Yesterday I attended the IAB Marketplace: Digital Video conference. Digital Video has so much exciting potential for the industry and seems to be getting bigger. Brian Shin of Visibile Measures said video is growing faster than anyone could have imagined and Cisco estimates that in 2013, 90 percent of Internet bandwidth will be taken up by video traffic. How do we harness this potential?
The lineup of speakers including industry leaders like Joey Trotz, Chris Young and Robert Davis to comedian Kevin Pollack as well as Kevin Jonas, Sr. (father of the Jonas brothers and co-founder of the Jonas Group) seem well poised to answer this question. Here are some key takeaways from the day:
User revolution
Robert Davis, Ogilvy Worldwide, said what we are experiencing is a user revolution. It’s happening in content production, in contributions to content, in viewing habits, and even in advertising. Viewers of digital video content are now involved in all these things. Brian Shin, who was co-keynote with Robert Davis, said we are seeing a whole new class of “choice-based” advertising. Users pick what ads they want to engage with.
Viewers of digital video want an experience customised for them. Some want to get involved and participate, some just want to sit back and enjoy. As Lance Podell, YouTube Next Lab/Google puts it, people have affinity with shows, not networks. And the digital video content producers are finally meeting the viewers at those points.
Convergence
Kiefer Sutherland could not make it to the conference due to a conflict but Chris Young and comedian Kevin Pollack discussed his project, The Confession in his absence.
The Confession, is a digital-only series currently playing on Hulu. Digital Broadcast Group (DBG) is co-producing the series. Kevin Pollack referred to it a “watershed” moment for digital video. A-list talent, script writers and producers are willing to create content that is digital only.
According to Chris Young of DGB, the Hulu partnership allowed for the monetization of the series. Hulu was able to provide the revenue stream through their advertisers.
But Chris also made the point that what this project really illustrates is that convergence is here. Convergence, being able to run media across any platform, has been talked about for years. This capability has been possible for quite some time but the actual adoption has accelerated more recently. The speakers at the conference kept talking about how their kids have no concept of broadcast TV being “better” than digital video. They are just as likely to watch a video on a tablet, computer or smartphone and they don’t feel like they are missing out on anything. The quality and quantity of content is comparable to broadcast. The recent release of apps from the likes of Cablevision, Time Warner and Comcast supports what Chris is saying – this is happening now.
As Lance Podell said there’s no concept of primetime anymore. People come home and they “turn on YouTube.” What does that mean? They are viewing what they want, how they want and at a time that’s convenient for them. Lance said that in 2-3 years it won’t matter where I watch video or what I watch it on.
Measurements
Randall Rothenberg, CEO and President of the IAB, said the big question is how do we make DV scale like regular TV. Is it even possible?
According to the presentations the answer is measurements and standards. Joey Trotz of Turner Broadcasting said video buyers are not going to move dollars out of traditional media until they know how to quantify what they get. He and Suzie Reider of YouTube/Google cited a new report that listed improved ROI measurement and better standardized metrics as the top opportunities for increasing the growth of digital video advertising. You can read more about the report in this press release.
Julie DeTraglia of NBC Universal was the moderator for the panel on measurement. She described how difficult figuring out the answer to “how did 30 Rock do over the weekend” really is. She said she can answer a lot of different ways; the data from all sources is all different from each other. Also she make the point that for operations implementing tags is not like flipping a switch. There is development time involved.
There seems to be a consensus that we need to find commonalities across the different platform metrics in order to measure effectiveness, in general and against each other. However, coming to an agreement on what those commonalities are is where we get stuck.
To that end the IAB mentioned it’s initiative called “Making Measurements Make Sense.” The initiative is a joint effort with the ANA and the 4As. It’s goal is to create a currency not just for video put for digital across platforms. You can read more about that in the IAB press release.
Monsters – do you have any feedback from this event? We would love to hear from you – please contact us to submit a blog post or leave your thoughts in the comments below.
If you want to learn more about this IAB event visit the twitter stream #iabdv and check back with iab.net to see if they have the video sessions available.
Yesterday I attended the IAB Marketplace: Digital Video conference. Digital Video has so much exciting potential for the industry and seems to be getting bigger. Brian Shin of Visibile Measures said video is growing faster than anyone could have imagined and Cisco estimates that in 2013, 90 percent of Internet bandwidth will be taken up by video traffic. How do we harness this potential? Here are some key takeaways from the day.