Google TV Ads, Cisco Feeds MSNBC, & Interactive Marketing Agencies: A Fresh Perspective

/6 Comments/in , , , /by

Another week, another Tuesday segment on TheTVNews.tv. This week, I aggregated three new online video news stories that I think merit your attention. My video segment is below, and below that are the Google TV Ads video demo, more comments, and links to all the sources. Please let me know what you think.

1. Great Video Demo of Google TV Ads

Seth Stevenson of SlateV.com did a wonderful job of demoing Google TV Ads for the rest of us. I’m sure you will agree that he proves his point that, yes, anyone with the technical chops to produce a 30-second TV spot and set up a Google AdWords account, also now has the opportunity to be a media buyer and place those TV spots on carefully targeted cable TV networks in the time slots of your choice.

I’m impressed and ready for a client who wants me to do this for them. I’m highly qualified. Are you reading?

Here’s the SlateV Google TV Ads demo for your viewing pleasure:

By the way, for those of you doing the math, not familiar with Google AdWords campaigns, and figuring that, hey, that’s about $1.30 per website visitor… please keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for AdWords customers to pay $4, $5 and up PER click. And the visitors he “acquired” via this campaign were coming to a strange website URL with no identified service or product being offered.

2. Cisco Feeds Its High-End Teleconferencing System to Rachel Maddow and MSNBC

In what is said to be “a news media industry first,” Cisco has partnered with MSNBC to provide  The Rachel Maddow Show’s New York and Washington D.C. studios with its branded TelePresence technology. According to Cisco, “TelePresence offers what traditional broadcast interviewing technology often lacks: a truly two-way, visual connection between the studio host and remote guest with virtually no audio lag time.”

To me, that’s an interesting tech story, not only because of the “no audio time lag,” but also because of further in-roads being made by a traditionally IT industry player providing hardware services to the broadcast TV industry.

Click here to see for yourself.

For more details and illuminations of the interactive benefits of TelePresence, Beet.tv has a video interview with Charles Stucki, VP & GM of the Cisco’s TelePresence unit.

3. Forrester Research Predicts the Future of Marketing Agency Relationships

Anyone in the marketing or advertising business knows that all marketing agencies are being forced to cross “boundaries” that traditionally defined specific niches. Now, Forrester’s latest report, “The Future Of Agency Relationships: Marketers Need To Lead Agency Change In The Adaptive Marketing Era” sets the stage for overlapping, multi-discipline agencies and the ways we all will be doing battle (or not) in the future.

But if you don’t feel like plopping down $499 for the report, I highly recommend Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim coverage of the report, Forrester Predicts the Interactive Agency of Record Will Die. Beal reveals the main types of agencies discussed and some of the top level data including this quote which gives you a flavor of the sophistication being required in today’s marketing agency market:

It is not enough for adaptive agencies to understand market research, ethnographic, or behavioral data. To fully understand customers, and to leverage that knowledge to improve customer experience, requires agencies to understand the interplay between the various types of data, and crucially, demands the ability to turn the data into actionable intelligence.

Stay tuned. The landscape continues to morph at a record-setting pace. Keep on dancing… and keep your seat belt fastened. 😉

Top 5 Online Video & TV on the Web Mega-Trends

/13 Comments/in , , /by

On Tuesday’s edition of TheTVNews.tv, I talk about how hard it is to keep perspective on how fast things are changing, when things are changing this fast.

To help put some perspective on at least some of these changes, here are five key online video “Mega-Trends” that I think are worth noting—each illustrated by a current news story from the past week with at least one relevant link for your browsing pleasure.

Please let me know if you like this post and/or if you have any suggestions. Thanks!

1. Online Video Just Keeps on Growing.
The latest example: CBS and NCAA set a record for broadband viewing: 3.4 million viewers watched the opening round on computers. That was just on just the first day of March Madness, the national collegiate basketball tournament. CBS and the NCAA put video of all of these big games, held around the country, online at a website they call March Madness on Demand (mmod.ncaa.com). Read more at the Washington Examiner >>

2. Social Networking Usage Surges Globally
The Nielsen Company is reporting that the audience for social networks is growing at a whopping 29% year-over-year. Driven largely by Facebook, the GLOBAL average user’s time spent social networking more than doubled from just more than 2 hours/month in Feb 2009 to nearly 5.5 hours/month in Feb 2010. Interesting, Italy tops the specific country list at nearly 6.5 hours/user/month and the US is just over six hours per user a month. And this doesn’t even include YouTube as a social networking site, which it is (at least in part). I promise you that this trend will continue. The public’s appetite for making connections online and sharing blog posts, digital pictures and videos is just ramping up. Read more details on Mashable >>

3. Online Video Advertising Is Poised for Growth Thanks to Analytics
Beet.Tv posted a very interesting video interview with Mike Bologna, director of emerging communications at GroupM, the giant corporate parent of the WPP advertising and media agencies. Bologna sees formerly cautious advertisers jumping into online video thanks to the availability of browser and viewer use statistics, or analytics as we call user tracking on the web. This valuable info is drawing more advertisers into becoming willing to leverage the power of online video. Here’s the Beet.tv clip so you can hear Bologna’s insights from “the horse’s mouth”:

4. More High Quality & Professional Resources Are Being Committed to Online Video
Here are just two of the many examples of this trend. Again, both announced within the last week:

  • NYTimes.com has launched a new daily video program called TimesCast that features behind the scenes footage of the Times editorial team at work, mixed with coverage of the day’s headlines. TimesCast is now at the top of the right column on http://video.times.com Here’s a direct link to Monday’s edition >>
  • The leading tech blog, TechCrunch is upping its video content creation capabilities by hiring Evelyn Rusli, an anchor from Forbes video who made over 200 appearance on Fox News in the “Forbes on Fox” segment. In it’s typically cheeky fashion, TechCrunch announced, Welcome To Evelyn Rusli, Whom We Stole From Forbes

Of course, these are just a couple of examples of the way that important players are continuously making important steps to increase the attractiveness and viability of their online video offerings. That said, I think both NYTimes.com and TechCrunch are good examples to watch. Both are attracting both a significant volume of viewership as well as meaningful advertising revenues.

5. Major Internet Players, like Google, Are Creating New TV Hardware To Put More Online Video on Your TV
We all know that Google is a software king whose reach goes way beyond being king of the hill in search to include Google Apps (like Google Mail), Google Buzz, they own YouTube, and more. And, then there’s the Google Phone manufactured by HTC. Well now, there’s Google TV.

As the New York Times reports: Google and Partners Seek TV Foothold. Expected to bring a  new kind of Internet video experience to living rooms everywhere, Google TV is a new kind of set top box that is being created in partnership with Sony and Intel. It uses Google’s Android operating system and will compete Internet video boxes like the Boxee Box, Roku, Popbox, and the innovative Sezmi system that I profiled a few Tuesdays ago on TheTVNews.tv.

As you can tell and probably already know, Online TV / Video is not just one thing, but the trends above are clear. This “toothpaste” is not going back into “the tube.” (pun intended)

And, underneath all of this is what you might call “The New Rules of Communication” that the Web has inspired. To be successful, whatever you are doing online, you can’t just be a “broadcaster,” you need to be truly interactive and authentically engage viewers and visitors in such a way that you create real relationships with them. That’s something most TV companies still need to learn… which is good news for the rest of us.

Speaking of relationships, I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below with what you like or do not like (and rate and comment on the YouTube clips if you are so moved). I’d love to hear your feedback. I’d love to hear your ideas for what stories you’d like me to cover on TheTVNews.tv or on this blog. What would be most useful to YOU? Thanks!

Online Video, the TV Everywhere Buzzword & Where It’s Going

/3 Comments/in , /by

Online video continues its seemingly never ending expansion. Now, it’s everywhere.

According to the latest NielsenWire report:

The number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year according to The Nielsen Company, from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010.

Among the top Web brands ranked by unique viewers in January, Disney Online was the fastest growing month-over-month, increasing 23.3%.

As I discussed in the Tuesday, 2/16 edition of TheTVNews.tv (my New Media / New Marketing segment is at about 2:42), amongst the TV industry, the term “TV Everywhere” is starting to achieve such high visibility that it’s almost confusing. As you probably know, Comcast has attempted to own the term as a brand; but TV Everywhere really stands for much more.

I realized that this issue needed to be addressed when I saw it achieve TLA status. In case you don’t know the joke, TLA stands for three-letter acronym, and TV Everywhere is starting to be used so commonly that it’s starting to be referred to as TVE. Brightcove (see below) even has a product called TVE-SP or the TV Everywhere Solution Pack.

But before I say a few words about why I think Brightcove may be useful to some of you, I just have to say that TV Everywhere is becoming another “buzzword du jour.” So, be careful how you use it.

In the same way that terms  like “multimedia” and “digital video” in earlier eras were used as catch phrases that covered too much broad ground to be entirely useful, TV Everywhere is a similarly vague term. Bottom line, TV Everywhere refers to any video content creator’s attempt to publish its video content online, i.e. via the Internet, in addition to publishing said content via more traditional broadcasting and/or cable and/or DVD channels.

That said, we are seeing more and more of this kind of approach and this winter’s two premiere sporting events—the Winter Olympics via NBC and NCAA basketball’s “March Madness” via CBS—provide vivid illustrations of the online video / TV Everywhere trend, but with notable differences.

PaidContent.org’s Staci D. Kramer provides an excellent overview, dare I say “high level perspective” with her post, Vancouver 2010: Watching The ‘TV Everywhere’ Olympics From 30,000 Feet. Of course, video on the Internet also now means video on laptops on airplanes thanks to in-flight wi-fi. More importantly, it’s interesting to note NBC’s huge jumps of 350% in unique viewers and 700% in video streams since they put video of the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics on the web.

March Madness is even bigger in terms of unique visitors, and I like CBSSports.com‘s more open approach better. Unlike NBC who is keeping all the video on one site, NBCOlympics.com, CBS and their “March Madness On-Demand” (MMOD) plays nice with the other web video kids by sharing its valuable video in a web-friendly way. Their approach is illuminated in this interview by Light Reading Cable with CBSSports.com’s Senior VP and General Manager, Jason Kint. Kint explains that CBS lets the likes of ESPN and YouTube link to it’s content. This not only spreads the wealth of this content and creates good will and increased visibility for CBS as “media host,” but it is also more progressive and aligned with what makes “the web go round” i.e. sharing content is good and ultimately better for media consumers. (That’s us!)

By way of additional perspective, I brought up Brightcove.com earlier for two reasons. First, because I value to views of Brightcove’s CEO, Jeremy Allaire. Mr. Allaire has been a web innovator since day 1, most notably leading the team at Macromedia that made the Flash platform that has become something of a web video standard today. If you want more perspective on TV Everywhere, I highly recommend Allaire’s Predictions for Online Video in 2010 (via AllThingsD.com) as well as TechCrunch’s coverage of Brightcove Wants To Take “TV Everywhere” Beyond Your Cable Company’s Video Website.

Secondly, for small enterprises and sole proprietors of all kinds, I recommend a YouTube channel as the fastest, easiest and least expensive way to aggregate your video clips (a.k.a. your content). But, for larger organizations and particularly TV industry folk like producers, cable networks and others who own their content, more sophisticated ways to publish it on the web is necessary. Online video publishers, for example need a feature set that includes the ability to embed your own advertising sales as well as other features. In this case, an online software platform like Brightcove delivers. Make sense?

Then, with the publishing platform in place, program distributors can get down to creating impactful social media marketing support and multi-screen cross-promotion for their programs. And, that’s just for openers.

In other words, the fun is just beginning. TV Everywhere is now and always. So if you are a significant creator of video content you better get with the TVE program ASAP.

Also, by way of reference, I’d like to share the following Brightcove promotional video. It’s just an FYI, and not because I was paid to post it… although I wouldn’t mind 😉

I hope this is useful, and as always, I look forward to your comments, feedback and suggestions. Thanks for reading.

Super Bowl Ads Still Lack Social Media Marketing Success (Mostly)

/5 Comments/in , , , , /by

Thanks to everyone who participated in our live, interactive Super Bowl Commercial Rating Party in partnership with TheTVNews.tv, the TV industry’s only daily video newscast. (Watch this space and TheTVNews.tv for details on our Oscars Party.)

Reprise Media Search Marketing Scorecard on Super BowlBy way of follow up, Jeff and I did a segment on tomorrow, Wednesday 2/10’s show (my New Media / New Marketing starts at 2:50) discussing my view of the winner and loser Super Bowl advertisers in terms of social media marketing. We referenced Reprise Media’s Search Marketing Scorecard on the Super Bowl (a free PDF download) which points out a surprising fact: While 93% of the advertisers—who shelled out a reported average of $2.6 million for each spot—do have an official Facebook profile, (get this) only 5% promoted their social profiles in order to leverage or take better advantage of their massive investment (a.k.a. marketing expense).

The single biggest social media marketing loser was Denny’s. Here’s the link to Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion author, Gary Vaynerchuk’s rant about how Denny’s missed the boat with their multi-million dollar expense. Gary is totally right. Why not use an incentive like a free breakfast to capture customer information and build a platform for better engagement? Duh!

The viral marketing buzz winner was the Audi Green Police spot below which got the most Twitter buzz according to Trendrr (via a chart referenced in the Repris Media report):

Bonus Category: My “nominee” for the Super Bowl TV spot with “Best Script,” at least the script that hit closest to home for me had to be this creative “Man’s Last Stand” spot for Dodge Charger:

Too bad I don’t relate better to the product. 😉

Bonus Just for Fun Video Link: Business Insider’s 10 Best Tech Super Bowl Ads Ever

Bonus Link #2: USA Today’s Super Bowl “Ad Meter” (pretty slick, including green screen video intro)

As always, your comments, suggestions, rants, and any other insights you care to offer are welcome via the comments space below. I look forward to hearing from you.

TV Industry News, Talkin’ New Media, part 2

/2 Comments/in , , , /by

I’m continuing to have fun as a video contributor and New Media / New Marketing expert on TheTVNews.tv. Today was the “world premiere” of what will now be a weekly appearance every Tuesday and more. I wrote a press release for the occasion, “New Media / New Marketing Consultant Joins the TV industry’s Only Daily News Show with Weekly Segment.”

This press release also introduces the “Super Bowl Commercial Rating Party” which will be offered via Twitter and Facebook during the big game. FYI, we’re still looking for peeps with TV industry creds and experience. If you’re interested in being part of our Twitter list of luminaries, please give me a virtual “shout out.” Here’s today’s show. All feedback and suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Talking to the TV… Industry

/1 Comment/in /by

I am very pleased to announce that I have joined the team at TheTVNews.tv as their New Media/New Marketing expert. The guest appearance in the show embedded below was handled via Skype, but I’ll be recording my weekly reports, starting Tuesday 1/26, with my new camera. These new media/new marketing reports will appear each and every Tuesday. And, because they will be stand-alone segments (not like this one), I’ll be able to post them directly to this blog.

The lead-in to my segment in this show begins at 3:19 with statistics on the explosive growth of online video consumption via a report by Nielsen Online. My segment proper begins at 4:00.

The full Nielsen report PDF, “The Shifting Media Landscape: Integrated Measurement in a Multi-Screen World” that I mentioned is available FREE via the link above or at the bottom of their page which discusses “Integrated Measurement and the Pathway to Internet Profitability.” While this page and the excellent report, in my humble opinion, is talking to Internet companies about a TV strategy, I found it equally relevant to use it as a strategic recommendation to TV industry players who want to leverage their media assets with an effective multi-screen strategy.

Of course, all of this is easier to say than to do and requires a significant long-term, risk-taking strategy to be truly effective. Just the same, I hope that my rec0nnection with the TV industry via this video show will yield some opportunities to use my expertise as well as my broadcast and cable industry experience to make a valuable contribution to the internet marketing and online media development efforts of some select TV industry clients.

If you are interested, please don’t hesitate to contact me. And, if you want to be updated whenever I post to this blog, including the upcoming New Media/New Marketing TheTVNews.tv segments, please use the “Subscribe via Email/RSS” links at the top of this post. Thanks!

I look forward to your comments and feedback.

My Top 5 List of Top Whatever Lists: Happy New Tech New Year 2010

/7 Comments/in , /by

Tis the season of lists. Too many lists? Maybe or maybe not, depending on whether or not you are looking for some perspective, or maybe some bottom line insights about trends and/or tips on how you or your organization’s tech, social media or just plain ole marketing priorities should be focused for the coming year.

My high hopes are that the following list of lists (and grand perspectives) will help you make 2010 the best yet:

5. Super Geek David Pogue’s Pogie Awards
My favorite NYTimes tech writer’s picks for gadgets, apps & such include the killer Firefox extension READABILITY and a very funny (to me) iPhone app that let’s you safely text while walking, by using the iPhone’s built-in camera.

4. Google’s 2009: A Glimpse of the Web’s Next Decade
At least at the moment, as Google goes, so goes the Web. And, if you haven’t noticed, Google is hardly standing still. In fact, they have been innovating their butts off. So, if you’re not tuned in, you should be; and this post by Mashable is packed with eye-candy charts that help make staying up to date more fun.

3. YouTube Is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade
Also, via Mashable, and also not technically a Top Whatever list, I’m including this post because I think the importance of YouTube is about as important as it gets. For one thing, YouTube is frequently omitted from lists of social networking sites. Come on! This thoughtful article explains why I’m going to be posting a whole lot more video in 2010 and why I think you should too.

2. 8 Things Every Geek Needs to Do Before 2010
This post is beyond practical, it could literally save your life (technologically speaking). No kidding. Have you backed up lately? Have you edited your privacy settings and pruned your feeds? This is important stuff (via leading tech blog ReadWriteWeb) that can help make your whole year better.

1. 2000s Decade Recap – Business and Technology (video below)
Originally called to my attention by the TechCrunch post Video: A Decade Of Tech Highs And Business Lows, the 3:22 video below puts the past unprecedented decade in perspective, and given the magnitude of the changes, from the dot-bomb implosion through ground-breaking iPhone innovations and social media explosions, I think it’s worth taking at least 3 minutes or so to reflect. Don’t you?

As the Grateful Dead sang, “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

May the Tech Highs continue, and the Business Lows not so much.

Taking a Deliciously Dangerous Risk: New Video Holiday Greeting

/5 Comments/in /by

I had started gearing up to do a new series of on-camera videos before I read what I now consider to be a Silicon Valley classic business book, Randy Komisar’s The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living. I’ll review this book in more detail later, but the bottom line is that personal risks are far more important than financial risks. Randy illustrates through his own considerable life and business experiences that the real failures in business and in life result from doing things for the wrong reasons and not following your heart and your true passions.[amazonshowcase_e3b2b118d706bf6c7c901f6305cea3d3]

Well, how perfect is the timing then that I’ve chosen this moment to finally express my passion for connecting and communicating with you all through video? As they say on TV, there’s much more to come; but for now, please let me use video to say Happy Holidays to you all… (available in HD).

I’m looking forward to your feedback and any comments you may have, either here or on YouTube (where your ratings are also very welcome):

Google Gets Simple, Elegant in New Tech Videos (Google Real Time Search & Google Goggles)

/in /by

I like clear and simple. I heard Steve Jobs quoted today as saying that simplicity is “the ultimate elegance.” I especially like simplicity when it’s used to describe complex new technologies, and so much the better if that simplicity is being offered on YouTube, via video clips that are less than two minutes in length.

Thus, the two-clip salute below to Google and two major new (complex) technologies that are designed to make our lives simpler.

The first is real time search. A hot new trend that’s featured in the #1 spot on the American Express OPEN Forum post, “5 Trends That Will Shape Small Business in 2010.” Don’t look now, but the web has taken on a whole new dimension:

The second video demonstrates something even more powerful, Google Goggles, which searches by objects using your cell phone’s camera rather than text or voice to initiate the search. I like the tweet description that I just read by @faris: “Seriously – no messin’ – Google Goggles is an entirely new paradigm of human computer interaction – ‘hey Internet – what’s that?’ ”

Let’s let Google explain it visually in two minutes:

Yes, I hear that Google Goggles WILL be coming out for the iPhone.

And, come to think of it, Google always did get simple. Just think of their home page.

What do you think? Are these exciting new technologies? Are these videos any good? I’d love to hear your opinion, view and/or feedback.

3 Leading Edge Video Clips Illuminate Next Gen Video Web

/1 Comment/in /by

One benefit of my on-going back recovery is that I’m currently watching even more online video than usual. This weekend, I was delighted to discover a rich sampling of video clips that I found inspiring as well as informative. So, of course, I want to share the three carefully selected video clips embedded below with you, dear readers, blog commenters and tweet peeps.

I invented the term “Video Web” when I was writing for Videography magazine, and now that this particular dimension of the Web is expanding and improving in quality at an exponential rate, I find that it also just keeps getting better (at least by my subjective standards). I hope you will agree that these clips are exemplary of something good and that they also reflect some valuable trends and useful models. But, even more importantly, I think that each of them also delivers actionable, leading edge information (at least for some of you).

1. “RIP: A Remix Manifesto,” A Mashup Culture Flick with a Message
The first clip is a trailer for an independent feature film, RIP: A Remix Manifesto being distributed via the Web as well as in theaters, Internet cafes and at film festivals. Being a strong believer in the importance of freedom around the controversial issues of digital rights, I was so inspired by the content I saw in the trailer and on the producer’s other sites, I coughed up $5 (optional) and downloaded the whole movie. (This was a first for me.) It’s really well done. It’s as clear as anything I’ve seen—certainly at this length—in illuminating these important rights issues. And, because of its real world examples (most notably the mashup performing artist, Girl Talk), this movie authentically walks its talk on many levels. Highly recommended!

2. Leo Laporte Explains Successful Webcasting with Transparency
Personally, I admit to not being a fan of podcasting pioneer and former TechTV host, Leo Laporte; however, for obvious reasons, Mashable’s headline, “Leo Laporte Makes $1.5 Million Per Year from Podcasting” caught my eye. And then, as I started listening to the 40-minute conference talk below, I was impressed by not only the success of the Twit.tv entrepreneur, but by his willingness to share pretty much everything he knows about what’s working and what’s not working in the world of Net video advertising and more. He also frankly shares his experiences as he has made the migration from failed broadcaster willing to call an idiot an “idiot” and a stupid business model “stupid,” to someone who has built a viable online “netcasting” business that is reportedly doubling every year. Laporte has really been there and done that, and he’s not afraid to tell you what he knows. I like that.

3. Epipheo Creates Viral Wave Explaining Google Wave
Clear, concise video clips that explain technology with under-stated style are quite close to my heart. If you don’t know, Google Wave is a “next big thing” groupware, collaborative platform currently in “limited beta” at Google. Amongst the technorati, there’s quite a buzz. Even Business Week thinks it could be big. Enter the video clip below, “What is Google Wave?” from Epipheo Studios. This clip was just released a few days ago and I have personally watched it go from about 150K views to over 200K views on YouTube in the last 24 hours (as of Sunday night, 10/4). Watch it. I think you might learn something worth knowing, at least if you’re interested in the leading edge of online collaboration; and, for sure, you’ll see a neat, short video clip that tells its story well. A tip of my virtual hat to you, epipheo guys. 🙂

I look forward to your comments. Thanks!