Graeme Ferguson, until recently Vodafone Group’s director of global content development gave a talk at Breakfast with Guru’s. He said that adult content drives the mobile content market -- "At Vodafone we denied this, but the fact is that 70% of downloads are of adult content." He also gave some tips to small content producers: "Small producers with mobile content need to approach operators via content aggregators. Or, "Sell it to Yahoo instead. If you don’t have a big brand or marketing budget, the mobile user won’t find you."
Besides InfoSpace's own cloudy future, of course...Infospace president Stephen Davis spoke at Mipcom, and said the long-term value proposition for mobile TV has yet to be written: "We're trying a lot of things and experimenting, waiting to see what the customer will adopt and what they will pay for and what the elasticity is. Ultimately, as the ad model becomes more sophisticated we'll see that advertising represents a far better model for monetizing content long term than it does today." – Davis did not have an answer for what that monetization will look like and when it will happen. But he says there is much to be learnt from the trials of monetizing broadband services, not least that a different system of quantifying mobile ads might be needed. "We're talking to advertising agencies and big brands looking to buy and the traditional CPM model does not work for them. Yet they under that mob represents one of most targeted, relevant distribution channels for delivering their message so we almost need to adopt a different measurement system to quantify the value for them - particularly in US where markets are becoming much more verticalized. We're focusing on very specific segments of demographics in a way haven't been able to in search, for instance." – He said Infospace's research into ad forms had found product placement to be the most accepted and least obtrusive way of monetizing content. "You give the consumer a reason to experience even a two or three second banner ad or click on a product placement plug - give them an incentive like a credit or a ringtone - and then give them that content for free. It's a Pavlov's dog mentality that you can develop over the long term of content delivery. Product placement is the most accepted and least obtrusive for now. I don't know if that is long term but it works for now." – And what will those ad and sponsorship models look like? "Cable TV is the most relevant model. The all-you-can eat mentality is a mentality across broadband, and even linear platforms, that consumers like and are most comfortable with." He described the current market as still predominantly about personalization with 80 percent of revenues for most US mobile companies coming from ringtones. "In the short term, a combination of a subscription model bundled with an а la carte option to up-sell or cross-sell individual pieces of content is a pretty decent model for creators or owners of IP to fully maximize the value of what they have." – Davis, a former president of Granada America and Carlton America, said established brands like MTV have a clear advantage in the mobile environment. "Once the consumer is drawn in by the brand then you can wrap them in original content." Discovery is still one of the biggest issues in mobile content: "It's irrespective of how good the content is if you can't find it, it takes multiple clicks and it's a poor user experience. Consumers are very fickle and have so many alternatives they will not adopt mobile as a primary distribution channel for consumption of video or anything else." He said the first step in planning the delivery is any content is to work out how it will be found, and that subscription is the cleanest package for content producers.
Telephia released some figures in response to Google buying YouTube, I’m not sure whether they’ve been seen before but I figure there’re worth putting up again to reflect on the deal. There are nearly 8 million americans who use their mobile phone to capture video, according to Telephia, with the most popular handset choice for this being the Razr V3 series.
Adoption Rate for Video Capture Among Recent Handset Buyers (Europe, U.S. and Canada) Country — Share % Spain — 15% Italy — 14% UK — 12% Sweden — 10% France — 9% Germany — 9% Canada — 4% US — 3%
Even expert navigation by Yahoo's Mitch Lazar, VP business development couldn't steer this session towards any weighty conclusions - or at least any new observations. He launched with an excellent summary of the mobile TV landscape so far including how 3's business saw a 61 percent uplift since its FIFA world cup TV service this summer, Orange's TV service found that 70 percent of users were watching for more than five minutes and Vodafone UK has said its mobile TV revenues is outpacing ringtones. In all - mobile TV supplements traditional TV rather than replacing it. The consensus is now that the most successful mobile TV is made specifically for mobile, or at the very least re-edited for mobile. Two to three minute clips is always the template and MTV's production teams, for one, now commissions for TV, PC and mobile from the outset. MTV's Dan Whiley, international CVP said it's lucky for MTV that its young demographic are heavy mobile users. "It's a distinct advantage that we already understand that mobile audience. Some people say that MTV invented short-attention span TV but shows like Jackass and Barrio 19 work well in small chunks that people can get in and out of quickly." – Hala Baviиre, services and portal content director for French operator SFR, said a partnership with MTV had helped target younger users. SFR packages 4 MTV channels and usage more than doubled in the first semester of 2006. Part of SFR's strategy has been to schedule different types of content for different times of the day in a similar way to conventional TV: kids' shows after school and sports at the weekends, for example. Sport has been another been a major driver for traffic - and is another example of content that works in short form. She made a plea for producers to create content specifically for mobile and said once they have that tailor-made content, they can deliver it quickly to their subscribers.
@ Mipcom: Piracy Is A Business Model, Says Disney Co-Chair Anne Sweeney
(c) MocoNews So this is the first day’s keynote by Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television Group. Ultra-slick corporate stuff, but some good next-step observations about the industry.
A couple of announcements: Disney is launching its latest mobile content deal In France with Orange’s 24 million wireless customers, and introducing video diaries from Lost characters for mobile. The size and type of the screen will always be secondary to what’s on it, says Sweeney. This time two years ago, Disney were congratulating themselves at the end of a season that saw Lost and Desperate Housewives make it big. But at the end of the meeting, the head of operations and engineering presented a high-quality, ad-free version of DH that had been put online less than 15 minutes after the program aired. That was a defining moment for the business, said Sweeney. “We understand now that piracy is a business model,” said Sweeney. “It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.” That’s an incentive for Disney to make its content available easily and legally - and the iTunes movie deal is the first part of that. In the year since the deal was first done with Apple, Disney has sold 12.8 million episodes via iTunes and 51 of the 272 TV series available on the service are Disney products. Sweeney talked about the “watershed” signing of the deal with Apple just over a year ago. Leading up to that, Disney CEO Bob Iger had asked her to call Steve Jobs. Jobs introduced her to the beta iTunes 7 and the still-under-wraps video iPod which, she said, answered both her key concerns about offering something that viewers would embrace and that would be good for Disney’s content. Another critical point, she said, is that, after research, Disney can’t find any evidence that putting programs online on the broadband player cannibalizes the broadcast audience, or even the iTunes audience. Quite the opposite in fact - “it may actually drive viewers to on-air programming. There are different ways to serve viewers that do not overlap. Some want to own the content and can’t wait to get it on DVD. Others missed it on TV but have to get it quickly - for that ‘water cooler’ moment.” That’s backed up by the data on when shows are watched online - the bulk of viewings are in the 24 hours immediately after a show has aired. Making the content available in those 24 hours also makes the service highly competitive with content pirates. “Content drives everything,” said Sweeney. “As more platforms are created, the demand for content increases.” More Sweeney-isms: - Eighty-four percent of those that used the on-demand service said that it was a “good deal” to get a free episode in return for watching an ad and, significantly for advertisers, 87 percent of those could recall the advertiser that sponsored the program. - Sweeney outlined Disney’s strategy as: being primarily about content because it drives everything else; being about maximising new platforms for both content and advertisers; and sharpening its brands, because consumers choose brands they know and trust. - Partnership, she said, is critical because Disney needs “compatible brands” to focus on its core aims of: a quality user experience; growth on delivering consumer value; content valuation and protection; and a commitment to market products and services. - “The digital revolution has unleashed a consumer coup. We have to not only make in-demand content but make it on-demand. This power shift changes the way we think about our business, industry and our viewers. We have to build our businesses around their behavior and their interests.” - “The most powerful creativity comes in response to a challenge - as long as you know who you are and where you want to go.” - “All of us have to continually renew our business in order to renew our brands because audiences have upper hand and show no sign of giving it back.”
3UK, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone have teamed up to trial yet another broadcast mobile TV technology in the UK. The trial uses a so-called TDtv platform provided by IPWireless, based on the Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard.
MBMS allows 3G operators to offer bandwidth-heavy mobile TV, audio and another IP datacast services using existing 3G spectrum, without impacting core voice and data traffic on the main network.
This is the fourth broadcast mobile TV technology to make it to the UK, following the O2/Arqiva trials of DVB-H earlier this year, BSkyB's ongoing work with Qualcomm's MediaFLO platform and Virgin Mobile's launch of DAB-IP based services this month.
Professor Michael Walker, director of R&D at Vodafone said: "In the case of mobile TV, there are a number of technologies emerging that must be fully explored so that we have a comprehensive understanding of how the technologies work and the experience they will offer. Currently the most interesting technologies are the variants of MBMS and DVB-H.”
TDtv base stations have been deployed on 12 cell sites covering parts of Bristol in the UK.
Content and handset software for the MBMS trial is being provided by MobiTV, which already powers 3G streaming mobile TV services for Orange and 3UK.
Pay TV service Showtime has put some video clips of its shows (such as Weeds and The L Word) on the mobile platform with a deal with Mobile Streams. "Mobile users with 2.5-G or 3-G handsets can access the site (wap.sho.com) on their phones to get video clips and wallpapers from such shows as Dexter, Weeds, The Underground, The L Word and Showtime Championship Boxing...In addition, mobile users can send text messages to the network to request more content and information on Dexter as part of the network's multimedia promotional campaign surrounding the series' launch this month."
Weeds: You Can't Be A Lesbian Celia lectures her daughter on why not to be a lesbian.
The L Word: I am a Lesbian Some unexpected people confess they are lesbians.
In more mobile video news, 3UK will distribute content from Zone Reality. "Zonemedia will provide a supply of regularly refreshed, looped programming which can be accessed by 3 customers. The high-impact segments are being specially edited for mobile viewing and are created from the best of Zone Reality's hit shows including Ouch! That Had to Hurt, Moronic 21st Century Idiots, Crash Bang and Beyond Bizarre." It doesn't sound sophisticated, but it does sound popular...
Russian operator SkyLink has plans to launch a mobile TV broadcasting service to mobile phones in Moscow and St. Petersburg later early in 2007, according to a report in subscription-only Prime-Tass. SkyLink also plans to introduce other video services, including mobile video surveillance. Currently, Moscow subscribers currently have access to four mobile TV channels, with a further six due to be launched this month. Subscribers in St. Petersburg have access to eight channels. In August SkyLink launched a trial of mobile TV services as part of its effort to target the region's wealthier consumers. SkyLink has not disclosed tariffs, but tariffs are likely to be pricey.
Analyst Angle: Women are growth engine for mobile content consumption
M:Metrics has been tracking the U.S. mobile medium since November 2004. Year-over-year comparisons in markets for ringtones and mobile games show that while the number of purchasers of tones grew by about 20 percent, the number of subscribers actively downloading new games remained relatively flat. The high-level metrics regarding content consumption mask underlying trends that point to a rapidly shifting market in terms of content and consumers that is being defined by an older female demographic.
The number of subscribers downloading polyphonic ringtones fell by about 15 percent, held up by the active promotion of distributors that earn higher margins on polyphonic products. However, the number downloading master-tones grew by a whopping 91 percent to become the majority in the market in an August 2006 survey. While the number of active game downloaders remained relatively flat, the number of people reportedly playing a downloaded title in a month expanded by about 15 percent. Higher prices for games and an expanded number of active game subscriptions yield a market that has expanded by about 30 percent in terms of revenue year over year.
Of particular note is the shifting demographic profile for active mobile content consumers. The number of females consuming ringtones and games grew by 27 percent and 21 percent, respectively, year over year. Corresponding numbers for males were growth of 15.4 percent in males downloading ringtones and a decline of 11.3 percent in the number of males downloading games. Females now account for a clear majority, or 55 percent, of ringtone purchasers. While males still have a higher propensity to download games, the ratio of male to female game downloaders has dropped from 61 percent male in 2005 to 54 percent male in 2006.
While much of the focus of the mobile entertainment sector has been on seeking to engage over-stimulated teens and young adults, it is clearly evident that growth in the market is coming from older demographic groups. While starting from a smaller base, the 35-to-44-year-old segment has had the highest growth for games and ringtones. Consumption among teens has lagged, with the number of teen ringtone purchasers remaining relatively flat, while teens engaged in downloading games fell by a whopping 30 percent.
As the market for mobile gaming begins to shift older and more gender neutral, it more closely resembles the market for online Web-based gaming defined by venues such as Pogo, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN than the market for console games. The titles of the top game titles reinforces this view as the usual coterie of Tetris, card and retro titles have been joined by PC online hits such as Zuma and Sims, which have made it into the top 15 title list.
While companies in the mobile games sector will be heartened by the broadening of the market and growing revenue, the fact that teens are apparently being turned off is less than encouraging. The success of casual games may be partly self-fulfilling in a market where placement in an end cap such as Top Sellers is the determinant of success. The advent of a broader demographic adds fuel to the argument that new modes of discovery that relies on search and deck personalization.
As a precursor to a more dynamic personalized merchandizing, carriers can go some way by offering fewer logical starting points. For example, we see three broad clusters of mobile games that appeal to different groups: console games, which have an obvious appeal to a young male demographic; games based on trivia and chance, which appeal to a broad demographic; and puzzle and skill oriented titles, which tend to have particular appeal for women.
Disney Channel has signed a content distribution deal with Orange, which is being touted as its "first pan- European deal to provide content to mobile phones". Orange will show the content in the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Poland, Holland, Romania, Slovakia and eventually France. It seems to be focused on a 3G mobile TV service since it's mentioned that Orange has 2.9 million customers that can view the content. "The service will consist of 65 to 120 minute programming loops featuring some of the most popular Disney Channel content, including full 22-minute episodes of key, live-action programming franchises That's So Raven and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and animated hits like Kim Possible and Disney's Recess . In addition, consumers will be able to watch clips from Hannah Montana and a selection of Disney Channel Original Movies."
MCW: Q&A with Brendan Dowling, founder of iO Global
Dowling set up the first pan-European MVNO as CCO of Metero Mobile Communications and operated Ireland's first ISP for mobile through his purchase of Meridian Communications. As non-executive chairman of Digital Versatile Media he focused on translating traditional media content for the new environments of mobile and online, and is the founder of the BT-backed platform iOGlobal.
What needs to happen for mobile TV to open up to a wider audience? If you want to supply any service, be it TV, music, movies, anything, you've got to look at how the consumer consumes these products today and ask how to add some value to the experience. For example, I shouldn't have to pay for a movie trailer - that's rubbish. But I'm happy to pay for the movie because it's premium content. So help me browse movie trailers on my mobile during my downtime for free. If I want to purchase it let me pay for it on my phone, but then allow me to watch it through my cable set-top box and on my plasma screen when I get home. I might buy a music album on impulse and I'll pay whatever the full retail price is for it. Help me buy it on my phone, but don't deliver it to my mobile because I don't want to pay 10 times the price of the connectivity - deliver it to me on my DSL. Or I might take one track from the album right now on my phone, and then wait to get the whole album when I get home. So it's about the value add, the price people will pay and also the advertising - a lot of the content we consume today is all paid for by advertisers.
So we'll see more and more ad-funded content? Oh, definitely, there's no doubt. The bulk of our content will eventually be paid for by advertisers.
People have been conditioned that way by the web, of course. Exactly, and mobile is a hugely valuable premium product. But charging GBP2.50 for a ringtone – it's outrageous and it's not sustainable. If consumers are going to buy music, and spend much more money, then they want full track downloads, they don't want ringtones. We've got to offer a value proposition that's some way close to what they get online or even in the digital or physical retail store - GBP10 or GBP15 for a music album. I shouldn't be paying GBP20 or GBP30 in a digital environment – in fact, I should pay less.
So what are the obstacles to this kind of thinking? Well, it was the technology, but it's no longer the technology. It's the commercial mindset and the incumbent legacy decisions that people have made - that is basically acting as a barrier to people opening up this industry and making it work. Content owners kept telling us "we know how to build content, we know how to brand it, price it, we know that far better than these guys up there who are called mobile operators". They want the interface to load their content to the retailers because that is what they have always done. It's a crazy duplication of work for a couple of 100 people at an operator to do the content - and they're not even good at it.
Are operators are wasting their time getting directly involved with trying to produce the content themselves? Absolutely crazy. Completely nuts in my opinion. It's a totally different business and completely misaligned with being an operator in my view. In fairness to operators, they are very good marketing machines. Making phone calls, SMS etc - that's all a given in all networks the world over. So, ultimately, it comes down to good marketing and how they package and bundle and how they run their retail stores.
For many of us, the latest mobile telephones on the market are simply cool gadgets for making calls, with a few nifty electronic extras -- MP3, agenda, e-mail, image capture - tacked on.
But for a tiny yet growing number of artists and filmmakers, they are in fact amazingly small, cheap cameras - a tool that might herald the start of a new revolution in digital-video moviemaking.
"Something is definitely happening with these. I was as surprised as anyone when I saw what I could do with one," said Jean-Claude Taki, an experienced French director who has taken the new technology and run with it.
He was one of 80 directors, students and artists showing what movies can be made with 3rd-generation mobiles in an unusual Paris film festival on the weekend dedicated to the format.
Aptly titled the Pocket Film Festival, the event showcased works that included animation, artsy flair and narrative fiction, with 14 of the best movies being projected in a competition.
The limitations of using a mobile phone camera were evident on the big screen -- mushy sound, a blurry or pixellated image and weird motion effects.
But at the same time, those deficiencies were less marked than expected. It was clear that the very latest camera phones, such as those loaned to the entrants in the festival, were rapidly narrowing the gap with the bulkier and more expensive proper digital video cameras.
The festival's artistic director, Benoit Labourdette, acknowledged as much.
Last year's Pocket Films Festival -- the inaugural event -- had been dogged by technical handicaps in getting pint-sized images on to the big screen.
A year later, those problems were disappearing. "The images now produced are four times bigger than those shown last year," Labourdette said.
It also helped that the artists using the mobile format often deliberately played up some of the shortcomings to achieve a desired effect.
One director, for instance, filmed undressed women in a hammam -- but made the image so blurry and fragmented that it resembled more a moving impressionist's painting than video.
Another entrant, film and art student Margeurite Lantz, 29, filmed her own transformation from contemporary Parisian to a near-exact likeness of "The Girl With the Pearl Earring", the celebrated 17th-century painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.
"I wanted to go through that painting and take her place," she said, adding that the unobtrusiveness and accessibility of using a mobile camera had opened up a whole new realm of art making to her.
Another short film was a haiku-like animation of a cowboy (actually a "crow-boy" given the protagonist's inexplicable beak) who, upon settling down to sleep in the desert, is left by his bored horse and awakes heartbroken.
Taki's own film was an ambitious project made in his spare time while working on a documentary shoot in Kazakhstan.
Full of haunting images and benefiting from his professional sound engineering talents, it told the tale of a French scientist who commits suicide while in Russia after he learns of the death of the girl he was in love with there. The story parallels the scientist's work in quantum physics and the idea that two particles, once they cross, leave indelible traces on each other.
Taki, 44, said working with his mobile phone was more natural than using a digital camera, and allowed him to amass hours of effective images he happened across which were then whittled down to his 24-minute work.
"It's a lot like making a sculpture," he said.
The ubiquity of mobile telephones and the increasingly sophisticated technology they contain mean more and more people who feel they have a filmmaker's gene in them will be turning to them, he predicted.
"I don't know if this tool will turn out to be a revolution. But I do know it's not just a passing trend," he said.
UK Mobile Operators Team for Common Mobile TV Platform
The Independent reports that mobile operators in the UK are in discussion to ease the spectrum squeeze by building a common platform for broadcasting TV content to mobile phones. In the UK spectrum that is ideal for mobile broadcasting via the technology platform DVB-H will not be available until 2012, and concerns are high that this could set the UK far behind countries such as Germany, Italy and Korea that already have commercial plans for offering mobile TV broadcasting firmly in place. Germany's regulator freed up spectrum to allow broadcast of the World Cup and UK operators are now doubly determined not to miss an opportunity around the London Olympics in 2012. Most UK operators already offer mobile television, but not on a common or cost-effective platform. Orange and 3 UK, for example, stream TV content over 3G.
However, an Orange spokesperson told me in an email that the operator is "open to considering DVB-H as an alternative to other mobile TV platforms if it offers a better customer experience and a more cost-effective method for broadcasting content". The spokesperson continued: "We are currently conducting DVB-H trials in France and continue to explore potential future networking options."
Virgin Mobile has launched a broadcast TV service using the BT Movio network using the DAB platform. The report says the current talks between the operators could result in a "broadcaster building one network that all participating mobile operators could use". Spearheading the talks is O2, which has also tested DVB-H services together with broadcaster Arqiva using Nokia phones. O2 has since been lobbying the UK telecoms industry regulator to free up spectrum as early as 2008.
