January has been a hot mess of conferences and travel. Early in the month I headed to Las Vegas to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to speak on a panel about Best Practices in Web Production for the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV), and attend the inaugural IAWTV Awards.
CES is Gadget Heaven, with all the latest gizmos from companies like Sony, Samsung, LG and more. While the over-the-top 3D television displays were pretty insane, turning the convention hall into an entertainment fun house, at the end of the day I still don’t want to have to wear glasses to watch television in my living room. I currently have no plans to fork over a fistful of dollars just to have a baseball pop out of the screen once in awhile.
I was more impressed by the progress with connected television. Last year when I played with the Google TV interface, it was clunky and slow – a novelty that was interesting to see in action but – in my opinion – nowhere near ready for prime time. This year, Smart TVs got a lot, well, smarter. While there are still kinks to work out, I would be tempted to lay down some extra bucks for the feature to gain access to a variety of streaming services and Internet channels, as well as just to satisfy my curiosity (unfortunately, I have expensive curiosity).
Over the last couple of years, CES has been working on attracting the Entertainment Industry to their annual event, so it made for a good fit with the IAWTV, as web series are right at the intersection of content and technology. Kudos to the show producers and the organization! Held at the Venetian, the show was a funny, intimate, inclusive affair that appropriately celebrated the community of web video creators. The big winners for the night included Felecia Day’s The Guild and Shira Lazar. Click here for the full list.
A week after CES, I flew out to Miami to attend the annual NATPE Market and Conference. The event used to be held in Las Vegas...sooooo happy they’d moved it to Miami! The weather was gorgeous, and it was a treat to spend 4 days at the Fountainbleu Hotel. I spoke on the "Big Screen, Little Screen panel," where we did an American Idol-style critique of new projects from digital content creators (apparently I was Randy Jackson for the evening). I also was on the Advisory Board for and attended the Digital Luminary Awards, which honor “the innovative people and companies who are catalysts in the content revolution.” Or as I like to put it, cool people and companies making or supporting kickass projects.
Lunch with a view...and SAG New Media's Will Marshall
While at NATPE, I checked out a variety of conference panels and had many conversations about the state of the digital content business. Here’s a snapshot of hot topics and some of the interesting points raised throughout the event (if you really want to approximate the NATPE experience, go mix yourself a mojito before reading the rest of this entry).
- Tablets are fundamentally changing things. They are not “lean back” or “lean forward” – they are a “curl up” experience, and provide a different cultural, social environment by which to consume content. (Niko Chauls: MSN Original Programming)
- Home page real estate is invaluable for portals such as MSN, Yahoo! and AOL. It’s limited, and must be used strategically to direct traffic. This affects content choices because it means that a portal can only promote a video series a certain number on the home page. For example, Tom Hanks is a huge star, but if Yahoo! put him on their home page every day to drive traffic to his new series Electric City, users would get really annoyed.
- Lots of questions about what being a “network” in the digital space really means. Normally, television networks act as gatekeepers, determining what gets on the air. But how does gatekeeping work in the digital realm, where - unlike the broadcast world - there is unlimited space? Russ Axelrod (Microsoft, Dir of Branded Experiences) offered the idea that in the online arena, gatekeeping comes in the form of the decision about what to promote. With so much content out there, marketing and promotion become just as important as creating a good show. Consensus was that equal amounts should be spent on content creation and the marketing of that content.
- As “hits” attempt to break outside of traditional television, i.e. Netflix’s forthcoming original content offerings, recommendation engines become a crucial part of streaming services. And of course, social networks are now a key part of any digital project, as the power of a friendly recommendation is boundless...it can accelerate a hit’s rise and then broaden it out to additional audiences.
- What is the relationship between online content and traditional television? Is online merely a testing ground for new TV programming? A place to build an audience that can then be transported to multiple platforms? Or the next step, the evolution of traditional television? Daryl Evans from AT&T said he believes the question is not WHAT we’re going to be watching on television in five years, but WHERE we’re going to be watching it.
- A large percentage of the advertising money spent on online video is currently going to shows that first premiere on traditional platforms, i.e. Grey’s Anatomy, partly because it’s very hard right now to fulfill a large buy with online content. The inventory and scale are not there yet. But if a brand wants to spend $10 million on ABC for a one-week flight, their agency can call and have the deal taken care of in a day. An original online property wouldn’t have the inventory or the audience needed to fulfill the order. Of course, advocates of digital content argued that what brands really need is the right audience rather than a lot of audience, and it’s easier to find the right audience online because of the combination of narrowcasting and analytics. Those from the portals responded that at the end of the day, content isn’t just about quality – it’s also about who will buy it. If an advertiser won’t support it, you can’t make it because there’s no money to do so. That’s the world we still live in if you are on an ad-supported, free-to-the-viewer platform.
- Sales in ancillary markets are a key part of attempting to monetize digital content. Curt Marvis summed it up nicely when he said, “I wouldn’t develop something for the online world that was only meant for online, the same way I wouldn’t develop a feature that was only meant for the theater. You create it to be seen in the theater, but you know television, DVD, etc. are all going to be part of the life of the film.”
- Geoblocking of online content is a double-edged sword. While it allows you to repackage content and sell it overseas to local markets, international fans on social platforms get pissed off when they can’t view a show they are excited about when it’s released in the U.S. The creators of Aim High witnessed this firsthand when non-U.S. fans of their star Jackson Rathbone got upset because they kept reading about the show but couldn’t watch it (currently, it's only available in the U.S.). Lesson learned: when putting together a release plan, producers need to evaluate the possibility for revenue in ancillary markets vs. value of the viewers a social campaign brings to a project, and the relationship between the two.
- Lots of talk on both panels and in the hallways amidst conference-goers about over the top (OTT) streaming and cord cutting. During his "Over the Top & Upside Down: How OTT Is Changing the Game" session, Suisse Securities' Spencer Wang talked about the “good enough” concept: the idea that while not everyone will want a particular solution, a segment of the market may be willing to accept it...and that may be enough. Streaming has a different value proposition than the traditional cable and satellite offerings. It underperforms established products in certain areas, such as features and inventory, but it has other offerings that fringe customers may value more, including low price, convenience and simplicity. OTT is not a perfect substitute for pay TV, but may be right for homes at a certain income level who watch a lower than average number of television hours. In addition, “OTT only” subscribers skew younger and less affluent. These “cord nevers” may set the stage for larger changes down the line when they have their own households and don’t want to pay for television.
- And what would a conference with a digital media track be without YouTube? The company had a large presence at the event, and both staff and YouTube personalities populated many of the panels. Much of the chatter was about YouTube’s new Channel initiative. The company’s Tom Sly said that they are making this investment in their own platform so that others will see the value of it, and then bring their own money to the platform. But what will success actually look like for this initiative? Some believe that YouTube will be judged not by whether the shows are “good” or “bad”, but by whether YouTube can drive traffic to them. AOL and Yahoo! have become experts at using the firehoses that are their homepages to drive traffic to various elements elsewhere in their ecosystem; can YouTube develop this same skill?
