Interactive TV

Respone to Eric Franchi , Monday, July 28, 2008

2008-07-29T20:25:00.004-07:00

UGC User Generated Content and advertising.

When it comes to advertising I think professional content is hands above UGC. But UGC will mature hopefully. After 4 million vids of booty shaking, its time to move on.
The issue with most UGC is that its not too long so wasting a minute doesn't seem to be to bothersome , but hey match that with a 30 second commercial and hey forget it. Some UGC that focuses on special interest is great for advertising. All those photoshop tips, guys 4 wheeling in the woods, etc etc. The issue here is generic advertising does not work. you need to be laser focused. Well we could try profiling each user and only advertise to their individual likes , but hey that's a way off, has its own share of issues, Or we could have the content itself work for us. Lets take the photoshop makeovers. That audience needs PS plug-ins, bigger monitors. Maybe some depth to that whats going on with all those clicks and keystroke shortcuts.

This is perfect territory for product placement. But not product placement in the obvious sense , but in the context of the content your watching. When you see a technique you like why not click on that section of video and get the details of what your seeing. This is called advertising by segmentation. It specifically targets the long tail. Servicing the longtail is the holy grail for advertising, your going after those who want your products in the first place, and are likely to be repeat loyal customers. The concept of CPM works, but its hunting rabbit with a shot gun. You'll hit some but it will be full of BS. The long tail is advertising based on context, this requires meta data and the ability to associate product and services to that meta data. That's where Empactv comes in not only does it associate meta data with advertising it provides a seamless interface to the consumer.

Product placement is...

2008-07-19T15:37:00.003-07:00

Product placement is the way to advertise in the digital age, Empact makes it easy. Everything you see and hear can now be made an advertisement.

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The nice thing about standards is there is so many of them.

2008-06-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of that terrible saying the other day reading a blog from the video insider http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?p=178
I've spent years in the database industry and this is something we would joke about with clients everyday. Once you start writing SQL it won't take you long to start using the extensions , Oracle , Sybase, MS, MySQL put into their product. Of course once you travel that path say goodbye to migration. Which (duh) is exactly what any manufacturer would want.
When we talk about delivering video, advertising, metrics, etc. we are really focusing on meta data, and in the media industry we have standards. MPEG 7 , MPEG 21 and the TV Anytime standard. Metasoft has done a great job in creating an
API plus a web set of tools around these standards. So why is this important, well for the most part meta data around media has been limited., Actors, Producers, Title, Synopsis, etc. In reality the amount of information you could apply to a movie or video is infinite. Lets take an example. Recently I saw an ad for a line of furniture called the Bogart Collection the only image they had was a picture of Bogart. What if I wanted to create a commercial piecing together clips from old Bogey films. That would take hours/days/weeks ?, I'd have to research the films and then view them to find the appropriate segments that had Bogey in a scene that created the image I was looking for. What if the meta data was available, so I could query it view the segments and instantly compose those segments into a 30 second spot in a matter of minutes. Well how awesome would that be? It would take a task that was monumental and reduce it to something I could finish while drinking my morning coffee. Now I have the media put together, I want to target my add to people who would appreciate it. Well guess what thats built into the standard too. My humble opinion is that we need to embrace the above standards and look at monetizing the content as oppose to the delivery. There are millions of uses for the meta data.
Here is the best part an open system like a wikipedia that allowed a larger community to apply the meta data would create a meta library that could be monetized in a matter of months.

Pop ups Don't Work!

2008-05-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

If your objective is to create impressions, then you may succeed by adding pop ups that overlay video. The first problem with an overlay is that 90% of the time it has no relationship with content. The second major flaw is that it detracts from the content. From a viewer perspective these are extremely annoying. They ruin the viewing experience. Most viewers first thought is how do I shut this off. Third from the advertisers perspective, its associating a negative to their product. Thats assuming the annoyed viewer cared to look at the pop up. Here is a demo that I made to look exactly like Youtube. Youtube recently added popups to 'their ?' user content. Only in this demo I've made the video interactive. There will be no pop ups. But the entire video is mapped to products and travel data. The user clicks on any item they see and the product information is displayed to the right dynamically. The advantage of this system is that the number of advertising positions in the video is virtually limitless, you don't annoy the viewer, in fact you engage the viewer in the content. If your the advertiser ask yourself this question, would you rather have a prospect that wants your product, enough so that they asked about it, or one you got because they clicked to make the pop up go away?

Monetizing content by making it interactive

2008-05-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

If I knew I'd make money on my content no matter how it got distributed, then the greater the distribution the better. So how do I get monetized if I can't control the distribution. Well you get monetized by controlling the content. If we make the actual content itself the intersection point where the user interacts. Its a matter of associating metadata to what the viewer is seeing/hearing and making the content interactive. See the shirt buy the shirt. See the car buy the tires, wheels, stereo or just the whole darn car.

This is where the interface to the consumer is so important. because they say NO to POP UPS, NO to Pre-Roles, a big fat NO to Post-Roles. Basically they hate commercials. If you could just get the user to ask / pull the information you would create a better experience. Here is where subtle product placement comes in. If you need a chair in the scene why not use a chair someone is willing to pay you for. The problem was no one was interested in paying you to use their chairs because without a big fat logo how would anyone know it was my chair. Well this is where meta data solves this problem. We map the show so when a viewer see's the chair they click on the chair and the meta data provides the information on the chair. Heck if you like it and the price you can buy it without even leaving your couch. Now you can apply this to hundreds of items. I've created a technology that not only applies the meta data but also an invisible interface so the viewer can interact with the content.

Turning Content into Money.

2008-05-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

The old adage that 'Content is King' has never been more true. The problem is who is the content making King. The internet and digital media have changed the distribution model, and makes a mockery of copyright laws. Laws that can't be enforced are pretty useless. How do you force a 13 year old in China to take your media of his website. And of course he wrapped it some embed code and now 4 million others have posted it on their sites to. My argument is that for most content developers its not the proliferation of their content that disturbs them but the fact they have lost the financial control of their own media. In fact the opposite should be true. Content owners should hope that the content is distributed as broadly and deeply as possible, with one caveat. They still make money every time my media is played.