Cynopsis: DIGITAL
09/17/12

Good morning. It’s Monday, September 17, 2012, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Jason Yim, President and Executive Creative Director of Trigger, has led the development of multiple digital/mobile games and experiences for a wide array of entertainment companies. Most recently, Trigger built an augmented reality app for The Amazing Spider-Man, which he speaks about in the following Q&A. The company has also done work with the likes of Sesame Street, Nike, and Cartoon Network, and has also developed a game tied to Anthony Zuiker’s upcoming digital movie, Cybergeddon, which Yim “couldn’t” comment on at the moment, but is coming out soon.

You developed an augmented reality app tied to The Amazing Spider-Man. What does the app do?

The main component is that there are 13 augmented reality missions that the consumer can engage in. Each mission requires a marker, which is something the user can point his phone at in order to activate the augmented reality mission. The marker can be almost anything — it can be something the user prints out to use it at home, or it can be distributed via marketing partners or movie collateral; a movie poster, a page in Entertainment Weekly, the cover of The Amazing Spider-Man video game, things like that. The app tells you where to find these markers as well. For example, I believe mission 12 is one that directs the player to go find the video game cover. All the player has to do is point the app at the marketer, after which they’ll see a custom 3D animation overlaid on top of that marker. So if you point it at the movie poster, you get this animation of Spidey crawling up the poster.

If you had to pitch to an entertainment company, say a studio or a television network, or even a brand advertiser — on why they should consider an augmented reality campaign — what would you say?

The best way to look at it is that whatever the property is, whether it’s a movie or a TV show, you are already generating a ton of collateral for it. From paid media to earned media, there is already so much print out there that contains your imagery. With AR, you can enhance all of that. So instead of a person just seeing that first layer, you can now put additional content over it, as well as offer transactional stuff, such as movie times based on the GPS capabilities of your phone and the ability to purchase tickets. Additionally, AR can be used to look at the product and get additional information such as ratings and reviews directly from the web, and in some cases, even a special price. It kind of closes the loop and brings the consumer all the way to the point-of-sale by just looking at the product or a piece of collateral.

What’s an interesting project you’ve done with a television network or brand that used AR in a cool way?

We did work for Sesame Street that kind of demonstrated where AR can go. Sesame Street and Qualcomm partnered up with IDO to create a line of toys. Our job was to bring these toys to life. So let’s say you have a tablet. You point the tablet at these toys of Sesame Street characters, and when you look at them through the tablet, they actually come to life and talk and interact with each other. For example, a Bert toy would ask the child to bring Ernie into the scene, and then when the Ernie toy is dropped in, those two would start talking. In a similar way, another AR interaction allowed kids to drop a jukebox toy “into the scene,” after which music would start playing from that jukebox. With augmented reality, it no longer always has to be up to the imagination of the kid. And this can extend to other lines of toys. Imagine all of your action figures having the ability to fire missiles and do other cool stuff. It’s more engaging and more exciting. It’s the future of what playing with toys can be.

I was recently told that entertainment marketers are generally on the leading edge of mobile advertising. Would you say that is correct? Describe where the entertainment industry is when it comes to mobile advertising and engagement.

I’d definitely agree that entertainment is a leader in the space; especially in terms of the content they’re putting out there. We’ve been developing gaming apps for films and bringing them to market for two years now. For The Karate Kid remake, we launched an iPad app the same day the iPad was introduced. So the studios are definitely thinking in that kind of advanced way. However, there are certain disadvantages they have to deal with. The lifespan of a movie is quite short. You come up with an idea and you market the film and you push, push, push, and then it launches, and then you’re done and moving on to the next film. So it’s hard to collect all of those users into a larger effort. You have to restart each time. If you look at the aggregate number of all the users of all of the apps that we’ve developed, it’d be big.

So then would you say there is a greater opportunity to do something with AR and/or mobile engagement if you’re a television company?

Definitely. There is a great opportunity on the television side to produce compelling second-screen experiences that incorporate social interactivity so that users are regularly engaged and keep on coming back. Even though compared to movie studios their budgets are smaller, networks have the advantage of being able to add additional content on a weekly basis, through multiple seasons. So unlike the short lifespan of a movie release, there’s a great opportunity to build community around your content and brand if you’re a television producer or network.

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The 2012 Creative Arts Emmys® were handed out this past Saturday. The Team Coco Sync App from Team Coco Digital and Turner Broadcasting won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media — Enhancement to a Television Program. In the other digital category, Dirty Work from Fourth Wall Studios and Rides TV, beat out USA Network’s Psych #HashTagKiller as well as original online talk series What’s Trending with Shira Lazar to win Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media — Original Interactive Television Programming.

Verizon is sending out invitations to a select group of individuals to try out a new FiOS TV iOS app that supports live-TV streaming, according to a report from Engadget. Other features that may be available on such an offering include a programming guide, DVR control, and Flex View On Demand videos.

Google has announced that 180 “fiberhoods” throughout Kansas City will be the first to receive its high-speed Google Fiber service. Leading the way will be the Hanover Heights neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas, as Google says it plans to install Google Fiber for its first customer in the area within the next few weeks. In the Missouri side of Kansas City, the first neighborhood to get the service will be Crown Center, which will have to wait until next spring as Google is still deploying infrastructure necessary to offer the service in the region. Google says anyone in the 180 fiberhoods can still sign up for the service, whether they’ve pre-registered or not. For those on the fence, Google has secured a deal with Turner Broadcasting to offer their channels — Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, Turner Classic Movies, TNT, and truTV, among others — to Fiber subscribers.

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Multiplatform video advertising company Innovid will integrate comScore’s Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) into its analytics dashboard. comScore’s vCE product is meant to provide advertisers with metrics, such as audience demographics and GRPs, that can be used to compare reach across platforms. “Increasingly, brands and marketers want to compare apples to apples in evaluating the performance of digital and traditional advertisements. Access to comScore’s metrics allows Innovid clients to seamlessly gauge the strength of their video campaigns with analytics that matter to them,” said Zvika Netter, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovid. According to Innovid, this integration will track any ad across its Ad Server platform, regardless of format, screen, publisher, or ad network.

BrightRoll is now allowing advertisers to bid on mobile video inventory in real-time through the BrightRoll Exchange (BRX). Combined with the ability to bid on online video, which has already been possible through BRX, BrightRoll is now offering a more holistic RTB solution for media buyers. The new BRX enables advertisers to bid at the impression level on in-app and mobile web inventory. Of note, BrightRoll says that, based on the number of ad requests it has seen during the first half of 2012, it expects that more than half of all digital video ads will be mobile by the end of this year.

Content delivery solutions provider Akamai Technologies has acquired FastSoft, a provider of content acceleration software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, except that it was a cash transaction. “[FastSoft’s] development team possesses extensive experience in advanced [Transmission Control Protocol] technology that we believe can enhance the delivery of rich media, as well as support future initiatives in the areas of mobile applications and cloud performance,” said Bill Wheaton, SVP and GM/Media Division at Akamai, when announcing the deal. FastSoft’s patented FastTCP algorithms help increase the speed of dynamic page views and file transfer downloads while reducing the effects of network latency and packet loss. The FastSoft team will be integrated into Akamai’s engineering group, which together will establish a new “Center of Excellence” focusing on network protocols and optimization technology, based in Pasadena, California.

Video portal Veoh has retained the services of Equity Partners CRB to “explore strategic options,” including a potential sale, according to TechCrunch. The company says its portal has millions of users from around the world, more than one million mobile users, and over 3 million pieces of content, many of which is through revenue partnerships with global TV, cable, music, and online video brands. The report indicates that it’s not clear as of yet whether a sale of Veoh would include its library of content or not. Veoh has raised close to $80 million from investors such as Michael Eisner and Intel Capital.

A recent IDG Global Solutions study, which surveyed over 21,000 participants from across the globe on the topic of mobile usage, finds that 77% of respondents use smartphones in their business and personal lives. In addition, 61% of respondents said they view videos on mobile devices, with the top three video categories being technology product reviews (56%), job-related videos (45%), and movies (44%). Much like every other research on the matter, survey participants also picked Apple’s iOS (35%) and Google’s Android (33%) as the operating systems they most prefer. When it comes to tablets, IDG says half of the respondents own or use a tablet. The most popular activities on tablets among these consumers are web browsing (92%), reading emails (81%), using tablet apps (77%), watching videos (66%), and reading newspapers or magazines (64%).

Join us on November 14, 2012 at the Cynopsis Digital Video Measurement Summit in NYC. REGISTER NOW.

Social games developer Funtactix and Lionsgate have made The Hunger Games Adventures social game available for the iPad. The game debuted on Facebook in March alongside the blockbuster’s theatrical release. In the adventure game, players get the chance to explore the world of Panem, the setting of the book/film franchise, as they complete various quests and learn more information about characters and access exclusive content. For example, Funtactix recently released inside the game the first-ever map of Panem, which featured the actual locations of Districts 2, 11, and 12, as well as the Capitol. Going forward, the plan is to reveal more districts on both the iPad and Facebook versions of the game as players await the release of the next film.

Social news service BuzzFeed has hired web video veteran Ze Frank to be EVP/Video. The appointment is a part of BuzzFeed’s acquisition of Frank’s company, Ze Frank Games. Frank will build a team of video producers in LA and establish a studio to create “content native to the social web.” What this means is that Frank will work with BuzzFeed’s existing video and editorial teams and produce videos inspired by BuzzFeed posts. He will also focus on extending BuzzFeed’s content to YouTube. The company says Frank will develop new YouTube channels covering a wider range of topics and will also collaborate with BuzzFeed’s social ad clients on branded content. “As a social publisher, BuzzFeed’s growth has been driven by Facebook and Twitter and we are thrilled that Ze Frank is joining to extend our work to YouTube,” said Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed Founder and CEO.

Definition 6 has hired Luciano Tapia as Art Director and John Gill as Senior Editor, both of whom will be based in the marketing agency’s NY office. Tapia will oversee production and design conceptions as well as an in-house team of designers. Gill brings with him an extensive background in video editing, having worked in the past for the likes of Spike TV, Nickelodeon, VH1, USA Network, Comedy Central, AMC, BET, and Animal Planet. Definition 6’s client base includes The Coca-Cola Company, HBO, Nickelodeon, USA Networks, Sesame Street, Cox Enterprises, and truTV, among others.

Scenios, a provider of a cloud-based platform for film and video production, has opened a new office in the Tribeca Film Center in NYC. Scenios’ “virtual production office” serves as a hub for all production information, including scripts, budgets, and schedules, along with the ability to store video, including rough cuts and final cuts.

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NOMINATE THE MOST INTRIGUING PEOPLE IN MEDIA…

Event/Submission Questions: Jenn Sredzinski
Advertising/Sponsorship information: Mike Farina.

If you haven’t downloaded The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’s new Headlines app, you should do it right now. Available for iOS and Android devices, as well as the Kindle Fire, the app offers up videos ranging from show segments featuring Stewart and “The Best F#@king News Team Ever” to the host’s interviews with a wide array of guests. However, full episodes are not available on the app. Other features include additional information on upcoming guests, random quotes that are linked to the classic segments they came from, and the ability to share videos on Facebook, Twitter, and via email.

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Associate Editor for Cynopsis Digital
09.17.12

Denise O’Connor: Group Publisher, Media Entertainment
Diane K Schwartz: Senior Vice President, Media Communications Group

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