Week of March 19, 2007

Battle of the Titans

Friday, March 23, 2007

The announcement by NBC Universal and News Corp's that they are joining forces to launch a new online video distribution channel sets up a big media battle with Google's YouTube for online video supremacy. The traditional media players are betting that a strategy based on distributing Hollywood-produced content will ultimately win out over the mish mash of user-generated content, which predominates on YouTube.

The big content producers, concerned about copyright issues are hoping to preempt further unauthorized posting on YouTube by putting together a site that they promise will have full-length TV shows, videos and movies, using a mix of advertising and pay-for-downloads.

User-generated content has been the big buzz in new media for at least a year. Clearly, YouTube got out in front with user-generated content, because that's what they had to work with. Will this new deal prove old media right, or will user generated content continue to open new doors? We'll have to wait until summer to start finding out.

Google's pay for performance

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Having assumed the leadership in online advertising, then extended into more traditional media advertising, Google has doubled back with a relatively new online advertising approach, "cost per action." Traditionally, advertisers paid Google each time a user clicked through an ad. With cost per action, Google will get paid each time a user follows through on a specified action, for example making a purchase or downloading software.

The potential advantages for advertisers are many. First, it eliminates click fraud, where some advertisers click through ads simply to guarantee that they get paid. Second, it's a hedge against an ineffective ad. For the time being, these kinds of ads are not being placed next to search results. For the time being, they will be limited to publisher's web sites.

Buying The Litigation

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

One of the interesting viewpoints spreading across the media blogs and opinion sites yesterday was that Google expected litigation over YouTube, and that was one of the reasons they bought the service. The thinking is that Google sees video as fueling its future growth, and one of the things that they needed was for the DMCA to be ruled as liberally in their favor as possible. The only way for Google to guarantee that the litigation would receive the best funded defense and lawyers was if they were the ones being sued. Thus, as the theory goes, they bought the litigation from YouTube.

Is Big Brother listening?

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

A few days ago I had an interesting discussion about the PPM with a General Manager in a market that will not be due to get the new technology for several years. His question about the technology brought up a very interesting point that is not getting a lot of attention, what kind of person will be willing to be part of a PPM panel?

Diarykeepers are recruited for a period of one week, while PPM panelists are recruited to keep the device for 6 months. Considering the difficulty in getting someone to agree to participate in the diary methodology, what's it going to take to convince someone to keep the PPM? It's a much longer period of time and the electronic methodology, while being more accurate with the results is, by definition, also more obtrusive from a privacy standpoint.

The PPM panel is smaller compared with the in-tab for the diary methodology, which in one sense, makes it easier to hit quota. But just how easy will it be to get people to participate? Are people becomes more or less desensitized to giving up personal information? What kinds of people are going to be even less likely to participate? And how will that impact the results?

Buying Popularity On MySpace

Monday, March 19, 2007

One of the most addicting elements of MySpace is the race to have friends. When real groups of people join, you often find them competing amongst themselves to see who can become more popular the fastest. It's like high school all over again for a lot of adults.

Now comes word that a MySpace account was recently sold on Ebay for $2,215. The key for the sweet price? The account had over 100,000 friends. So, unlike high school, it looks like you can buy popularity in a community... as long as its online.