danielheaf.com

Dr Horrible

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it. - Dr Horrible

A few months ago I gave a presentation on how professional content producers will be siphoned off traditional platforms over the next few years. While I concentrated on on-air talent like Ricky Gervais, Stephen Fry and Chris Moyles, there may never be a better example than Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, penned by godlike genius and creator of Buffy the Vampire slayer, Joss Whedon. To my mind it is the best example of on-demand TV to date.

Composed during last year's writers' strike, when Whedon found himself at a loose end, this is big TV production talent making something themselves and importantly something bespoke for the web. The first of three acts was released for free on July 15th and the final act on July 19th. From July 20th onwards all three episodes were available exclusively through iTunes where they continue to occupy 3 out of the top 5 TV download slots. This clever windowing gave access to all those with their ears to the ground (reviews and bloggers), to watch it for free and to tell the rest of the world it was unmissable.

While unquestionably ambitious from a TV perspective Whedon, who's known to be a bit of net-head, has sown his horribleness across the web with manifestations on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube. For me the icing on the cake has to be the Dark Horse comics and Dr Horrible / Captain Hammer t-shirts. Now if they'd make the Doc's X-Ray goggles available!

TV

Grim 08

Despite being woefully out of shape I've booked myself in for some ritual humiliation and torture. If 8 miles in the mud and wet is your thing feel free to join me. I'm running on the Saturday.

Virtual meat sticks

So, there we are trying to convince BBC Wordwide to create a virtual world for one of it's super brands. Endless discussion, business cases, 5 year projections, meetings and cajoling. The brand is ripe for expansion and everyone knows it - the audience would love to engage in new and deeper ways. We know that because they're already doing it.... on other peoples' sites. But the lights are stuck on amber...

So you can understand my upset I am when I stumble across Spicy Town. Spicy Town, as I'm told by Slim Jim's PR agency, is a virtual world for "people who want to explore their spicy side." Given that the Slim Jim is the US answer to the Pepperami it would have been more appropriate to create a virtual garage forecourt where you can contemplate the minutes you have left before contracting a horrific human / bovine illness.

I've been told Spicy Town, is a "wild place where people can create a unique alter ego that’s a little aggressive, insane, adventurous, and mischievous." Once you've created your Spicy Side avatar, you can "challenge other users to real-time rumbles, talk smack, or just hang out in the immersive digital Spicy Town where you can cruise around and break mailboxes, spray paint walls, and collect Slim Jims to unlock new spicy moves and annihilate unsuspecting Spicy Side residents."

Doesn't matter today if it's good or bad. It's just wrong!

Eventually everything connects

Thinking about how the BBC might produce more short form factual content and came across this:

Written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames in 1977 it couldn't be more suited for distribution and consumption on YouTube.

Q & A

This weekend, my drive to Henley and the reoccurrence of insomnia saw me catch-up with some listening. Churned through morass of podcasts and audio books including episodes of Front Row, Now Show, Media Talk, Guardian Technology, Harvard Business Review, The Command Line, The New Yorker, The Economist and The New Scientist. Many hours of great listening but it was the Sony Award winning drama Q & A that really caught and held my attention.

From the producers of A Suitable Boy, Fatherland, and The Handmaid's Tale and based on the best-selling novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, the production was recorded on location on the streets of Mumbai with an Indian cast.

Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated street kid from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a live TV quiz show. But as Ram explains "the brain is not an organ the poor are authorised to use". His account is an extraordinary adventure through every strata of modern-day India, from orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, into the homes of Bollywood's rich and famous, a well meaning, but ineffective British Missionary, and a seedy Australian diplomat.

A heart-moving story, woven around an inventive format, constantly punctuated by soundscape of an India metropolis. Worth staying up all night for.

BBC Worldwide Annual Report

Inspired by Dan Taylor I ran BBCW's annual report through Wordle so we might compare it to the public service report.


From Dan Taylor:

UK Video: YouTube still dominates

Loving the new look iPlayer. Came across this nugget on PaidContent.UK

Still, despite its strides, YouTube continues to dominate online video viewing in the UK, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). The research firm’s Video Metrix service found that Google--of which YouTube accounted for 99 percent of all videos viewed on the site--attracted a 48 percent share of all online videos viewed in the U.K, or an average of 81.1 videos a viewer. BBC sites came in a distant second with a 1.2 percent share, an average of 6.7 videos a viewer

Quick conclusions:

• YouTube dominates video search and delivery in the UK
• Users prefer short form video to watching long form VOD at present
• YouTube's dominance will decrease over the next year or so
• Comparison by session time necessary

Across the pond things are much the same with Google sites once again ranking as the top video property with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. According to ComScore data the average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.

Hulu, the TV streaming service most comparable to the BBC's iPlayer, owned by NBC Universal and News Corp doesn't figure in the ComScore data. But according to Nielsen May was a different story. Nielsen reported that Hulu climbed to no. 9 among video sites, ahead of ABC.com (79.9 m streams) and behind CNN (89.7 m).

Last week, Hulu themselves reported that they saw 63 million streams during their first month of measurement, April 2008. Despite the number of visitors and streams, Hulu's success doesn't translate into big business. A recent Silicon Alley Insider article is speculating that Hulu will earn between $45 - 90 million during their first 12 months - April 2008 through March 2009. However, after paying off their content partners, their net revenue will be between $12.5 million and $25 million.

Digital Privacy

Digital privacy and it's implications on society is an issue of growing concern. Over the last month I've been along to a few privacy / identity discussions and I thought it might be useful to post some top level thoughts.

• The lines between personal / public / private / professional are blurring
• Like Moore's Law the amount of personal information online doubles every 6 months
• The UK population are not well versed on how to manage their digital identities
• Children are most vulnerable as parents themselves lack the necessary experience and knowledge to educate them
• We're lost sight of how to define and discuss privacy intelligently
• Privacy allows individuals to experiment and fail without fear of retribution
• To give up privacy is to give up freedom
• A society that doesn't protect privacy becomes a society without trust and integrity
• Companies and governments are not as benign as we have been led to believe

Advertising: future trends

The European online advertising industry is at most two years behind receiving its “fair share” of ad spending based upon consumers’ time spent online. The Internet’s highest possible expected share of the European ad market in 2006 was nine percent, a level it will surpass in 2008 - Jupiter Research (June 2008)

In the global advertising market, traditional television advertising is still the core purchase in advertising campaigns, with higher rates and longer purchase deals than those found in all other media.

According to JupiterResearch consumer surveys, European online users increased their median weekly online time by 25 percent between 2006 and 2007. This growth has created a new advertising opportunities, deeply attuned to digital user behaviour actions and taste expressions.

Subsequently it's of no surprise that internet advertising is the fastest growing segment of all ad spending. In certain markets, industry associations report that online ad spending has overtaken spending on some traditional advertising channels.

Of it's annual $4.8 billion in gross ad-revenue, Google paid $1.4 billion to it's various advertising partners. Ad networks are springing up everywhere to aggregate sales for smaller and more specialised markets. Creating and distributing targeted advertising is happening outside of traditional advertising agencies.

Some numbers:

US online ad spending is expected to reach $48 billion by 2011, and $75 billion globally. However, we should bear in mind that when the relatively lower value of advertising within nonmedia online activities is considered, the Internet’s potential share of all ad opportunities can fall dramatically.

Rich media and video spending will continue to grow reaching $1.35 billion (5%) by the end of the year. By 2011 10% of internet advertising will be rich media / video.

Trends

• Digital media solutions and targeted analytics will evolve differently for each adverting category.
  
• Sophisticated advertising formats and sales networks will be necessary to maximise placement across complementary digital media platforms including mobile, social, video and even game-like virtual worlds.
• Overall, the future outlook of online advertising may be in targeted advertising. However, this particular path still remains a double-edged sword: privacy is a huge issue and some advertisers will still opt for scale rather than niche user profiles.
• Over the long term, Google’s online ad monopoly is likely to end, as there are many new players with increasingly aggressive acquisition strategies.
• Data privacy will be a key consideration as players seek to make advertising more targeted. Serious issues were raised with Facebook over how it might use its members’ data, for instance serving relevant advertisements based on keywords in users’ profiles.
• Advertisers have traditionally paid significantly higher prices for advertising opportunities within media- related activities than for advertising opportunities within nonmedia activities. Developing non-media advertising solutions is key if online advertising is to fulfil it's promise.

May's top 10 travel sites

The Hitwise data featured is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US internet users. Key trend here is that TripAdvisor, continues to gain US market share while Hotels.com and ICG have lost share. National Park Service has grown since Feb as interest in domestic Summer holiday's increases.