Iconic

[Trends in rich media consumption and delivery] - 출처 : CrunchGear
Here’s an interesting Q and A session with a panel of experts in therich media industry — mostly online video – that took place lastTuesday at the Pacific Crest Technology Leadership Forum in Vail,Colorado. The members of the panel:

• Ron Bloom, CEO, MEVIO
• Mike Hudack, CEO, Blip.tv
• Steve Liddell, CEO, Panther Express
• Joy Marcus, General Manager, DailyMotion U.S.
• Perry Wu, CEO, BitGravity

Here are the questions, followed by a brief synopsis of the answers, followed by the complete answers in MP3 format.

Q: How has the behavior of the consumer changed over the past year?

• Joy Marcus – We’re seeing a lot of people moving from high-level,squeaky clean Hollywood stuff to more gritty “Pro-tail” stuff, which issemi-professional, long-tail content.
• Ron Bloom – Consumers are tired of watching TV. They’ll make theirown 30 minutes of entertainment. The real goal is to displacetelevision viewing with a type of viewing that’ll attract brandadvertisers. The audience is okay with advertising, they just want alittle more freedom of choice. Audience doesn’t know the differencebetween professionally produced content and garage content – they justknow what they like.
• Mike Hudack – People are starting to use YouTube as a searchrepository. Other services are better for entire shows to be deliveredsimilar to how a DVR works. We’re seeing more and more people embracingepisodic content.

Audio (7:24): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia01.mp3

Q: What are your thoughts on time spent online, traffic, and consumption?

• Perry Wu – We haven’t seen a slowdown in the media space. We’rejust putting more and more media on the Internet. Traffic continues togrow on an exponential curve. There’s a seasonality to our business butthere’s still a lot more content than there was a year ago, so we see alot more traffic.

Audio (3:24): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia02.mp3 

Q: Broadband has been a big driver. What else can we look forward to as far as driving traffic is concerned?

• Steve Liddell – Live events are growing exponentially. Live is waymore important than anyone thought it was going to be. Applicationsbuilt around live events make it really compelling to watch thingsonline – chat features, gaming, etc.

Audio (1:38): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia03.mp3

Q: What kind of metrics matter to you?

• Ron Bloom – You have to understand who your customer is. Ourcustomer is the audience, our partner is the owner of the content, andthe beneficiary of that relationship is the advertiser. We’re notdriven by viral content, stolen content, or pornography, we’re drivenby creating an entertainment environment that engages the audience.
• Mike Hudack –  One of the most important metrics you can watch isthe amount of a particular video that somebody watches. It needs toresonate with someone right away. The average time before someoneclicks away is eight seconds.
• Joy Marcus – We’re known for a very high quality video player.We’re also now offering HD, which has been a big focus for us. Qualityof content is important but so is the quality of the experience.
• Mike Hudack – There’s also a challenge about where your content isdistributed. What if an ad for Holiday Inn is shown on a blog thattrashes the travel industry?

Audio (11:07): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia04.mp3

Q: In terms of user generated content, will we ever be able to monetize it or will it just be a traffic driver?

• Ron Bloom – Google did two interesting things. One, they madesearch into a pastime. Two, they made advertising for everyone exceptbrands. What’s missing is that there’s no safe haven for brands. Theaudience is getting tired of user generated content. A new group ofcompanies and service providers is emerging. Can you build a largeenough audience to rival television so that you can give brandadvertising the audience you have with television along with theefficiencies of the internet?
• Mike Hudack – One of the problems that YouTube has and viral videohas in general with user generated content is that you can monetize it,but do they have the right to monetize that content?
• Joy Marcus – We have to distinguish between display advertising andin-video advertising. We have no problem monetizing display ads on ourplayer page. When you’re talking about putting a video ad inside avideo, where does that video go?  And what happens when a video ad getsplaced inside a video we don’t know much about?
• Perry Wu – One of the things that’s largely ignored in the marketis paid-for content, particularly live content. That kind of content isperishable, so people are willing to pay for it. Companies are afraidto charge for stuff on the internet. Not saying that everything shouldbe for-pay content, but there are hundreds of events happening on aweekly basis that people will pay for.
• Steve Liddell – While everybody’s talking about advertising, veryfew people are talking about DRM. You’re going to see a renaissance inpaid content and DRM.
• Ron Bloom – By this time next year, brands won’t need to worryabout user generated content. There will be large enough audiences forbrands to safely advertise. People will move away from TV.

Audio (12:46): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia05.mp3

Q: How important is it to make sure that your content isaccessible on set-top hardware devices so that the people who resistconsuming online content at their desks will be able to consume it intheir living rooms?

• Mike Hudack – The numbers are extraordinarily small right now andthe opportunity to traffic third-party verified advertising dynamicallyin these environments is basically non-existent. We approach it rightnow as “We want to put a stake in the ground” and it’s a marketing toolto be able to tell a content creator that they’ll be on TV. Thechallenge is that only a small number of these outlets can handle anytype of scale when it comes to content choice. There’s literallylimited hard drive capacity at the head. Out of our 33,000 shows, wehave to pick about ten to send to Verizon (FiOS), so the experienceisn’t the same.
• Perry Wu – There’s a big economic barrier to overcome. The set-topboxes are subsidized by the MSO’s (multi system operators). The numberof TiVo boxes is puny compared to the number of cable boxes. The cablebox, plus the cost of deployment, has to be under $300. So they havelimited processors and limited hard drive space, especially with onlinevideo pushing higher quality and DRM.

Audio (4:30): http://www.crunchgear.com/audio/richmedia06.mp3