The Tribble Ad Agency site is a parody site set up by search engine marketing (SEM) firms to poke holes in how traditional agencies tend to handle interactive projects. Here is an example of what you will find:

“The print media industry has been in decline for years as well as TV viewership among key age groups. However, we here at Tribble feel that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. We make our clients feel secure by telling them that the internet is NOT as big as it seems. It’s just a lot of “fluff” and is actually on the decline, in fact the Internet is just a fad. We love to spend our clients money in this way. It’s great for the ad agencies like ourselves because you can’t really track ROI with the print media strategy, so the client can’t tell how much we are wasting. It’s a wonderful feeling to see our clients’ budgets get blown out the water and yet the client believes that we did something, well something postive that is.”

Ouch! But hey…the truth hurts.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2006-2010″ report is forecasting an 18.1 percent CAGR, reaching $51.6 billion in 2010.

“We expect that Asia Pacific will remain the fastest-growing region for the industry, reflecting both the underlying economic growth and local developments and initiatives. The growth will be led by double-digit increases in internet, TV distribution, casino and other regulated gaming and videogames. Significantly, we also expect that the People’s Republic of China will pass Japan in 2009 to become the largest market in Asia Pacific.” Marcel Fenez, Asia Pacific leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Entertainment & Media Practice.

Full article.

According to my friend, who works in the industry and has just returned from visiting various companies in Europe and the US, this is a summary of what is happening around the world and an indication of how TV will look in the future.

Consumer Generated Media for TV
Companies like Siren TV refer to this as participation media. This refers to TV shows where the audience interact via SMS (and other mobile protocols such as MMS), web, email. Nothing new here, but this trend will continue upwards and as set top boxes, mobile devices and other technology became more pervasive the ways in which consumers will interact with TV will become more varied.

Mobile TV - TV to Go
Vodafone New Zealand currently over the ability to download pre-recorded shows and clips to your 3G mobile phone, however, the future is in real time broadcast to your phone or other handheld device, such as the PSP (PlayStation Portable). This service is available in Ireland in a joint venture between Vodafone and Sky, and also in the UK. Sport is proving to be the most popular of the categories and also news. This makes sense, as watching a full movie would be a bit tedious, but catching the highlights of a rugby or football game that you missed whilst you are sitting on a train or bus is very appealing. I know that broadcast TV has been available in South Korea for a while and no doubt in Japan.

SlingBox
SlingMedia produce a device called the SlingBox. This is sort of like a TiVO or PVR (Personal Video Recorder such as mySKY) however, it will record from any video or audio input, so you can load recorded shows, DVD’s, MP3s etc onto it. So what!, you say The cool thing is that the SlingBox connects up to the Internet via a broadband connection and then you can access any of the content on the device from any computer anywhere in the world via their media player software. I assume that they backup all your media to their servers so you can stream it to you where ever you are. I think this model is amazing. Imagine being at work, and wanting to watch a World Cup Game that was currently being recorded onto your SlingBox via Sky at home, you could just watch it on your laptop. Want to watch a movie from your personal DVD collection when you are on holiday or stuck in a hotel room on business? No problem, just connect to the Net and start playing the movie. Presumably they will provide other versions of their media player application that can run on your mobile phone or the next generation iPod (which is rumoured to include WiFi). Of all the home entertainment/media centre solutions out there at the moment, I think this is by far the most attractive. Plus, just check out how the SlingBox looks on their website, who wouldn’t want one of these in your lounge.

Video on Demand (VOD)
Video on Demand is now readily available in the US and Europe. Channel4 in the UK has readily adopted the web download model and many of their shows are available on their website (for UK consumers only) including Lost and Desperate Housewives. They are also producing their own content that is only available online. SkyByBroadband offers access to a range of downloadable movies and sports games. Consumers clearly want this type of service, and the technology exists to deliver it quickly and affordably. The main barrier is a legal one around licensing and intellectual property. Apparently some of the studios don’t actually know who they would need to ask for permission to make a particular movie available for download because they just don’t have accurate records on who owns the IP. The added complication is that TV shows and movies are often sold into syndication for different overseas markets. This means that another third party owns all the rights in a particular country, hence the reason why iTunes had to be rolled out country by country, to give the lawyers enough time to sort out all these issues in each market. There is unfortunately no easy answer to this. Hollywood is not going to take any chances for fear of being on the receiving end of a whole load of lawsuits from people coming out of the woodwork requesting a share of the profits. Looking forward, all new contracts will include specific provisions for ownership of online distribution rights, but this just wasn’t foreseen as an issue until recently.

Triple Play and Convergence
Telcos, ISP’s and broadcasters are all looking like they are going to be in the same business in a few years. Everyone is wanting to increase their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) so everyone wants to offer additional services to their subscribers. Triple play is the concept that you will buy TV, phone/voice, and broadband Internet from one provider. This provider could be someone like BT, Sky or one of the new players starting to emerge in the marketplace. The other main business model being considered is a transactional one rather than the usual subscription deal. This means you could have your broadband and voice with BT, but just pay for each movie/tv show you download rather than having to commit to a monthly subscription fee. Presumably they are looking closely at the MP3 sites in the US. iTunes charge per song/video downloaded, whereas good old Napster has been resurrected as a monthly subscription MP3 download site.

IPTV
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is the concept where your TV becomes just another device on the Internet. At the moment content is delivered to a TV via broadcast signal, satellite or cable. IPTV would just give your TV and IP address and you would get everything via this medium. This opens up some interesting possibilities such as instant messaging your friends about a TV show you are all watching, having real time consumer reviews of a show or movie, and being able to look at consumer based recommendations and ratings. For example, I love 24 and Sopranos and give them a high rating, so my TV tells me that people who like these shows also like Prison Break, and so I decide to start watching this show. The appeal of IPTV is obvious, as it would just help bring everything together in an increasingly IP-centric world. This is undoubtedly where we’ll end up with all devices being connected to the Internet but the big barrier is that we just don’t have the infrastructure. The Internet just doesn’t have the bandwidth for more traffic and devices that require IP addresses, especially IPTVs that would consume a huge amount of data traffic. The broadcasters are not prepared to make the investment in this and neither are the telcos, so we’re in a bit of a stalemate. My opinion is that compression technologies will get better and better and the price of fibre optic cable and gigabit ethernet will continue to decline making this more affordable. I also hope that governments will step in and offer huge incentives to encourage investment in this critical infrastructure.

The other obvious advantage of this platform is that everyone you watch become far easier to track and measure so TV advertising can then become far more targeted and more like Google AdWords, rather than the rather archaic methodology used right now, i.e. Nielson ratings based on a handful of households who know their activity is being monitored.

Whilst all this is happening, traditional broadcast television is fighting a losing battle with free illegal downloads of content. The answer is clear, provide a reasonably priced, legal alternative to consumers even though this conflicts with traditional business models, and reap the rewards. Just ask Apple. Their iTunes Store business has been incredibly successful and profitable.

Technorati Tags: apple, itunes, mobile tv, napster, slingbox

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Advertising. Bill is in favour of SEA and I think this is the right idea. Traditional SEO tactics will become progressively less relevant. Google and others don’t want you to do SEO and they have billions of dollars to try and ignore all the little tricks and scams. Build your site from the ground up so that your content can be indexed and then put your money into search engine advertising.

Technorati Tags: SEA, SEO

“The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached a new record of US$3.9 billion for the first quarter of 2006. The 2006 first quarter revenues represent a 38 percent increase over Q1 2005 at $2.8 billion and a 6 percent increase over Q4 2005 total at $3.6 billion.”

Excellent. Long may it continue.

Vodafone has just posted a £14.9bn loss only a couple of months after bowing out of the lucrative Japanese market. This was part of the statement put out accompanying the results; “Vodafone has met or exceeded expectations, outperforming its competitors in an increasingly challenging marketplace,” said chief executive Arun Sarin. Errr, yes, you’ve outperformed your competitors in the area of writing down assets that you seriously over paid for. Nice work.

Perhaps the current very expensive looking “Make the Most of Now” advertising campaign that they are running, which has so far made absolutely no sense to me, is in fact an internal comms exercise. Make the most of now before we axe your job! They have announced 400 jobs will be going as part of the move to reduce costs.

Excellent article by Jeremy Lockhorn, group director at Avenue A | Razorfish, about the future (or lack there of) of traditional TV advertising. Like me, Jeremy has a vested interest in seeing more marketing budget being allocated to interactive, but nonetheless, he makes some excellent points.

Kevin Roberts, Saatchi uberboss and Sisimo guy said this recently at a conference in Montreal this month. Kevin, I entirely agree, and in fact I am betting my entire business, career and reputation on this being the case. Kevin, I hope you’re right, otherwise I’m screwed!!

Thanks to One Degree for this.

I’m currently evaluating a replacement metrics and reporting system for our website clients have looked at three alternatives so far.

Click Tracks
Web Trends
Google Analytics

So far, suprisingly, Web Trends seems to be the best option in terms of features and pricing. Google Analytics is free but has some short comings and I can’t see how they can always provide this for free and still only provide 5 sites per account. I have to make a decision this week really but I’m still not sure.

This is a good blog on Google Analytics.