Speaker Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of eMarketer, first made an admission, “They gave me this title and I had to look up the definition.” So, while his presentation was not a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis of online vs. offline media, you could have written your own analysis by the time he finished his hour-long brain dump.
[ED. SPECIAL NOTICE: Geoff generously provided us with a summary, 31-slide version of his presentation available to us. Download the 5MB PPT file by right-clicking here.]
Fortunately, he was one of the few speakers to supply a printed copy of his presentation, in advance, to the audience. My fingers were not capable of moving quick enough, and right about now I’d be answering a lot of questions like “Why did you quote him as saying all online media buyers will be fired in two years”.
He didn’t say that by the way. In fact, the future looks quite bright. And not that kind of pie-in-the-sky, I-don’t-know-why-this-is-working-it-just-is kind of bright we’ve seen before. Instead, while the entire media world is becoming more fragmented, online media of many forms is becoming more and more relevant.
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Today’s second Media Matters session, Impact of Brand Exposure Duration, was led by Broadband President and CEO Matt Wasserlauf. The panel included MSN Streaming Video Evangelist Todd Herman, Maven Networks CEO Hilmi Ozguc, Carat Interactive EVP Karim Sanajabi and RealNetworks Chief Strategy Officer Richard Wolpert.
Carat’s Sanajabi began by saying media consumption in the 80s and 90s was about choice. That has now moved to one of control with consumers able to select only the media they want to consume. This, he claims, is a benefit for the growing segment of online video advertising. Sanajabi reviewed a Carat campaign for the launch of Adidas’ “Impossible is Nothing” campaign which incorporated video ads on Yahoo and MSN. The campaign generated five million video-views and lifted brand awareness by six percent. A campaign promoting MTV’s Sunday Stew cam in at an attractive CPM of $3.17 and generated a 50 percent lift in tune-in.
CNET’s Wolpert discussed his companies expansion of Rhapsody into video and is exploring “pre-roll” ads to offer free music video downloads.
Maven’s Ozguc tried to launch a full screen video, which bombed most likely due to hotel bandwidth limitations rather than technology issues. Yet, that is one sign that hints infrastructure isn’t quite there to fully deliver this technology. Ozguc reviewed two campaign’s which used Maven’s technology. The first, for the movie “Master and Commander,” offered high quality downloads of the movie trailer and behind the scenes footage. The effort generated a very high 26 percent click through to buy tickets. The second, for musician Ben Harper, centered on a “send to a friend” feature which offered the sender a free unreleased single to download. Harper’s label, Virgin, saw their database of Harper fans triple.
MSN Video’s Herman said Microsoft’s efforts center on building a bridge between television advertisers and the web. MSN’s efforts hope to allow consumers to control, condense and combine online video offerings. Herman pointed out online video advertising can offer fresh reach as many broadband users watch less TV and less clutter as broadcast television has over nine minutes per hour of advertising.
In all, this session was fairly content-rich, with many practical, real-world examples provided.
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Today’s first Media Matters Session, Leveraging Interactive and Broadcast and Aggregating TV Audiences Online was led by moderator Matt Wasserlauf, President and CEO of Broadband Enterprises. The panel included ESPN Motion Director and General Manager Ed Davis, CNET Networks VP Business Development Chas Edwards and AtomShockwave CEO Mika Salmi.
The theme of the panel rested with broadband’s ability to deliver television quality video over the web. CNET’s Edwards said research has shown that television-style ads viewed online are far less annoying than the same ads viewed on television. He cited Yankelovich research stating 64 percent of consumers are “pummeled” by ads and 77 percent of TiVo users skip commercials yielding an “opt-out culture.” which calls for the more opt-nature of the web. Edwards reviewed CNET’s Instream ads and how the site has plans to replace most of its images with video.
AtomShockwave’s Salmi jumped in and explained his AtomFilms and Shockwave offerings which he described as “pre-roll” and claims use of these technologies has delivered click throughs from nine to eleven percent.
ESPN Motion’s Davis said his company (as did Salmi’s) decided to design ESPN Motion as a downloadable, rather than streaming, application to insure the quality of video delivery and so that the company can better manage resources by controlling the download process. Davis hinted at a soon to be released “send to a friend” feature which will allow ESPN Motion users to forward videos to those that do not yet have ESPN Motion installed.
None of the three speakers did a great job at tying their technologies back to advertiser’s needs. Sure there were some examples but other than the knowledge that television commercials can now be placed on the web, not much else was offered.
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