Digital Bytes

Six thoughts for 2008

Content creation will boom - As people’s time becomes the most valuable commodity, advertisers will need to create more engaging content to deliver results.

Video content will continue to expand its reach as more people tune in and watch online.  Technology will improve and begin to consolidate to make it easier to get more content from one place or platform.  The volume of video content online will grow and being easily discovered will be the key to success and viewership.  As confidence grows video lengths will increase.  There will be more programmes to follow in Skins shoes where online viewers are greater than through traditional platforms.  Video will fall in line with the webs measurability and media investment will follow.

Behavioural targeting will explode: MSN, AOL, and Yahoo all bought behavioural techology companies in 07, bringing Behavioural targeting to mainstream brand advertisers.  This will take greater share of the budget for both brand and DR.

Social networking bubble will evolve –some users may express more concern around how their data is used and shared.  Google will help us link to friends on other networks and video and content will play a huge role in giving users more reasons to spend more time on the networks.  Some people may just realise that seeing friends for real is better after all!

Networks will be challenged - as analytics improve and data becomes more available, the networks will need to prove themselves where they have relied on post Impression/view metrics to drive acquisitions. The industry will get smarter in understanding duplication and the halo affect on search.

Mobile - whilst 2008 is unlikely to be year where mobile reaches full potential, we believe the ad model will evolve and mobile ads will become more relevant, entertaining and effective.  The iPhone wifi model will challenge mobile networks to keep up the competition on 3G.  Google’s Android will materialize later in the year.  We believe that 2009 will be start of the real uptake of mobile web.

Hulu Hulu

News Corp and NBC have taken a few more wraps off their new venture in online TV - Hulu.com. While details are still hard to come by, it appears to be a user-friendly (think itunes) interface, allowing registered users to view classic NBC and Fox shows such as 24 and The Simpsons, as well as a back catalogue of films such as Sideways and ...err... The Blues Brothers. Bravo, MGM, and Sony are also believed to be making their content available. It still early early days, even the Beta is in Beta, but some conclusions can already be drawn.

At the heart of the strategy is a concept that distribution of premium content to the largest possible audience is what advertisers want. Currently, owners of 'the good stuff' tend to lock this away on their own website, hidden behind registration processes, micro payments, and encoding. News Corp are seeking to reverse approach, and claim 96% of the (US) online universe will be able to watch their shows, completely free.

Distribution deals are in place with Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and the News Corp owned Myspace; potentially more importantly the content can be placed on blogs and personal pages too. In so doing News Corp hope to secure advertising. The trading model is a long way off completion, and will undoubtedly be more complicated than it needs to be, but the product is a huge step into the world of online content, and will have a big impact on the marketplace.

What remains to be seen is whether people will be able to make the switch to viewing long-form content such as a 30 minute sitcom via their current technology setup. PC and TV convergence will happen, but it may take longer than News Corps patience can support. Watch this space...

More than the transaction

The role of the internet in the retail space has long been established but the newer dynamic is the community aspect.  When things go wrong and orders don’t arrive people need somewhere to go and to be reassured.  Also the shopping experience is more than just the transaction itself.  Just as in a real world store we get far more than just the purchase, it is often a complete brand experience, think Top Shop or Nike town, the challenge is how brands can create this online.  Many brands now employ companies to run community sites on their behalf to improve their CRM.  Ebay have a good example of this where the community themselves help solve problems which means that less people need to work in call centres to support the business.  Other brands are using communities to build deeper relationships with their consumers giving people more reasons to spend time with brands, Dove, Campbells and Mini are all making this work.

The rise of the always on generation

It is completely conceivable that I can be in touch and connected to my network of friends and acquaintances wherever I go, the question is do I want to be?  Just as most of us can’t imagine life with a mobile or a blackberry the average 14 year old can’t imagine not getting a daily feed on what their mates are doing.    The BBC have looked at this new generation of hyper connected individuals, click here for more   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6637865.stm

Understanding the value of 'enagement'

With a significant number of brand campaigns now including content integration the grey area between advertising and content is expanding.  Brand campaigns often include advertorial content, blogs, UGC and video, this means we need to think of new ways to measure the success of these campaigns and set benchmarks for future work.

Whilst ‘traditional’ measures of online campaigns such as reach in the form of impressions, clicks and unique users are still relevant, the success of brand campaigns is increasingly about measuring interaction and engagement, involvement and contribution.

With increased clutter online it has become progressively more difficult to measure a campaign on reach alone as we can not be sure that an advertising message has been truly absorbed. However in contrast, with an increasing number of advertisers using UGC as a core element of generating interaction, too many hopes are pinned on micro measurements of success such as generating user contribution via video uploads, the actual amount of video entries is actually likely to be fairly small.

We therefore need to look at additional measures that sit between reach and the micro measurements of contribution. Clients should be educated early on in the process of exactly what measures are available to set as KPI’s.

Digital Day - What’s on next? A snapshot of Jo Lyall's presentation

There are exciting changes happening now in the world of TV, video and online.  Video itself is not really new to the web but long format content is and it will change our TV habits forever.  There is more content than ever before, not just from  linear growth but an explosion of content created by you and me.  The web is the world stage where everyone gets their opportunity.  Right now the power is still with the major producers and broadcasters, so quality of content will continue to prevail.  We make sense of it through sophisticated search technology, tagging and traditional category listings.  If you are looking for something then chances are if you know how to navigate the web, you will find it.  One thing remains the same, that is that content is more important than they way it is accessed.