TV viewing used to be simple..now it’s a nightmare

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I am interested in gadgets for those that did not realise and for that reason this blog post is probably more relevant to people like me. I received a Roku box recently, a video streaming box that houses content from a number of companies such as Netflix and HBO etc. I always enjoy receiving new gadgets of course but it struck me as just how complicated my viewing experience has become.

I now have an Xbox that I can access social media, stream movies and play games. If I want to watch a movie I have the choice of Apple TV or the iPad to stream to the TV via Apple TV, now I have Roku which gives me more selection or more of the same, this time in a different room, my living room was just too busy to cope with another box!

Even when I isolate a single vehicle such as the iPad I then have more options. I can stream movies from lovefilm, I can download from iTunes I can catch up on TV from the iplayer, 4OD, ITV or watch live with Sky. If its a programme I want then I could download from iTunes, Roku HBO channel and Netflix will hold the same programmes – I could even look at my EPG on Sky and find it in there somewhere, or maybe I Sky+ it. I can’t remember really, perhaps I should check in Sky Anytime+ or The Planner or trawl through 300 channels?

It is a mind boggling amount of options and choices and this will only increase as Google and Xbox continue to grow their product offerings in the UK. There is another important factor in all of that – no Ads. All of the above is driven by micro payments and subscriptions and it is this that makes the TV model look so ill defined as we enter 2012. The Roku box asks me to subscribe at every turn for every service and at that point I hesitate..can I get this somewhere else, is it worth it?

I noticed this week a video from Microsoft that talks about similar changes in our consumption behaviour so I thought I would post the link here

Added to that the measurement becomes ever more confusing and understated. John Baylon, Head of Digital Trading at SMG commented in an article about how the research Barb are doing is just not up to the task, indeed in my opinion its actual measurement is looking outdated and needs an overhaul. The NMA article and link can be found here.

Just sometimes it would be nice to have less rather than more, that said next week it will be more rather than less. Next week I am off to The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and I am extremely looking forward to it, maybe there I will see something that highlights the major future change in this arena, I suspect however I am going to see a myriad of new devices and boxes that will just make things ever more complicated. One thing is for show in the TV space, the TVs will all be connected, big, pixel-tastic and likely with a few Ds but it’s the connected bit that will be the game changer. Already Skype integrated TVs are being produced so you can sit and Skype through the TV, nice touch and makes perfect sense..

More from CES next week.

2011 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy New Year!

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A very Happy New Year to all the followers of this blog and anyone else who comes across it in the coming weeks! It has been a fantastic 2011 and I am looking forward to 2012 starting with a trip to CES in January!

We are all addicted to our mobiles

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I have noticed it more recently, perhaps because I am becoming conscious of my own addiction to mobile and tablets but everyone, all of the time, is head down into their mobile. It is something that has been gathering pace as the smart phone uptake has grown (iPhone represent 55% of all mobile traffic and 7% of all web traffic) but it is now literally out of control. Human beings can no longer have a pause without the pause being filled by a pull at the phone and some interaction.

Although not what I am focusing on today, it is interesting that the advertising and media industry still seems in capable of grasping this opportunity, I would now say above all other media channels mobile dominates our life and yet ad spend on mobile and mobile optimised ecommerce sites of major brands is not where it should be. In 2010 advertisers spent £83m on mobile advertising – that’s a crazy stat when you think how attached we are to our phones.

The thing with the mobile phone and in particular the smart phone is the crazy amount of things you can do with it, it is this that makes it something we are glued to day and night. GSMArena carried out research with around 15,000 people, link here and you can see the array of things people use their phone for and what was most popular. There is a word cloud and an info graphic, both below that are pretty insightful.

The detail behind those words can be found on the next infographic

It is for this reason that my phone stays with me from dawn until dusk, I am not alone in reaching for my phone before anything else, 83% of people use their phone as an alarm and so starts the day. From here when you look around you its relentless. Everyone is used to the idea of people using phones on trains etc, the commute, it’s not that which I notice the most, it’s the bits in between. As an example what is the shortest pause you need to reach for your phone or check it?

a) Would you check your phone as you wait for the cash machine to register your card?
b) Would you check your phone as you wait for lights to change in the car?
c) Do you always look at your phone while you are walking?
d) Would you check your phone in a work meeting
e) Check it when you are one on one with a friend?

It is relentless checking that I am noticing, and I am well and truly guilty of it, but I think we re beginning to erode the old rules and its acceptable. More and more people are checking phones during meetings, at dinner, at the bar, often three or four people are all checking at the same time. Big events and presentations have more people with their heads down on their phones or tablets than concentrating. The rules of politeness are being eroded. Concentrating on a conversation or a meeting is no longer a prerequisite. In fact as soon as someone leaves a conversation to pop to the gents, you dive onto your phone is you have been restraining yourself. We are all addicted.

More and more guys are on their phones at the urinals now, that is an emerging trend! Perhaps they were the polite ones not looking at their phones during a conversation and went to the loo just so they could.

I remember someone once saying that we are making time for ourselves with mobiles because we fit all our catch up conversations in on the move and so its making time at home for partners and friends, I am not sure that holds water anymore, we are always on our phones and when it was just calls it was fine but now you can basically run your life from them, they have become more intrusive. I look around me and see everyone immediately reaching for their phones at any pause in life, all of us head down not watching life go past and I feel like I am in one of the futuristic movies where we are all wired to some unseen force, I think we need to disconnect more.

VW have done it in a German factory, they have stopped their servers sending emails at 6.30pm so workers are not constantly on their blackberries – interesting! Not sure that will catch on but its the principle of it, the fact they are trying to break a cycle that is hard to break. As new members join the company and are desperate to get a blackberry I always think what a mistake that is and to stay away for as long as possible, as soon as you are wired to the work all hours is the day you will never truly have a holiday again.

I am addicted to my phones so I am all the things up there but I wish I was not, I spend too much time on it and looking at it, it makes me rude at times, and I miss things because its head down all the time.

I think Microsoft got it right in their Ad to kick start their new phone – ‘Really’ Take a look, not a bad Ad and absolutely on the mark!

Online video – time to fast forward. Paul Silver’s perspective

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Time for @thepaulsilver to write his second post for my blog and today he covers the video marketplace and what needs to happen to realise the potential that is clearly there.

Online Video – time to fast forward

Online Video is at an interesting place. It’s poised to accelerate digital spending over the next few years. But it’s stuttering somewhat. Given the time of year, this is not about predictions, but what needs to change if Video is to fulfil its promise.

Planning

Advertisers and agencies alike need to change their planning mentality when it comes to Video. Rule number 1, it is not TV so why plan like it is?
Video planning is still dominated by replicating a TV spot buy online. In a world where we now have the ability to address and optimise at scale, why create a plan that is not suited to the strengths of the medium? The Video industry needs to embrace the move to programmatic, audience led buying. There are new ways to reach and engage audiences; TV targeting models simply are not transferable.

We also need to define premium. Advertisers (rightly so) are sensitive about content and environment but to the detriment of innovation. It seems to be a belief that only long form broadcaster content is deemed premium. Id argue that reaching & captivating your precise audience and demonstrating engagement and interaction would be a premium buy? I’m not discounting the value of broadcaster content, but it should sit within a blended schedule that really maximises audience reach and the ability to optimise.

Personalising

A lot of our research from The Pool suggests users want a different online experience, different from TV. All the more reason why we should not be repurposing a TV strategy online. Users want personalisation, they want more relevancy. Our research has shown that if ads are more relevant, users are more engaged. Users understand the web economy; if they need to be exposed to advertising in exchange for content, they want it more tailored. This is another reason why innovation is needed. A change in the way we serve ads, using data (in the same way we do for Display) to customise creatives on the fly. We simply have to.

Measurement

Speaking of optimising brings me onto a fairly contentious subject: No one knows how to measure video. Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of dialogue and conversation with those within the video space and the feeling i’m getting is we buy long form content because it dovetails nicely with our TV spot buying schedules. This would then assume that it’s a reach and frequency game against an audience. However, when we start looking at reaching a precise audience, using actual data, the goalposts move. Buyers look at clicks. Clicks are the worst metric to evaluate as a measure of success for Video. Users who click are a) from a certain type of environment and tend to be a consistent type of demographic and b) are not being subjected and impacted by your advertising. Video is truly about upper funnel engagement. Regardless of whether it’s on your mobile, desktop, tablet, connected TV. Those that do click also drive, invariably, terrible bounce rates. What about connected TVs? We are already accessing inventory within these platforms. Do we expect users to start clicking on TVs??

The problem is that there is not a common currency. And whilst there is not a 100% robust methodology to bridge TV to Video using a GRP, we should be evaluating success on engagement and cost per engagement. If that happens within long form content, short form content, it should not matter. You’re reaching your audience and optimising to engagement. If ITV, et al can outperform all else on a cost per engagement model then great.

Buying

Video is still dominated by the old guard approaches to trading. There is a fear to change and innovate and often it is misplaced, perceived fear. Video publishers look at the display space with the excess volume of inventory and fear that Video will become a race to the bottom. This is not the case. You remove UGC out of the equation and you have a model that is prime for biddable trading. You have constricted supply with an increasing demand for that inventory. Anyone knows this will lead to increased pricing. Addressable video is about improving relevancy for the advertiser and rewarding the publisher appropriately. With improved relevancy and reduced wastage means less ads required to make the impact. Less ads at higher yield means a better user experience. A better user experience means more returning visitors. And then the process repeats itself.

Trading Video over a table is not the future digital model. It will become platform based. It will become technologically enabled. But as to the reasons above, this isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t mean prices race to the bottom. Change is happening and it’s a positive thing which needs to be embraced. At Audience on Demand we are 100% committed to making the Video space more efficient, more scalable and ultimately more rewarding for publisher and advertiser alike.

Paul Silver, Head of Product, AOD UK
@thepaulsilver

Patrick Dixon, Futurologist

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This guy presented at the recent Google Global Agency council, an extremely intelligent guy who presents with what can only be described as force. He can talk on any sector or any industry, taks about science as well as business strategy. Watch a few of his videos here

Dr Patrick Dixon, international conference keynote speaker, author of 15 books and Chairman of Global Change Ltd.  Patrick Dixon is a management consultant, growth strategist and trends analyst, whose clients include many of the world’s largest multinationals. He has been ranked one of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive today (Thinkers 50 2005).

Take a look at the video below and others on YouTube.

2012 Watching change and the future

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A couple of thoughts for 2012 and beyond.

There will be many predictions for 2012, these are less predictions as thoughts on what I see around me right now and discussions being had. That is why I have referred to this as ‘watching change’ rather than predicting it. As usual with me its tech heavy but not exclusively an inspired by some recent people I have met lately, more of that for another post.

What do I think we will see changing in 2012?
1. The rise of campaigns targeted against connected TVs, there is so much movement in this space and it is happening so quickly, I believe more advertisers will be looking to agencies to deliver more targeted advertising on the TV through connected TVs and set top boxes. Video advertising shown on streamed content on TVs will also increase significantly in 2012. What I find most interesting in this space is that as with mobile there is a lot of talk but I can see things moving faster than anyone predicts. If you look at the Xbox alone, they have more ‘set top boxes’ than Sky, that makes them the most connected organisation in the UK in regards the TV.

2. From an agency perspective the silos of search, exchange trading and buying on APIs will be broken down as we start to use Data Management, targeting and buying across all three of them to drive campaign results. We will all get smarter about talking data as a planning mechanism rather than a list of sites to represent targeting. Where we can combine audience targeting with context and highly dynamic creatives we will hit the bullseye. This process is already well underway but see this accelerate in the next 12 months.

Where do I see the greatest opportunity for improvement?
A. The greatest room for improvement will be in video as we move from a disparate, highly admin intensive channel that is still managing to scale rapidly to a more platform, third party adserved, data driven opportunity for clients. Video has the opportunity to explode in terms of volumes, the use of buying platforms and third party adserving will make that possible and produce better results for advertisers and a more efficient delivery from an agency perspective. I hope AODv achieves this on behalf of the agencies.

Video revenues could increase significantly with this last impetus, it is a shame that it is being held back by some major broadcasters hell bent on protecting the old models and the ‘it has always been like this approach.’ We know how successful these people have been in the past, so I think they should move to a bigger and better learning model.

Technology:
What tech/device will completely transform the way you do business?
Connected TVs, already have become more and more prevalent in shops, the connected TV will bring the social TV experience to the living room that is currently produced by the highly reported two device usage people employ now ie PC on Twitter whilst watching TV. The connected TV and to set top boxes such as Xbox will allow users to genuinely multi task and enjoy a more social experience. On top of that they will of course also be able to access new content that will pull more influence from the linear TV schedule

What technology has transformed us in the last two years?
Life changing is pretty strong but the ability to work in the cloud would be up there, whether its docs in Dropbox or my iPad, iPhone, Apple TV and Airport Express all linked up wireless at home with no need for synching etc. The principle that the devices no longer need to be mega storage devices is a huge shift and the always on, access anywhere approach to tech is an amazing shift.

What do I think we can’t live without now that will be obsolete next year?
The death of the desktop, its all tablets and laptops and as working conditions become more and more mobile the desktop becomes more and more out of date. Of course that wont be next year but as a trend I believe we are starting to see the PC desk top being eroded, as companies no longer want to invest in more and more office space, instead opting for work from home or hot desking lap tops and tablets become the primary device.

General:
What will change specifically in media?
Our organisations are becoming more and more global by nature, the pitches, the advertisers the media properties we spend with and so the nature of new business requires a more joined up and well round global group to answer these challenges. If you don’t do it well you will lose those big international advertisers, more and more focus will go on how we weave our different agency properties together in a meaniful way that gives clients the maximum amount of insights and services with the minimum amount of disruption.

What do we need most to see greater success in 2012?
We are in a transition period where media owners, Ad Nets and Portals are all trying to plan for the future but manage their old business at the same time. As an industry we need to give companies 12 months to allow that change to happen even if it upsets shareholders and the bean counters. Many organisations will take a hit in terms of ad revenues they receive for direct response campaigns direct from agencies and have not seen it returned through the new approaches such as AOD. It does not mean its wrong, it’s just difficult to manage but they have to so they can reshape for the future.

Mobile needs tracking and ad serving badly! Mobile usage is huge, it brings online to offline and offline to online. The world of the web is social, personal, local and mobile and the smart phone ticks all those boxes and yet we can’t seem to bring the advertisers to spend the revenues. This remains what seems an eternal challenge to master.

Audience On Demand is hiring..

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VivaKi Nerve Center launched Audience On Demand in the US back in 2008, launched in London in 2010. Now the UK’s largest trading desk is looking to add to the team as we grow month on month working with some of the UK’s largest advertisers. We work with Starcom Mediavest, ZenithOptimedia and Razorfish teams and are the most lined up agency group in the UK with full support from the agency brands and our success reflects that.

Paul Silver Heads up the Audience On Demand Product and is one of the most respected people in the industry and he will be joined by the Head of Activation on Monday Geoff Smith, current Head of Technology at MEC, it’s a dream team backed by a number of activation and analyst team members and together we are really making great strides in the market place. If you want to work on private marketplaces, scale plays, strategies across the exchange space then you should contact me or Paul.

Bored at an Ad Network, or worrying about their future? Perhaps at another agency Group but struggling against constant resistance and confusion, maybe in a ‘specialist outfit’ but seeing just how restricting and myopic that can be? Want to work for a team that works openly and collaboratively with publishers then email us..

We look forward to hearing from you!