As I write this, I’m on a plane back to Atlanta from a week in Denver and San Diego. I’ve been consulting with several large companies on their streaming strategy. It’s funny how much more you can learn when you’re face to face with your client. You get to see their non-verbal communication, get to hear their frustration and even tap into things like their tone of voice and tempo of speaking. But you can’t do that 24 hours a day-7 days a week. Or, can you?
My company does more than just help people put video or audio on the internet. We move people to action with streaming media. Now, isn’t that a lot more exciting?
Why should you care?
Well, if you have a sales and marketing team that present visually to anyone, anywhere in the world and at any time…you shouldn’t. For the rest of you, I would recommend that streaming media has evolved beyond just being a way to listen to music or enjoy snippets of your favorite sports team or sitcom. It has become a vehicle that can indeed have an indelible impact on your bottom line while establishing a greater sense of community and loyalty among your customer base.
With product videos adjacent to your products online, you can experience dramatic increases in purchases. In presentations to prospects and clients you can deliver your message to global audiences with zero T&E, real time feedback and granular statistical measurement. With user generated content campaigns, you can empower your prospect and client base to provide passionate first-hand video accounts and feedback on how your products and services have impacted them in a positive way. Finally, the click-through percentages realized by exposing prospects to a video via direct email have exceeded 30% with some of my clients! Try doing that with ANY other form of promotion.
With streaming media, you can communicate with dispersed audiences and deliver to them more than just the facts behind your offering. You can do what you can do in person-communicate verbally and non-verbally, solicit real-time feedback and also solicit testimonials and other feedback from them. You can do it without being there…or even being awake. In doing so, you’ll reduce your need to do what I’m going to do in about 20 minutes: Make a mad dash from Gate 22B to 34A! Stream on!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Relevance Of Relevance
What does streaming media have to do with relevance? Well, IMHO-in the near future-everything.
In the early days of streaming, we saw many vertically focused content providers create "channels" and "made for the web" content. I was a senior manager at one such company-way back in the late 90's. Great content was created-but because broadband proliferation hadn't exactly lived up to the prognostications of various analysts...ugh...nobody...well, almost nobody...knew. For those bleeding edge streaming swashbucklers who had a voracious appetite for any streaming content...the fare consisted of postage-stamp-sized digital horse'dorve's (is that how you spell that?)...not the type of content we see today.
Fast forward a decade, and my company is pumping H.264 live streams to desktops, laptops, digital signage, iPhones...even 60 foot theater screens! The bit rates are now pushing well beyond the "broadband" streams of 1999 (around 300k for the really big consumer pipes of the day)...today, we speak in M's not K's. The point is that the pipes have gotten big enough so that content can now reach nearly anyone on the planet. But wouldn't it be better if that content reached viewers for whom it was highly valuable, meaningful and....here comes that word: Relevant????
That, my friends, if I may be so bold to play an encoding Edger Cayce...is where streaming media is headed. In the next decade, it won't be that you can reach an audience that will be most impressive...it will be how well you can reach an audience for which your content is highly relevant...that will win you the blue ribbon.
Guy comes home at night, walks into his house where he has 20MBIT speed down from his ISP. He's got the incoming wires or wireless...hooked to every appliance with a screen. But, since he only has two hours a week to spare...or just 30 minutes twice a week...he wants to make sure that his viewing time carries with it an extremely high ROI. He wants a relevant viewing experience. And guess what? Because the content that the matchmaker software he has tied into his TV has is tied to more demographic and behavioral data than the U.S. Government has on him, the system has lined up his programming choices from top to bottom based on how relevant it is for him when measured by that data. Since this data is constantly updated...a more granular profile of this "guy" is developed over time. Hence, his viewership experience becomes increasingly less frustrating over time as he is presented with media that he is very eager to see (because it is highly relevant!).
What does this mean where revenue generation is concerned? Well, CPM's become, dare I say...irrelevant! Why? Because if I'm a maker of fine ties...and I'm putting my ad on whatever the service is that's pushing this content to this "guy" via that broadband streaming system that's tied to that wacky relevance-machine...I am willing to pay a premium...not for numbers of eyeballs...but for QUALITY of eyeballs. "Mr. Advertiser, would you like our pewter package that will blast your video ad to one million completely distant and luke warm mothers of three who are suffering with overwhelming credit card debt. Or, would you like our platinum package, which will make sure your ad for ties plays in front of a much smaller number of metro-sexual guys with a tie fetish who are rich and love to watch clothing design content and repeated re-runs of "American Gigolo"? Hmmmmm? We have a new term: CFR. Cost For Relevance.
So, there you have it. In the future of streaming media, there's more going on than just being able to get content to any device. "Who's" device will be the next measure of success. And that is why relevance...is relevant!
In the early days of streaming, we saw many vertically focused content providers create "channels" and "made for the web" content. I was a senior manager at one such company-way back in the late 90's. Great content was created-but because broadband proliferation hadn't exactly lived up to the prognostications of various analysts...ugh...nobody...well, almost nobody...knew. For those bleeding edge streaming swashbucklers who had a voracious appetite for any streaming content...the fare consisted of postage-stamp-sized digital horse'dorve's (is that how you spell that?)...not the type of content we see today.
Fast forward a decade, and my company is pumping H.264 live streams to desktops, laptops, digital signage, iPhones...even 60 foot theater screens! The bit rates are now pushing well beyond the "broadband" streams of 1999 (around 300k for the really big consumer pipes of the day)...today, we speak in M's not K's. The point is that the pipes have gotten big enough so that content can now reach nearly anyone on the planet. But wouldn't it be better if that content reached viewers for whom it was highly valuable, meaningful and....here comes that word: Relevant????
That, my friends, if I may be so bold to play an encoding Edger Cayce...is where streaming media is headed. In the next decade, it won't be that you can reach an audience that will be most impressive...it will be how well you can reach an audience for which your content is highly relevant...that will win you the blue ribbon.
Guy comes home at night, walks into his house where he has 20MBIT speed down from his ISP. He's got the incoming wires or wireless...hooked to every appliance with a screen. But, since he only has two hours a week to spare...or just 30 minutes twice a week...he wants to make sure that his viewing time carries with it an extremely high ROI. He wants a relevant viewing experience. And guess what? Because the content that the matchmaker software he has tied into his TV has is tied to more demographic and behavioral data than the U.S. Government has on him, the system has lined up his programming choices from top to bottom based on how relevant it is for him when measured by that data. Since this data is constantly updated...a more granular profile of this "guy" is developed over time. Hence, his viewership experience becomes increasingly less frustrating over time as he is presented with media that he is very eager to see (because it is highly relevant!).
What does this mean where revenue generation is concerned? Well, CPM's become, dare I say...irrelevant! Why? Because if I'm a maker of fine ties...and I'm putting my ad on whatever the service is that's pushing this content to this "guy" via that broadband streaming system that's tied to that wacky relevance-machine...I am willing to pay a premium...not for numbers of eyeballs...but for QUALITY of eyeballs. "Mr. Advertiser, would you like our pewter package that will blast your video ad to one million completely distant and luke warm mothers of three who are suffering with overwhelming credit card debt. Or, would you like our platinum package, which will make sure your ad for ties plays in front of a much smaller number of metro-sexual guys with a tie fetish who are rich and love to watch clothing design content and repeated re-runs of "American Gigolo"? Hmmmmm? We have a new term: CFR. Cost For Relevance.
So, there you have it. In the future of streaming media, there's more going on than just being able to get content to any device. "Who's" device will be the next measure of success. And that is why relevance...is relevant!
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