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Cynopsis:
Weekender 01/03/08 Good morning. It's Thursday, January 3, 2003, and this is Cynopsis: Weekender. Below are a handful of industry stories - with which you may agree or disagree. If you'd like to be heard - put together your own 350 word submission! Details below. This is the last edition of Weekender for the calendar year 2007 ... back in 2008! Marketers Deepen Interactive Ad Investment By Daisy Whitney Interactive marketing dollars will more than triple over the next four years, growing to $61 billion in 2012 up from $18 billion last year. That's the finding of a recent Forrester Research report surveying the interactive advertising landscape. The report also concluded that interactive marketing - a category that encompasses search engine marketing, online display ads, email marketing, online video, social media, mobile marketing and in-game advertising - will more than double its share of all marketing dollars over the next four years. By 2012 interactive marketing will comprise 18 percent of total ad spending, up from only 8 percent today. The increase will be driven by two factors: better integration between traditional and digital advertising and by the continued embrace of interactive marketing by mainstream advertisers, said Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk. "There will be an interactive and digital capability as part of any campaign you do now," she said. But don't expect any single category to drive the drive the growth, as search marketing and display ads have done in the past. "Marketers have reached a level of maturity where they realize consumers are using a lot of media in their daily lives so instead of dumping all their media into one channel, they are distributing across interactive channels," she said. Advertisers are also moving traditional dollars to the interactive world. "They are questioning their investments in traditional media like TV and they are thinking about where consumers are spending their time. Clients are being more methodical about it and figuring out what is right," she said. The shift is following consumer behavior: 29 percent of consumers' media time is devoted to the Internet. Online video will grow quickly too as marketers become savvy at either repurposing their TV spots or developing fresh ones for the Web. Online video will experience an average growth rate of 72 percent for the next five years, jumping from $471 million in 2007 to $7.1 billion in 2012, the report found. Emerging marketing venues will ratchet up too including social networks, where consumers are increasingly hanging out online. FCC Says Yes to More Media Consolidation, But Not For Comcast By Louis Chunovic It's safe to say that boyish-looking Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, is not Comcast's favorite Washington regulator. At a contentious pre-Christmas meeting of the five-member regulatory panel, Martin deftly pushed through two new rules that could change the nation's media landscape. First, joining the two other Republicans on the panel, and brushing aside strong opposition from Congress, he won passage of a rule that will loosen a long-standing newspaper-broadcaster cross-ownership ban. Then, reversing field, he joined the two Democrats to impose a new horizontal cap on the cable industry that, essentially, will stop Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, from growing even larger in its escalating war with the telcos. (The cap, said its supporters, is necessary to prevent a single big cable operator from forcing an unaffiliated network out of business by simply denying it carriage.) Martin's twin victories, which may be short-lived, skillfully exploited the party-line polarization among the commissioners, and came despite the extraordinary mistrust they have expressed. Democrat Michael Copps, for example, said the rationale for lifting the cross-ownership ban -- that it will help struggling newspapers -- would do George Orwell "proud," and he complained about late-night maneuvers and last-minute waivers. "We're running the fast break for our big media friends and the four-corners stall for the public interest.... Happy holidays!" he said acidly. From the other end of the FCC political spectrum, Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell condemned the new 30-percent cable-subscriber cap, calling it the "ghost of Christmas past" and saying it was "out of date ... bad public policy and ... not needed in today's market." The cap, McDowell added, is "certain to be struck down" by the courts. Martin, without saying so directly, accused his Democratic critics of hypocrisy for criticizing his procedures while employing similar tactics when it suited them, and called the new cross-ownership rule a "relatively minor loosening" of the ban. The new cable cap was "reasonable," he added. Of course, consumer groups generally regard the lifting of the cross-ownership ban as a gift to big media companies, while the cable industry generally regards the new cable cap as a gift to big phone companies. Without a doubt, both rules are headed for the courts, where they will become expensive new year's gifts for armies of high-priced lawyers. It's Personal for Miro 1.0 By E. Maya In an age when net neutrality, media consolidation, and Digital Rights Management are causing great debate online, one non-profit organization is looking to shake up the future of television with their newly launched internet TV application. Miro 1.0 was built by the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation, or PCF. Like Joost, the internet TV application is essentially a free online video browser, aggregator and player. Miro, however, allows users to find content via other gatekeepers, such as YouTube and Video Blogs, and turn it into a channel. Then, the software monitors RSS feeds, notifying whenever new videos are available. Using a built in BitTorrent client, users can watch the videos right inside the Miro player. It's like DVR for the Internet. What makes Miro unique is that it's an open source application, which means that anyone can upload a video or create a channel. Even better, users are encouraged to take Miro and "share, republish, re-use and re-imagine the site." PCF believes that the future of Internet TV is too important to belong to one company. Open media is a rather bold and foreign concept within a venture capitalistic society. "Like Mozilla's Firefox, we can still be successful in terms of market share and revenue that we're generating, and remain committed to our values," says Miro/PCF Executive Director and Co-Founder Nicholas Reville. Right now, Miro receives financial support from individuals and organizations. One way that Miro will make itself more self-reliant is by offering high quality HD Miro Co-Branded Players to video producers and distributors in the coming weeks. These players will allow organizations to maintain their own brand through a custom channel guide. Like anything new, there are a couple of areas that could use some fine-tuning. Even though the Miro built-in guide boasts over 2,500 channels, it still lacks solid mainstream content and social web functionality. These should hopefully improve as the application matures and more video producers, distributors and users get on-board. Bottom line, users are responding to the free and open source concept. Since launching on November 13th, there have been more than 500,000 downloads for the application. "We expect to have more users than Joost by January," says Nicholas. Sounds like Miro just up the ante in the fight for open media and the future of Internet TV.
* WEEK'S RECAP *
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
SUBMISSIONS / AD SALES/ SUBSCRIBE & UNSUBSCRIBE Cynopsis Ad Sales - Mark Bohn - 203-583-1224 / Article submissions for Cynopsis: Weekender are welcome, provided they are no longer than a maximum of 350 words. News articles used are paid at the rate of $1/word. Not all submissions are used. Editorials (also 350 word max) may be submitted but are not paid, and not all are used. Send submissions to Cynopsis at . The Weekender edition is published every Thursday and includes a few items to ponder over the weekend, as well as the highlights from the week. It is delivered to the entire Cynopsis subscriber list, unless you specifically request to be unsubscribed. To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your email subscription, go to the Cynopsis website, www.cynopsis.com and click on the subscribe tab. Emails to the Editor: subject E-Mails to the Editor Copyright Cynthia Turner 2007 Later -- Cyn 1/3/08 What's On This Weekend: Saturday: 8-11p, January 5, 2008 ABC: ABC News Coverage of the New Hampshire Debates [7p] CBS: Move:High Crimes [r], 48 Hours Mystery FOX: Cops [r], Cops [r], America's Most Wanted ION: Movie: Escape from Wildcat Canyon [7p], Movie: The Tale of Sweeney Todd MNT: Decision House [r], Control Room Presents NBC: Saturday Night Football: Jacksonville at Pittsburgh PBS: Austin City Limits [9p] TELE: Cine Nuestro [7p], Cine de Impacto/Estreno UNIV: Sabado Gigante Sunday: 7-11p, January 6, 2008 ABC: AFV, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives, Cashmere Mafia [p ] CBS: End of Tenn v. San Diego Wildcard game (7-730p); 60 Minutes (730-830p), The Amazing Race 12 (830-930p), Cold Case (930-1030p), Shark (1030-1130p) CW: CW Now, Aliens in America [r], Life is Wild, Crowned [r] FOX: American Dad [r], American Dad [r], The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy [r], American Dad ION: Movie: Titanic NBC: Deal or No Deal, American Gladiators [p ] PBS: Nature [8p], Masterpiece Theatre [r] TELE: El Maravilloso Mundo de Disney, Cine Millonario/Estreno UNIV: La Hora Pico, Los 5 Magnificos [p ] |
