NBC could have twisted consumer interest and pushed all viewing to their network coverage, but they understood that in this new media world that if they didn't provide the consumers with on demand Olympics coverage, the consumers would do it themselves.

Netflix Extends Its Content Reach

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Netflix has been in the headlines a lot lately for one reason: It is aggressively extending the reach of its streaming movie services. When it launched, you could watch select movies streamed from the Netflix library via your PC. Of course, that isn't much of a game-changer as consumers just don't really enjoy spending two hours watching a movie on their computer. Meanwhile, Netflix was hard at work in the background with the goal of reaching the TV. Their first foray was the Roku box, which was simple: You hook it up to your TV and can watch the Netflix movies that stream any time you want. Roku quickly sold out illustrating the appeal of the idea. Next up Netflix announced a much bigger deal: The ability of Microsoft Xbox users to stream Netflix videos through their console. This opens up a huge market for Netflix. This week, Netflix fired another bullet: Integrated streaming movies through a new Blu-Ray HD DVD player from LG.

If you're looking for a trend, it's clear as day: Streaming of Netflix videos through as many ways as possible. For Netflix, it's a no brainer-the idea will certainly gain subscriptions for the company. For the hardware companies it is also appealing: They get to add another feature to their consoles and boxes, separating them from the competition.

First Classifieds, Now The Yellow Pages

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Forrester Research made headlines ten years ago with its prediction that classified advertising at major newspapers would see significant decline with the advent of Internet classifieds. That prediction has been confirmed, with the newspaper industry seeing its single largest drop in classifieds revenue occurring in 2007. Borrell Associates has made a similar bold prediction in their latest report: "Say Goodbye To Yellow Pages." You can find the executive summary on their site borrellassociates.com.

They state, "The conditions for yellow pages publishers are eerily similar... Over the next five years, we are predicting that 39 percent of ad spending on print yellow pages will vanish as small businesses shift marketing budgets online."

Information in all its forms is moving online, and it will be the rare industry that will be able to avoid an ominous fate. Yellow pages publishing won't be one of them.

The Brand As Destination

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

AdAge recently outlined some reasons that online display advertising growth is slowing. One of them is very interesting and quite worrisome to content providers moving into the future: Brand marketers creating their own destination sites and funneling users there. The feeling is that the money going into brand destinations is coming out of the budget of display advertising. While it is unlikely that anything less than a premium global brand could pull off a compelling destination site (as Red Bull and Nike can), the premium brands are those that spend the most on advertising to support them, so this is a real issue. It's an interesting development and one that could realistically hurt content companies.

Facebook Connect: A game changer or an unwinnable battle?

Monday, July 28, 2008

Last week, Facebook announced the release of a login method that will allow third party sites to use Facebook authentication (user names and passwords) and to simultaneously bring along the users' Facebook data with them. Sites, for example, can push a user's comments on a blog or video, back to that person's Facebook page. In this sense, Facebook facilitates the ease of login across the web, with all of the various elements of the person's social networking aggregated back at Facebook central.

Facebook clearly sees this as a game-changer, and in many ways it is. It takes the compelling social aggregation of platforms like Friendfeed and combines it with a universal login like Open ID. The difference is that this isn't really an open system at all. It is a way for Facebook to control the flow of personal data across the entire Internet. This is the biggest thing working in Facebook's favor: No company has really been able to do this yet, and Facebook is in a good position to succeed. The biggest thing working against Facebook is the wild nature of the Internet itself, the vast jungle of competing content sites, companies, and individuals posting material may not want to have Facebook as controlling the aggregate of the Internet experience.

This may be a battle of consumer convenience ("I don't care if one company is doing it, just let me find all my content easily in one place, and make it work wherever I go") and corporate control ("It's a great idea, but we'll be damned if we're going to let Facebook leverage our site via Connect.").