A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM IAB

Cynopsis: DIGITAL

04/09/09

Good morning, it’s Thursday, April 9, 2009, and this is your first early morning digital briefing. 

What if the next Bill Gates grows up in rural Idaho? The FCC unanimously approved a measure yesterday to develop a “national broadband plan” whose aim is to insure that all Americans have access to affordable high-speed internet services. The Commission, which so far has only a share of $7.2 billion to spend as part of the President’s stimulus package, must deliver the plan to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010 and is seeking input from all corners during a 60-day comment period. Initial responses to the scheme from industry executives and Washington-area think tanks were positive.
 

 
Feed your need for schlock. AMC launched BMC (as in “B Movie Classics”), a new online destination for B-Movie feature films in genres including action/adventure (Roger Corman’s Saga of the Viking Women), comedy (John Carpenter’s Dark Star), Crime/Thriller (Noir classic Carnival of Souls) and horror (Corridors of Blood). The portal begins with 27 embeddable titles, viewable in a full-screen player powered by Brightcove.
 
Showtime is offering Mixed Martial Arts fans a bit of interactivity with the PPV StrikeForce All Access bout on April 11. Fans who pony up $24.95 will have access to a simulcast video streaming interface providing 5 multiple camera angles. They will also be able to talk smack through a Facebook Connect integration. CDNs BitGravity and Episodic are powering the interactive stream.
 
The YES Network reached a multiyear deal with Verizon to offer Yankees games on FiOS TV’s on demand service. Verizon is the first multichannel programming service to offer Yankees games on demand.
 
Digital track inflation continued this week as Amazon, Rhapsody and Wal-Mart all raised the prices of their most popular downloads, noticed CNET.
 
Multiplatform LGBT network here! has picked up a 4th season of its signature soap opera Dante’s Cove. Production on 10 half-hour episodes will begin in fall 2009.
 

 
AnySource Media launched yet another internet video Navigator software platform it hopes to embed directly on HDTVs. A hybrid of a media center and content portal, the interface allows viewers to select sites and jump to specific videos, photos, home networks and music or to view any internet-based video.
 
Wi-Fi advertising provider JiWire raised $11 million in series B funding led by led by Panorama Capital and joined by Comcast Interactive Capital and existing investor DFJ Frontier. JiWire delivers advertising at hotspots, currently reaching about 20 million unique users a month across 25,000 public locations.
 
USC Marshall Executive Education and Really Useful Information (RUI) announced a plan to launch a series digital technology webinars beginning April 15 to promote a new online media management program. Presenters include Tim Napoleon, Chief Strategist for Media and Entertainment, Akamai and Mary Coller, Former CMO, Movielink, Former SVP, SonyPictures Digital and Co-Founder of Beatnik.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES

 
YouTube, which was just berated by a Credit Suisse analyst last week for its lack of success in selling ads (Spenser Wang estimates a loss of $470 million for the site this year), is actually growing its ad business at an impressive clip, according to a report in Ad Age. Thanks to innovations like Contend ID – which allows content owners to block, monetize or track usage on the site – YouTube is currently selling ads against about 9% of its video views in the U.S., up from 6% a year ago.
 
The growth of online ad revenues may be slowing but they’re holding up in terms of their percentage of the total media spend, according to some new projections from eMarketer. The internet’s share of total media ad spending is rising by at least 1 percentage point every year and is expected to reach nearly 10% of the total pie by the end of 2009.
 
US Online Ad Spending as a Percentage of Total Media Ad Spending 2007-2013
Year     % of total ad spending
2007       7.6%
2008       8.7%
2009       9.9%
2010      11.2%
2011      12.3%
2012      13.8%
2013      15.2%
source: eMarketer, April 2009
 
Radio ad network Target Spot signed a deal with Providence, RI-based Ando Media to use its Webcast Metrics product to measure online audio consumption. Webcast Metrics converts standard audience data into traditional measurement metrics (AQH, Cume, Time Spent Listening.) More than 5,600 stations subscribe to the service, according to Ando Media.
 

 
Just three weeks after its competitor Onstream Media walked away from a similar deal to purchase the Internet video platform vendor, Kit Digital acquired Narrowstep, one of the leaders in the race to provide TV quality video over the internet. The deal provides Kit with a technology geared to distribute content over Microsoft’s Silverlilght platform.
 
The Australian government committed $31 billion (U.S.) to building out a private-public national fiber optic broadband network as part of a AUS $78 billion economic stimulus package, per Reuters.
 

 
Newspaper publishers are producing and attracting more video views on their websites than ever before, according to a new analysis from Brightcove of 187 of its newspaper clients. Lower production costs, higher quality delivery systems and the slow but steady migration of ad dollars to the web have led to several clear trends:

• Videos uploaded by each newspaper into the Brightcove platform grew from an average of 186 videos per month in 2007 to an average of 638 videos per month in 2008. The total number of uploaded videos grew by nearly 1500% in 2008
• The number of Brightcove-powered video player-loads on each newspaper website jumped from an ave. of 169,093/month to 964,144/month in 2008. Total video player loads on newspaper websites grew by more than 700%
• Video streams on newspaper sites are growing an ave. of more than 35% quarter-over-quarter Last quarter, Brightcove’s newspaper customers did 42,777,231 video streams, compared to 15,311,542 video streams the same quarter last year
• Nearly 100% of Brightcove’s newspaper clients have enabled advertising for their online video content. An increasing number are partnering with third-party ad networks to help sell and optimize yield on their video inventory

 
Google crept up to a 72.39% market share of all U.S. searches according to Hitwise, an increase of 8% from a year earlier. Yahoo! Search (down 19% from a year ago), MSN Search and Ask.com received 16.36%, 5.50% and 4.07%, respectively. Hitwise also found that longer search queries (8 characters or more) have become more popular, growing by 20% in keyword clicks compared to March 2007. (However one, two and three word searches are still far more common.)
 

                                                                                    
Nintendo, which was thrown for a loop this week when it discovered that the PS3 console outsold the Wii for the first time in Japan in March, launched a new portable gaming device in the U.S. and Europe this week dubbed the DSi. More of Nintendo’s answer to the iPhone, The Wi Fi-enabled DSi combines gaming, interactive features and a digital camera with lenses facing both inward and outward. It retails for $170.
 
Starz Media signed an agreement with Artificial Life, Inc. to create mobile game applications inspired by the upcoming Overture Films horror movie Pandorum, starring Dennis Quaid.
 

 
Talk about a blow to the development pipeline. Legendary game designer Will Wright (“The Sims,” “Spore,”) announced he is leaving Redwood City, CA-base Electronic Arts to devote more energy to his Stupid Fun Club think tank he founded in 2001.
 
Former dotMobi CEO Neil Edwards is joining mobile virtual community Cellufun as the company’s new CEO. Neil is charged with launching new revenue-generating services around virtual goods and messaging within the Cellufun social gaming community and to expand the company’s mobile audience internationally.
 
Interactive television company Ensequence made two new hires. Andy Addis, former SVP of Comcast and EVP of Hillcrest Labs, joins as SVP/Marketing & Business Development. Tom Epes, former Microsoft GM, becomes SVP/Sales. Both report directly to Peter Low, Ensequence President and COO.
 
Dailymotion hired a pair of ad sales veterans: Former BET.com sales executive Marc Cristiano and former WWE interactive sales director Steve Moriya. Steve will be leading Dailymotion’s presence in Los Angeles as Director of Sales, Western Region.
 

 
In this day and age bands can’t wait for the Yahoo’s and the AOL’s of the world to figure out how to strike the right balance between community features and e-commerce plays. If the old adage “if you want something done you’ve got to do it yourself,” applies anywhere, it’s in the digital media space. Check out NiN.com, the official website of Trent Reznor’s industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor, who feuded for years with his record labels TVT Records and later UMG-owned InterScope, became famous for urging his fans to “steal” his music online then offered the 2008 release “The Slip” as a free download. This site serves as an excellent primer on how to build an online community by offering a rich set of features and content options that don’t cost a fortune to implement but keep fans coming back for more. Sampling is encouraged with free downloads and video footage. Registered members (there are close to 300,000 of them) have access to ticket pre-sales, forum postings and a cool remix.nin.com tool that allows you to come up with your own mash-ups using NiN’s angst ridden music. Integrations with popular web 2.0 services like Twitter, Blogger, Flickr and YouTube provide rich media content served off site. True to the crowdsourcing revolution, the tools allow NIN’s rabid fans to keep the site constantly updated with content. The big news this week is Trent and Rob Sheridan’s walkthrough of their latest technical coup – a new upcoming iPhone app designed to be a mobile portal to the NIN online community. The app will offer access to thousands of images, tracks and fan-generated remixes updated in real time.
 
Later — Wayne
 Wayne Karrfalt for Cynopsis: Digital
04.09.09

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A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

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SITUATION WANTED: SR RSCH ANALYST who worked w/ Natl Cable Comm forlast5 years and Telerep for3 years.Critical role on corporate research and industry driven projects, specialist for all LPM Analyses. Contact: [email protected] (4/10)

SITUATION WANTED: DOCUMENTARY. PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, WRITER in L.A. Credits: National Geo, PBS, Discovery, History CH, TLC and MSNBC. Contact email: [email protected] (4/10)

SITUATION WANTED: FILM & VIDEO EDITOR & PROD. (PREDITOR)/ NY looking for work. I have been working in Film and Video for approx. 15 yrs. Own equipment/office & a website with my reel & work exp listed at: www.giantedit.com [email protected] (4/10)

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