This is my room

Racing to Save Lives

I’m proposing a challenge -it’s to help make a difference in someone’s life. All I’m asking is to give up two lunches for the month. That’s $20. And donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It’s that simple.

My goal is to raise $4200 for blood cancer research- that would allow the opportunity for researchers to have funding to develop a cure, as well as assistance for those battling leukemia & lymphoma.

Visit my website and make a donation:
http://pages.teamintraining.org/ntx/tucson09/jdouglas

2 lunches. 5 Starbucks. That’s all. It’s also worth checking with your employer to see if they match funds- many do.)

Top 10 Reasons to donate:

1. 10. It’s a chance to save a life, it’s a chance to make a difference.

2. 9. It’s a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donation!
3. 8. Leukemia is the #1 killer of children.
4. 7. $25 pays for a patient’s chemotherapy prescription co-pay.
5. 6. $50 will register one person to become a bone marrow donor.
6. 5. $75 provides bone marrow typing for a potential donor.
7. 4. $100 provides patient travel costs to the cancer center.
8. 3. $150 provides aid to a patient for ONE YEAR.
9. 2. $1000 will help the LLS fund a researcher to find a cure.
10. 1. Today, through the work of the society and your donations, 712,000 Americans that would have undoubtedly died - are SURVIVING.

Thank you for helping, and I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Have a great day!

Re-Discovered Apple

….just wanted to take a quick moment and dish out some thoughts on the ShopDiscover program for Discover credit card members. Back in March I was consulting in the Bay Area and realized it was time to prep the old Apple laptop for burial and spend some cash getting a new(er) one. After much debate, I decided to go with a refurbished 15″ MacBook Pro — the new ones are quite abysmal in my opinion; limitations include no matte screen option, and only miniport support for external displays (and w/o dvi adapter!).

Before buying the computer online, I jumped into the ShopDiscover “mall.” I’ve used it before for the odd gift here and there, but a few percent savings on a $30 gift isn’t something to brag about (just a nice little discount). But when it came to the laptop, I couldn’t pass the offer up. I saved a $100 on the laptop just by visiting the online Apple Store through the ShopDiscover website; factor in the free printer promotion from Apple, and it was a pretty good deal all around.

What does all this have to do with new media? Well, it has more to do with my new job and a Discover Card promotion than anything else. I recently joined the Product Management team at DG FastChannel where I was greeted with a Dell laptop. But given that I’ve got this pretty much brand new Apple, I’m tempted to decline the offer and just use the superior product (ha!) ….as for the Discover promotion, this entry puts me in the running for a $50 gift card. I figure that if I’m lucky enough to get it, i can use it combination with that ShopDiscover Apple discount again and get a new iPhone!

Hmm… just noticed I can get 5% off Six Flags over Texas with ShopDiscover too… not bad. Here’s to hoping it’s at least somewhat comparable to Cedar Point.

Why hulu should stop caring about hulu.com

This isn’t going to be a clear, concise and straightforward explanation, but rather a variety of thoughts, which if twisted and turned and put in the right order, will make the proper case.

1. hulu does not appear to have a viable long term business model. They have enough problems selling inventory as it is, and it will only be a short while longer before all the MSOs each have their own full service portals.
2. Online video growth for full-length content has already gone through its most dramatic cycle and is most likely only going to see modest (but still decent) growth from here on out.  mobile consumption wont boost viewership dramatically, as we’re not capable of being mobile AND paying attention to long-form content.  public transit is pretty much the only suitable area for consumption
3. Even with the growth we’ve seen online viewing, the older demographic (which also has all the income) is not going to die off anytime soon, leaving the vast majority of viewing to occur on the television for some time
4. hulu has never released breakdowns of what content people are watching, but it’s my guess that the majority of viewing can be attributed to network programming, and a variety of pick-of-the-week clips. This is the very same content that people currently DVR on their television, and that MSOs will most likely reach out for VoD rights.  It’s also the same content available on the “network.com” sites.  Netflix, Blockbuster and PPV have the movie route covered.
5. hulu cant charge for its service (bc of point #4)

hulu should rethink it’s long term strategy and should embrace the MSOs and telcos.  I don’t have Comcast, but I’ve heard the majority of Fancast content is hulu.  This is where hulu should focus its efforts.  It should become the respresentative of online content for networks.  It will allow the networks to manage what is “free” and what gets rolled up into MSOs+Telcos online offering.  It also, and most importantly, creates a common platform for advertising.

2003 v. 2009

I’m not impressed with the “highlights” of this latest Nielsen report. 2003 to 2009 comparisons are of very limited value. Everyone knows and accepts social media and video has changed the game. Read the full report and pay closer attention to the 08/09 comparisons.

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!

I have not seen any information implying that offering full episodic content online is at the expense of increased television viewing. Until that time comes, I believe it’s fair to say that so long as operating costs can be covered by advertising to millions of viewers each day, watching millions of ads, than there is no reason to expect content will stop being available online.

True, the concerns of future cannibalization could lead networks to act sooner rather than later. But who knows what the MSOs are planning in the the meantime. Given the expectations of millions of viewers now accustomed to watching content online legally, any quick removal of content would surely create a breeding ground for rampant piracy.

Regardless of the outcome, consumers should not be the least bit worried of being able to watch content on their laptop, desktops, and phones. Content owners know people will watch content on those platforms, and they’ll take some revenue rather than none. Of course, none of this means that hulu is the right platform or solution.

One of the big differences between advertising on television and advertising on Internet television, is that a measurement standard is in place for evaluating different properties. To date, you can rarely find weekly online viewership numbers for the latest episodes of Lost, The Office, Heroes, 24 or any other shows for that matter. Perhaps the networks are sharing these numbers with their advertisers. But given that the only public information are monthly viewers or videos played (and distributed 30-60 days after the month being reported), I find it hard to believe they are.

Nielsen is wrong.

Forget the intro, I’m jumping right in -

Contrary to some recent popular media coverage suggesting that more Americans are rediscovering “free TV” via the Internet, computer video tends to be quite small with an average time of just two minutes (a little more than 0.5 percent) a day.

WRONG.  There is a major fallacy in the logic.  I’m surprised it hasn’t been picked up, and even more surprised that it’s being somewhat propagated by NewTeeVee. The problem with this statement is that television distributed via the Internet is an extremely SMALL portion of all the video available on the web.  Drawing conclusions from averages say nothing of the growth that exists within the Internet Television (ITV) domain.  Here’s the original Nielsen/CRE press release.

From the archives of the ITVT Newsletter:

ABC.com users watched a record 815 million minutes of full-length episodes on the player during the month, representing a 53% increase over the previous month and a 110% increase over May, 2007. In addition, ABC says, viewers watched 37 million episodes, representing an increase of 27% over the previous month, and each viewer generally watched multiple episodes during the month.

…and further down in the same release:

Since launching in 2006, approximately 400 million episodes have been initiated through the ABC.com Full Episode Player.

So what’s wrong with this picture?  It’s a fundamental problem that the industry has been avoiding for the past few years.  There is a clear difference between “video being distributed over the public Internet” and “long form episodic content being distributed over the public Internet, for consumption on computers, laptops, mobile devices and (gasp) televisions!”

The real shame in all of this is the industry’s lack of attention to this playout environment.  There is a lot of opportunity for advertising in 400m episodes.  To be more precise, there are over 1 billion opportunities for ads in ~400m episodes.

Update:  In all fairnes to Chris and the NewTeeVee staff, they do call out concern for that data point.  However, it’s not done until the very last paragraph, while the front page summary leaves the claim unchallenged.

Hulu Grew 33% in February, I think.

I’m quite fed up with the latest Hulu viewership report.  Why is it that the title of NewTeeVee’s latest article is “Hulu Grew 33% in February,” and not “comScore and Nielsen differ by a factor of 4″ ???

If I can’t actualy count on the numbers (no pun intended), I don’t care about how much anyone apparently grew.    I suppose that the 33% is a consistent increase across the different reporting systems, but it’s lost on me why the numbers are so dramatically different in the first place.  Streams are close, but still look to be ~10% different.  Unique viewer counts exhibit a horrendous difference.  And viewing times don’t appear to exhibit any consistent correlation.

What is the actual problem with capturing accurate information?  Is it the platform’s ability to capture information?  Is it the methodology behind the reporting services’ calculations?  Or is it the implementation of all the different pieces of technology by the content provider?

I suppose it’s good that we’ve essentially got two different ratings agencies’ numbers.  But it’s a disappointment that NewTeeVee isn’t ushering in an era of reliability.  Urging comScore and Hulu to sync up on their data release schedule isn’t enough; and to be honest, it’s not even that important.

PluggedIn Falls Out

It’s no surprise to me that PluggedIn is in dire straights.  I tried my hardest to use the service when it launched, regularly posting my favorite videos to facebook and checking the site whenever a classic video from the past came to mind, but the responsiveness of the interface was simply too slow.  It seems ridiculuos to me that it has taken YouTube so long to create the right environment for a similar offering.  Had PluggedIn got their stuff together sooner, they may have been able to offer a truly competitive offering in the market.  However, it’s reasonable to assume that any first mover advantage PluggedIn had was never a match for YouTube’s dominance.  That being said, I hope that whatever offering YouTube comes up with allows for a view that only displays official music videos– and more importantly, that doesnt separate content and recommendations by publisher.  No one knows what labels (yes, that’s plural) their favorite artists are on, and such distinctions or limitations will kill the user experience.

Not Buying the Rainbow

So Skittles handed over their homepage to twitter.  Ok.  Cool.  I guess.  But after reading what Alisa Leonard-Hansen had to say, I can’t help but add my own commentary to a few things:

A L-H: “Pageless, seamless brand touch points that are inherently embedded in the social web”
My response: Over-blown, dramatized reasoning for something that was done because 1) it will create its own press and 2) appeal to the target audience

A L-H: “It bypasses those crappy flash micro-sites that no one likes anyways”
My response: Preach on, sister!

A L-H: “…’we get it.  you the consumer define our brand, so we are making you the central point of the brand experience.’ ”
My response: Ok.  I changed my mind. Please stop.

This looks to be a bunch of mumbo-jumbo voodoo phrases.  Whatever happened to being straight forward?  And if anything, I would think brevity would be preferred over all else when doing an interview via iChat.  There’s really no need to upsell what’s already been sold, right?

Where is all the Transparency?

You can not turn on the radio, the television, or read an RSS feed in today’s economic climate without stumbling upon the word “transparency.”  Yet somehow today’s media companies have been absolved from having to provide its very own industry with accurate viewership information.  Earlier today I began to comment on the over-exaggerated excitement around Hulu’s boost in viewership from its television campaign.  But when it came time to do the math, and calculate what percentage of the Superbowl viewing population would be required to satisfy a 50% boost in Hulu’s numbers, I immediately ran into this problem:

• This ad age article cites Nielsen as reporting January unique viewers for Hulu to be at 4.5m;
• This Neilsen Online article cites November’s unique viewers for Hulu at 7.5m;
• and this comScore article shows hulu with a whopping 24.6m unique viewers in December

Now, all I really wanted was a good estimate of Hulu’s viewership base in January… but when the numbers appear as volatile as this, I see no real point on continuing to perpetuate the inconsistencies.  Can someone please shed some light on how these numbers were calculated?  And why isn’t Hulu coming out with their own information amidst this lack of clarity?  Even sites that implement comScore and Nielsen beacons all still (and should) have their own internal analytics.  It’s ridiculous for those reporting on the industry to be faced with such convoluted information.

It should also go without saying that I would expect the same level of transparency from other leading content providers, namely ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, CW etc…