This is old news by now given that the NCAA made its announcement this morning, but March Madness basketball games will be made available free online (through the semifinals that is) at NCAASports.com. While the games had previously been made available online via a CBS subscription package, the NCAA is taking a leap into the online ad world to find out which business model works best.
There will be web blackouts for games aired on local broadcast stations (presumably using some kind of geo-identification technology), and the free games will come packaged with extras such as highlights and interviews. (More on the NCAA’s decision to go free online in next week’s IP Media Monitor.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:37 PM | Print | Comments (0)
A group of European publishers warned Google today that the search engine giant better not get used to receiving their content at no cost, according to this AP piece. Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, gave a speech in Brussels saying “[t]he new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years.”
Balsemao also said
“It is fascinating to see how these companies ‘help themselves’ to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people’s content.”
The big beef European publishers seem to have with Google is Google News, which, ironically, doesn’t sell advertising. Agence France Presse has sued Google for including its articles and images in Google News.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:28 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Although the blogosphere is replete with references to this “news” item, I feel compelled to add my own two cents’ worth here. The editors of the New American Oxford Dictionary have chosen the word “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005.
Podcast, defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.
It’s certainly the best alternative among the top candidates, which included “bird flu” (hey guys, that’s two words), “IDP” (hey again, that’s an acronym), short for an internally displaced person, or “squick” (which I believe to be a made-up word), which purportedly is a verb that means cause immediate and thorough revulsion as in “was anyone else squicked by our waiter’s piercings?”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:33 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The chatter was right — NBC and Apple announced a deal to distribute NBC-owned TV programming to the video iPod via iTunes. Current and old shows from NBC, the USA Network and the SciFi Channel will be available on iTunes.
Among the programs are “The Office, “Law & Order,” “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Surface.” Among the classics are “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet” and “Knight Rider.” The revival of the oldies on iTunes is getting high marks in some quarters.
As was true of Apple’s deal with Disney, the shows are downloadable for $1.99/pop.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:04 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Ross Levinsohn, President of Fox’s newly formed Interactive Media unit (FIM), gave a blow-the-doors-down presentation today at UBS Warburg’s Global Media Conference. Hoping to dispel critics of Fox’s billion-dollar Internet property buying spree, Levinsohn laid out a grand and compelling vision for how the Murdoch-owned enterprise will make tons of money off the Internet.
As proof of the wisdom of Fox’s purchase of Scout, IGN and MySpace, Levinsohn said that revenues for FIM would soar by 538% from 2005 to 2006, jumping from only $47 million to over $300 million. “The time to focus on the Internet is today,” Levinsohn said. “There are explosions over every kind of segment. Now the consumer can view content anywhere, anytime on multiple devices.”
Levinsohn rattled off so many strategic points of focus and so many new announcements that it was hard to keep track. Social networking powerhouse MySpace, which Fox acquired with its acqusition of Intermix, has added 16 million new unique users in the two months since Fox took over, raising the total number of users to over 40 million.
“We’re focusing on strong organic growth for each of these properties. We’re not slowing the growth of innovation,” Levinsohn said. MySpace launched its own record label in November, and is gearing up to launch versions in the UK and in the Chinese-speaking world. Fox plans to leverage the dynamic MySpace communities to expand its film properties and to integrate other forms of Fox content.
In terms of content integration, Levinsohn gave examples of just how the powerful mix of Fox properties come together in FIM. Fox animated show, “The Family Guy,” which no longer airs on television, will be revived as an Internet-only production in 2006, aided by a fan community of over 175K people on MySpace and promoted across the Fox sites via a “Great American Sports Writer” contest sponsored by big name advertisers, including McDonalds.
Today FIM accounts for more than 15% of U.S. ad impressions on the Internet, he contended.
Fox will also produce the website for its hit TV show American Idol and under a recently concluded deal has the rights to simoncowell.com. “Fox Interactive Media will be a must-buy for advertisers in 2006,” Levinsohn said.
It has already secured a high-profile cross-property ad deal for the DVD release of the movie “Wedding Crashers (a Time Warner film via New Line, not a Fox property)” which appeals to Fox’s youthful users.
While the company plans to create a common technical platform for the easy distribution of content across all its sites, the focus for FIM remains on personalization and market fragmentation. “We think about portals differently than most people. Traditional portals are linear for most people,” Levinsohn said.
“We’re focused on building social portals where the consumer is in the middle. Their home page is focused on their favorite things,” which can also have the happy effect of having users actually help to sell Fox products. If someone buys a Fox-generated video clip and posts it on their MySpace profile, a visitor will be able to purchase that same clip with a single click of the button.
“Consumers will be able to take our traditional content and remix it on their home pages and that’s chaotic but frankly that’s where the web is going,” Levinsohn said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:06 PM | Print | Comments (0)VoIP pioneer and conference marketing genius Jeff Pulver has just posted his predictions for 2006, and most of them seem right on the mark. One of the most intriguing predictions that seems likely to come true is that the support of voice will “become part of the ecommerce strategy for many websites.”
Indeed, Amazon’s acquisition of Skype has all but sealed this trend as a certainty. Speaking of big-ticket acquisitions, Pulver predicts another couple of big ones in 2006.
There will be at least two major acquisitions in the billion-dollar-plus price range, matching or exceeding eBay’s purchase price to acquire Skype. Major media and Internet companies will announce blended, transformational IP-based communications plays.
On the video front, Pulver makes a risky prediction, but one that seems capable of actually happening given the scorching pace of video migration to the web. “Look for ‘Television’ shows to premiere first on the Internet and then appear on Broadcast TV, Cable or Satellite,” Pulver predicts.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:46 AM | Print | Comments (1)
Like most analysts, I receive dozens of press releases a day, but one that just came over the transom from VoIP provider SunRocket caught my eye. SunRocket, which just raised $25 million from an investment round led by Mayfield Partners, is now offering a monthly VoIP service for $9.95, a sign that the price point for voice service continues its steep decline.
While not a replacement for primary line service, the package, which SunRocket is calling the “Limited Edition,” is a nice one for a second home line. It includes enhanced 911 service, free calling features such as call waiting, caller ID and three-way calling, 200 minutes of global calling and unlimited inbound and SunRocket to SunRocket Internet phone calling.
Moreoever, additional lines cost only $3 per month, and additional outbound minutes are only $.03/each. Woe to the incumbent telcos, which are already grappling with a free-fall in local line counts.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
An op-ed piece in today’s New York Times by Damian Kulash Jr., who is the lead singer for a band called OK Go makes the case that copy protection embedded in CDs hurts musicians, or at least those trying to make it to the big time. “It’s much better to have copies of albums on lots of iPods, even if only half of them have been paid for, than to have a few CD’s sitting on a shelf and not being played,” Kulash writes.
Kulash is actually touching on a much bigger trend that seems to be affecting all intellectual property. A certain amount of free, unfettered access is actually good for business. The rise of the open Internet and the abundant amount of access to written, filmed or recorded content actually spurs sales, as many writers, artists and filmmakers have discovered.
The truth is that the more a record gets listened to, the more successful it is. This is not just our megalomania, it’s Marketing 101: the more times a song gets played, the more of a chance it has to catch the ear of someone new. It doesn’t do us much good if people buy our records and promptly shelve them; we need them to fall in love with our songs and listen to them over and over. A record that you can’t transfer to your iPod is a record you’re less likely to listen to, less likely to get obsessed with and less likely to tell your friends about.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:59 AM | Print | Comments (3)
According to the New York Times, the highly intriguing talks between Time Warner and potential investors Microsoft, Google and Comcast about those companies’ purchase of a stake in AOL no longer involve…anyone buying a stake in AOL.
Time Warner is purportedly still in negotiations with Microsoft and Google (with Comcast to be pulled in at some later specified time — makes sense - why does Time Warner need Comcast, really?) over other kinds of deals, arrangements that have to do with search pacts. The article contains a heavy hint that Time Warner’s negotiations were geared all along to getting the best terms for AOL on search.
Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said he felt that Mr. Parsons had always preferred to keep substantial control of America Online and was mainly seeking the best terms for the right to provide search on AOL. “Parsons has done a masterful job of making it look like AOL was for sale when I don’t think it was,” he said. “The most likely outcome is simply an improvement in the terms AOL gets from Google.”
Update: According to the Wall Street Journal, AOL is nearing a deal with Microsoft to mount a service that competes with Google in the online ad arena. Under the deal, AOL would drop Google as its search provider and use Microsoft’s MSN service instead. The two companies would then combine ad sales forces to sell ads across both companies’ Internet properties.
Clearly someone from Time Warner has been blabbing to the press. Both articles mention renegade investor Carl Icahn, who is critical of Time Warner’s management and gearing up for a proxy fight. Icahn is apparently displeased with the idea of Time Warner selling a stake in AOL because such a move puts a dollar figure valuation on the online unit, a value that presumably is too low.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:26 AM | Print | Comments (0)The New York Times’ Steve Lohr provides an overview of Google’s “revamped…social contract with its workers,” which is fueled by the company’s turbo-charged revenue growth and a management philosophy built around the motto “Don’t Be Evil.”
Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company’s headquarters…Other amenities there include children’s day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area. And the big perk: the company’s engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments.
To encourage a sense of ownership, all Google employees receive stock grants or options…The company also doles out cash payments, including Founders’ Awards of millions of dollars, for innovations that add value to the Google franchise.
Lohr then asks “[b]ut what happens to all this corporate largesse when, someday, the laws of economic gravity are felt at Google and growth slows sharply or worse?” He suggests Google’s management believes “any slowdown will be a soft landing that can be managed by easing the pace of hiring,” and quotes Shona L. Brown, Google’s vp of operations:
“We will not pull back on our commitments to employees,” Ms. Brown said. “The last thing we would do is take it out of the hide of our employees. That is a path to a downward spiral.”
Brown makes a good point, but it’s one that’s a lot easier to live by when a company is enjoying, as Google is, a prolonged and dramatic upward cycle. The good news for Google and its employees is that this upward cycle could very well continue for a long time, allowing the company’s employment model to evolve along with its revenues, profits and economic impacts. That employment model, coupled with Google’s industry-transforming intention-based advertising model (and, of course, its skyrocketing revenue and profits), makes the company a uniquely fascinating and important specimen in the Web 2.0 ecoystem.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 1:54 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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