The Mobile Content Venture with NBCU, FOX, ION and Pearl Mobile DTV (a coalition of nine broadcast TV groups) announced a management team yesterday, albeit a part-time and interim one. Erik Moreno (SVP, Corporate Development, FOX) and Salil Dalvi (SVP, Mobile Platform Development, NBCU) will be co-general managers.

It “takes a village” to raise a mobile television service. The inhabitants are content, spectrum, enabled devices, client software, middleware, metrics and analytics, ad serving software, wireless carrier partnerships, revenue models, broadcast station and network collaboration, etc., etc. That’s just the start. It also takes a vision, risk capital, a business plan and very capable executives and operations team. And of course it will take audiences and advertisers to fuel the whole enterprise. Does the Mobile Content Venture have it all together yet?

Bringing products and services to market is a brutal lifestyle. As companies ranging from FLO TV to VCast, Sprint TV and Mobicast have discovered, there’s no easy path to success in launching and operating a successful mobile television service designed to be consumed on cellphones and other devices. Even when you try to jump-start things by building and operating the whole thing yourself, you can run into snags as FLO TV has discovered. Even using the Super Bowl as bait has still resulted in an obstinate response by consumers.

The Open Mobile Video Coalition’s Washington Consumer Showcase is creating a mobile television community incorporating most of the elements noted above in a research setting  to see what this market might look like some form or fashion for local broadcasting. BIA/Kelsey is assisting Harris Interactive with the consumer marketing research aspect of this project. Start looking for results from this important project over the summer and into the fall.

Tim Reynolds is Meredith Local Media’s director of interactive media and a speaker at Digital Strategies for Broadcasting 2010. He recently shared his tips for growing station web revenues based on his experiences in trying to do so since 1996.

He recommends:

1. Use of large, eye catching display ads. Don’t be afraid to go big!

2. Video display advertising. This allows clients to use on-air ads on the web site.

3. Pre-roll video run before news clips or live feeds with a call to action.

4. Content sponsorships offering fixed position ads on the web site’s high traffic pages, particularly in combination with an on-air package.

5. Put enough weight into the web inventory, it may take 100,000 impressions or more to get the job done for the client.

6. Contesting builds databases and valuable leads for clients.
Mobile banner ads linking to a splash page are engaging. Location based services are technically feasible and just starting to enter ad inventories.

7. Leveraging the power of the mobile device offers great new powers of audience engagement.

To learn more about Tim’s ideas and what Meredith is up to, be sure to attend his session at DSB 2010, “New Ad Revenues for New Times: Monetize Digital Fast!”

While the choice of whether to drop Internet or TV may not be a likely choice faced by many people, it is not entirely theoretical. As we discussed in an earlier post dealing with the growing OTT trend; more households, especially those run by younger heads, are opting to forego video subscription services and rely soley on Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming video over their broadband connections.

Local television broadcasters have an interesting opportunity now to capitalize on this trend toward picking Internet over TV. For most Americans, that may actually come to a choice of managing their expenses and lifestyles between spending on broadband connectivity versus other choices. Broadband is essential and consumers are organizing their lives and value sets around this fundamental reality.

What local television broadcasters can do is start promoting OTA+OTT as the hottest new package on the street. Some younger consumers are honestly amazed that you can get free, wireless, HDTV service from local broadcasters. And coming soon, broadcasters will be adding mobile TV back into their offerings (analog TV could be received on mobile platforms, e.g., Sony’s Watchman, but not so for the first version of the digital TV standard selected in the U.S.).

We see all those cable and satellite commercials. Wouldn’t it be smart for local broadcasters and their networks who increasingly rely on OTT services like YouTube, Hulu and TV.com to reach audiences to start their own promotional campaign on the OTA+OTT value proposition? Networks like CBS and ABC are promoting their shows on the new iPad. How cool would it be to start branding the OTA+OTT experience as as consistent part of these deals. This would help tie networks and their affiliates in a tighter and sustainable relationship long into the future.

OTA+OTT could be this year’s killer app for local television. By binding the notion of what local television is in the minds of consumers to both OTA and OTT platforms, the stronger their bond with the Internet, the better it is for broadcasters. It becomes OTA+OTA versus “those pay services.” Working with innovative firms like Sezmi, broadcasters can even be part of a new type of pay television service to augment advertising revenue with recurring subscription revenue. Sezmi’s CEO, Buno Pati, will be discussing this more at our Digital Strategies for Broadcasting 2010 conference next May 17-19 in Jersey City.

According to new research released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, news is personal, portable and participatory:

• Portable : 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized : 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory : 37% of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

About 92% of Americans get their news from more than one platform; 46% use 4-6 platforms. The most popular news platforms are:

• 78% – local TV station
• 73% – national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or FoxNews
• 61% – online
• 54% radio
• 50% local newspaper
• 17% national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today

This study provides a lot of granularity to how local television and radio audiences are not only getting their news but how they are interacting with it. Users are much more active in personalizing their own experiences with the news and in sharing this with others. Seeing how the broadcast audience extends its experience across platforms in an integrated and active fashion argues for more multiplatform advertising campaigns by local businesses if they really want to make an impact. Local broadcast sales managers would be well served to take a look at this report and see what they can apply to their own sales initiatives.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the goal is both to bring web functionality such as Youtube videos, Google search, Twitter social networking and using Picasa for managing photos. Presumably, “Google TV” would be a Chrome-like browser experience for the user.

Of course, Google has been trying to find a foothold in the television business by managing and selling local advertising inventory. While this has not made much of an impact to date, the company certainly has the resources to keep at it. By establishing a presence in the living room, Google can create its own television ad inventory to sell as viewers launch some version of a browser to interact with this latest box.

Generally, this move by Google and its partners continues the evolution of television’s newest distribution platform, Over The Top (OTT) video. OTT is now competing with cable, satellite and telco distribution as television viewers can access on-demand and linear video using Internet connections to watch network and local television programming as well as movies, Youtube video and other services.

For local broadcasters, this creates interesting opportunities. Local television operators have focused on retransmission and multicast carriage deals with cable, satellite and telco distribution. That’s been a successful source of new and high margin revenue. OTT video creates a new business paradigm and potential new revenue outcomes for broadcasters. Imagine being able to have your own apps in the Google Android app store which can be used to build audience for your OTA programming, drive new web traffic to your sites and add to the overall user experience with your brand by leveraging creative viewer enhancements to extend the viewing experience.

Will we soon see local TV promo spots pushing a new “OTA Plus OTT” solution? Local TV stations can create a consistent user experience by leveraging their over the air signal into TV sets and with the new DTV Mobile standard, mobile phones. Adding to the OTA capability, the enhanced functionality of OTT and this could be a winning combination breathing new life into local TV’s cross-platform growth prospects. Generic Propecia India
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BNET recently featured Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati, who wrote a new book titled “Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business.” In his book, Gulati points out:

“In a marketplace like today, customers have more choices and more information, and services start to look like each other, in what we call a sea of sameness. If you don’t have an ability to transcend beyond the features and functionality of my product versus yours, then you have a problem.”

Gulati points out the fallacy of the notion that media companies are currently consultative and customer focused. Many media sales teams feel if they are asking a few questions about the business and their expected ROI from their marketing efforts that somehow this constitutes consultative selling. Put simply, salespeople are saying “I’ll talk about your needs so long as it leads to you only buying my portfolio of solutions.” Gulati’s point of view is “Most organizations believe they are customer centric when they are asking questions, but they’re communicating with customers through a product lens (with a pre-determined end in mind).” Instead, Gulati says “companies must ask deeper questions such as what problems they are dealing with and what issues are happening in the life of my customers regardless of the solutions the sales person is offering.” The goal in asking probing questions is to help the advertiser better articulate his or her needs so sales can get them met.

Consultative or collaborative selling is about transparency and building solutions that fit the customer’s needs and not necessarily the media company’s balance sheet. If a salesperson is aiming to sell a specific product set, and is willing to un-sell other potential solutions, then this version of consultative selling is merely disguised as the same transactional selling of old — all paths lead to a limited solution. Media consultants recognize there are many media options available to advertisers and that at times their portfolio of media offerings has to co-exist or complement other media and at other times they must fight to win budget from media that may not be as effective or is receiving too large of a share of an advertiser’s budget. Being able to counsel local advertisers on media strengths and weaknesses means salespeople must learn about all types of local media to be effective in selling their own portfolio of media options.

Local advertisers are much smarter about where they spend their marketing dollars because they have access to more information than ever before and have tighter ties to peers through social networks who can offer additional guidance. Salespeople used to be the source of information about what was happening in the local marketplace but now they are one of many sources available. If a salesperson cannot deliver value beyond what an advertiser can access on his or her own, then he or she has very little to offer. True media consultancy is the path where more peer-to-peer relationships are developed. Based on BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor study, 48 percent of SMBs want their media rep to help them understand their media options and make the best choice for their budget among the confusing array of new media choices.

While many media sales organizations are looking at incremental changes to their sales processes, those that are savvy and understand that local advertisers have changed and that the sales role must change are the ones that will thrive. The reality is the market has already changed and it is up to each media company to understand how to recraft its sales strategy and put together a consultative media sales team that understands local media and can be the media guide local advertisers are seeking. It’s time to stop making consultative selling a sales tactic for getting the advertiser to talk and use it as a means for building a relationship, creating value and developing media plans that work for the benefit of the advertiser and leverage their existing marketing activities. If consultative selling fantasy can be turned into reality, media outlets stand to make significant revenue gains and gain a larger, more loyal base of advertisers.

For broadcasters, it is an article of faith that “localism” is a point of differentiation that adds value to their operations. Localism tends to mean local news, sports, weather, traffic, local events, coverage of local government and other promotional and volunteer involvement in the community. There’s a lot of chatter about what it takes to succeed with true “localism.” This past year has seen some notable localism failures. Other efforts are in a nascent stage

One case in point is Allbritton Communications, based in the Washington DC-area. Its television stations are affiliated with ABC, with the largest property being WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in the Washington, DC market.

Our primary interest was the fall 2009 announcement of Allbritton’s plans to launch a Washington, DC focused news site that will combine with the WJLA and NewsChannel8 television and web operations. To launch this new local news site, Allbritton hired Jim Brady, the former editor of Washingtonpost.com, The site is set to launch in Spring 2010 and will have about 50 more news staffers on hand.

We recently talked with Allbritton’s SVP of Legal and Strategic Affairs Jerry Fritz, who supports Robert Allbritton (the family-owned company’s Chairman and visionary) and Fred Ryan. These three executives are the key architects of this strategy. Fritz has a long history with the company that spans more than twenty years.

While the timing seems very fortuitous, Jerry Fritz tells us it’s really the culmination of a plan that was devised back in the late 1980s, when Allbritton (who used to own The Washington Star) saw an opportunity to build a strong local franchise to compete with the newsgathering prowess of the Washington Post.

The first effort under the plan was the launch of NewsChannel 8 distributed over local cable systems. NewsChannel 8 was, at first, a separate operation from the local broadcast television station. A truly, locally focused news operation; NewsChannel 8 broke down its news for the area’s three separate and distinct geographies with a mix of local, lifestyle and political programs. It was a pioneer and in its early days, NewsChannel was a tough sell for audiences and advertisers. Its programming and appeal have grown as the product has matured and its mix of local news and lifestyle shows (Political talk to local golf) now attract larger audiences plus a mix of larger and smaller advertisers. NewsChannel 8 also has benefited from the growth in the news product on WJLA. WJLA has completely rebuilt its local news operations following a downsizing many years ago.

From its base in local television, Allbritton leveraged its core assets across media platforms to exploit some of the unique attributes of the DC market

That included developing an online newspaper to address the market opportunity of providing news, commentary and an advertising vehicle to government contractors, lobbyists, trade associations and others seeking to influence the nation’s seat of government.

Politico.com, designed to be the ESPN of politics, was Allbritton’s initial online effort under the new strategy. While Politico was designed around the Web, readers and advertisers clamored for a print counterpart. Allbritton responded with a three times-a-week print product that was quickly ramped to five days.

Since then, Politico has created a national network of newspapers and websites that share Politico stories in exchange for web ad avails, which Politico sells to national advertisers. It is a classic win-win.

In fact, Politico’s timing has been perfect. Many newspapers have closed their DC news bureaus, and local newspapers are struggling to fill the news gap. Recent filings with the SEC have detailed just how successful the operation of Politico has become in a relatively short time as revenue has topped the $20m mark and cash flows have reached seven figures.

Now, both WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8 share facilities and some staff members as they gather, collect and present local news and information to the DC market. Adding Politico, the Allbritton operation finds itself as one of the country’s leaders in the gathering and dissemination of political news. That has positive rub off impacts on both WJLA and NewsChannel 8. Washington is still very much a company town.

So, it’s in the same vein that we look at this soon to be launched local news oriented website. Adding fifty journalists to an operation that already includes a prominent local television station and its cable news spinoff plus the acclaimed Politico gives Allbritton’s operation one of the largest news gathering operations in the market. As the company focuses on enabling its journalists to file news across any platform, it’s easy to see the combined Allbritton portfolio giving some heartache to the Washington Post (and few know that property better than Jim Brady). The company just recently brought a senior sales executive to lead the advertising sales effort for the new metro new site.

Allbritton already has a deal in place with the market’s leading news/talk radio station as well to share content and to provide weather reporting from its team of meteorologists. While it doesn’t seem that Allbritton wants to get itself imbedded into the longer view stories that the Post covers, it does seem that there’s a probable audience for hurried Washington audience members who want to get the news in an easy, connected and time saving way.

The Allbritton mission is to produce and serve unique content which has appeal beyond the Washington market. The plan is to capitalize not only on local ad spend across broadcast, cable, print and online platforms but also to get access to content syndication and barter ad inventory nationwide. Allbritton understands that it can be profitable to serve not only local audiences and advertisers well with smart execution but that this entire operation can be leveraged to grow out of market revenues. Could this example serve as a possible model for other broadcasters looking for a digital strategy that actually makes money!

On the media side, key issues include finding viable business models; understanding the mobile ecosystem well enough to make informed decisions regarding content, revenue models, technologies, services, partners and market opportunities.

On the advertising side, brand managers, agencies and small and medium business (SMB) operators are trying to be smart with their media plans and spending allocations among multiple media platforms to drive the purchase funnel. Making the mobile platform even more challenging in the consumer environment is the fast pace of evolution not just in technologies but also in how consumers and businesses are adapting to the mobile environment.

BIA/Kelsey has conducted three waves of “Mobile Market View” (“MMW”) which is a consumer study of U.S. adult mobile phone users in the fall of 2007, 2008 and the latest results released in November 2009. One of the key emerging trends we see in the latest research is a solid consumer movement toward using the mobile platform for non-voice communications including search, text messages, email, video, social networking and mobile web browsing. We see fast growth continuing in adoption of smart phones (29% of consumers now have smart phones) and data packages (37% of mobile users now have data plans).

Based on consumer trends, we see revenue growth for content, search, directory, ad networks and of course mobile service providers. BIA/Kelsey sees the fastest revenue growth occurring in local search and mobile video services. The high trajectory revenue growth model will be advertising but we also see subscription and content on demand services as strong components of mobile revenue mix.

For advertisers, agencies and brand managers, this growing use of mobile has significant implications for their media strategies. From 2007 to 2009, consumers have essentially doubled their use of the mobile platform for non-voice communications. This represents a fundamental and rapid shift in media use which needs to be considered in determining the appropriate mix and spending levels among local media platforms. Media companies that do not currently offer a differentiated mobile advertising option increasingly will find it difficult to satisfy advertisers drawn to mobile’s ability to drive brand metrics such as increased awareness of advertising campaigns and messaging. Ad messaging can include not just search and mobile web but also video as we see nearly a fifth of mobile consumers have received or sent videos each month.

The mobile platform is becoming integrated into consumer habits in a more pervasive and sticky manner than any other medium in history. It is fast becoming a mission critical part of the media industry for publishers and advertisers.

Article prepared by Rick Ducey, Ph.D., Chief Strategy Officer, BIA/Kelsey

First published in ShowSmart, a publication by NABShow, which can be read at:
http://www.nabshow.com/2010/email/ShowSmart/LandingPage/ShowSmart_issue2.html#3