Content Is Currency

In explaining why content marketing is important, I have in the past argued that all buyers these days, both in their roles as consumers and buyers of business products, routinely search online for information when they've decided they need to buy something to solve a problem they have.

The issue for suppliers is that such buying processes start before any supplier's selling process can begin. If that is the case, suppliers need to be visible and credible during the research process, when buyers are making decisions that will eliminate most solutions and suppliers.

But there is another angle: people are very busy, and must contend with a very-chaotic and rich media environment. In other words, people now are bombarded incessantly with messages, making it harder to get attention.

Content becomes the conduit to earn consumer attention, the currency, if you will, that creates the marketer's side of the value exchange, argues Jason Heller at MediaPost.

MediaPost Publications Content Is Currency - How Wealthy Is Your Brand?

Netflix is the Big Story for Online Streaming in 2011

Among the consumers who participated in the most recent CBS Vision research, 43 percent are now Netflix users. A year earlier, Netflix users were such a small percentage of respondents that CBS grouped it into the "other" category, says CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack.

Turning to the streaming of full-length TV programs, as opposed to movies, Poltrack said that Netflix has now almost caught up to Hulu.

The latest survey suggests that users are not too interested in getting Internet access from their TVs, at least among households that subscribe to multi-channel digital TV services and also buy broadband access.

One might hypothesize that widespread use of Wi-Fi, connected smart phones, tablets and notebooks have something to do with those new findings. It doesn't add much value to access the Internet from the TV screen if you have a tablet or smart phone or notebook or netbook handy that can do so.

MediaPost Publications Netflix, iPad Lead Streaming TV Rally

A New Way to Measure "Sharing"

 AddThis has launched a new way for publishers to track the sharing that happens in its simplest form, namely copying and pasting a URL from the address bar and then sharing it out to a social network, email or instant message.

For AddThis, which is owned by Clearspring, that could represent a huge new trove of data that the company can provide to web publishers.

Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar says that the company has “seen up to 10 times greater sharing from the address bar versus the sharing buttons.”

With a network that now reaches more than 1.2 billion unique users per month across 9 million sites, that’s a ton of sharing that had previously been going uncounted.

Measurement tools of that sort are important for media properties, as what used to be called "pass along readership" can allow publishers to claim bigger audiences, which then allows higher advertising rates.

Read more here

Despite 4G, 3G is Where the Growth Is

WCDMA HSPA connections will reach 500 million worldwide by the end of June, making it the fastest-growing wireless technology ever, according to new Wireless Intelligence data. Furthermore, LTE, the next-generation mobile broadband technology, has now reached one million connections only a year and a half after the first commercial network launches.

The rate of WCDMA HSPA adoption in its first six years is ten times greater than the take up of GSM mobile phones when they were first introduced in the mid-1990s, says the firm. 

There are now more than 19 million HSPA connections being added each month and it is predicted that the industry will reach 1 billion HSPA connections by the end of 2012. LTE networks are also being rapidly introduced, with 1 million connections already and 300 million expected by 2015.

http://www.mobilebusinessbriefing.com/article/hspa-based-mobile-broadband-connections-set-to-pass-500m

Play a Game, Win a Prize: One Take on Mobile Advertising

Kiip: An Introduction from kiip on Vimeo.
Mobile advertising often does not take advantage of the unique attributes of the medium, ranging from availability of a camera to the touch interface. But lots of thinking is going into how games can be used as an advertising or promotions medium. A "play a game, win a prize" approach is one way to approach it.

How Small Businesses Use Mobile

Perhaps surprisingly, navigation and GPS are the most-used mobile apps.

Most TV Available Online, Mobile in 2 Years

Executives from Disney, Turner, and Comcast were in unanimous agreement that we are only two years away from 75 percent of TV content being available online and on mobile devices. As with many other applications, services or features, one has to avoid attributing unstated adjectives. "Online" or "mobile" does not mean "free" or "at no incremental cost." That's a mistake often made when terms such as "peering" or "dumb pipe" are discussed. There is no reason to assume that "peering" means "settlement-free," or that "dumb pipe" necessarily is preced by the adjectives "low gross revenue, low margin or commodity."

At the Elevate Video Advertising Summit, Matt Strauss from Comcast Interactive Media, Jeremy Legg from Turner, and David Preshlack of Disney and ESPN predicted that TV "everywhere" was imminent, and that in the same time frame the networks will be almost completely agnostic about where and when their video content is being viewed.

"For us, in the broader context of what we’re doing, we’re beginning to migrate everything to Internet video," said Strauss.

The business issues will be key. Content owners are not going to give away mobile or online access without being compensated. Distributors will try to minimize the additional rights payments. But consumers likely will have to pay, one way or the other. Such payments might happen directly, as in an incremental fee when buying other linear services, or as a new fee for online-only or mobile-only access.

In other cases the additional payments might be made indirectly, as in the case of bigger broadband access buckets of use that accommodate the extra video consumption. The point is that universal access will involve new payments to content providers, which will mean costs passed on to consumers.

The payments might be more of an incremental issue if the new distribution rights require prior, "tied" purchases to cable TV, satellite or telco TV subscriptions. Payments will be larger for "online only" or "mobile only" subscriptions not tied to purchase of other products. But the new attitude on the part of major content owners means something will happen.

Television Executives Predict Bulk of TV Content Will Be Available Online and Via Mobile Within 2 Years