Blogs

For the world, 1989 was a momentous year. East Germans take to the streets in weekly protests. Poland's Solidarnosc is legalised, and later wins the Polish elections. Hungary defortifies its border with Austria, sparking a wave of defections from Eastern bloc nations to the West. Czechoslovakia's velvet revolution ends decades of communist rule, and Václav Havel is elected president. Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu is forced from power. And the Berlin Wall comes down, quite literally, in small pieces and large chunks. Also that year, Chinese troops crush the Tiananmen Square protests. George Bush the elder becomes US president, Ayatollah Khomeini dies, and Kurt Waldheim becomes president of Austria, while the last Soviet tanks leave Afghanistan and the rise of Slobodan Milosevic's nationalists begins in Yugoslavia. And in Australia, Andrew Peacock succeeds John Howard as opposition leader. That, at least, is what the history books and annual digests will tell you.

I've spent some time last year (and I hope to do more of it in 2009) talking and writing about the increasing challenge to traditional television which the growing online video sector poses - both in terms of the original content available from the likes of YouTube and Current.tv and in terms of the shared and re-broadcast television content available from Justin.tv and various bittorrent networks.

My argument in that context was that such online services are gradually becoming more convenient than television itself, even where it's enhanced through VCRs, DVRs, TiVos, iPod Videos and other time- and space-shifting devices. Well, as it turns out, younger television audiences at least in the US agree with me. The Wall Street Journal reports that a new study by Solutions Research Group found that

Never go on holidays... Looks like a few days into my holiday on the Sunshine Coast, one of the electrical storms sweeping through Brisbane these days knocked out the server, even in spite of various forms of surge protection. Ah well - a motherboard replacement and some serious fiddling with Linux later (massive thanks to Nic Suzor for pointing me to the tip that enabled my successful necromancy), here we are again.

And while we're here, I might as well note that the audio and Powerpoint from my Interactive Minds presentation on 27 November are now online. I'm afraid the audio quality is, shall we say, 'for collectors only', but here it is, for what it's worth. This end-of-year IM event aimed to highlight trends in 2008 and predictions for 2009, and regular readers of this blog will recognise a few of my recurring obsessions. Many thanks to Jen Storey for the invite.

Sydney.
Up next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress is Robert Leach, Head of MCn Connect, whose interest is in digital television - and he begins by saying that interactive TV is now here; he finds it impossible to watch TV news without being able to 'press the red button' and get the latest news headlines. (Hmmm... Most Australians appear to use the Internet for this, rather than pay-TV?) Digital TV is changing rapidly. Does this mean the death of TV and TV advertising?

No, says Robert - we are watching as much TV as we ever have done, even though usage of other devices is also growing. Where the major growth area lies is digital video in its various forms. In the digital environment, devices have multiplied, but media are converging; the challenge for marketers and advertisers is to involve and engage audiences in video content. Where the Clinton campaign slogan in 1992 was "it's the economy, stupid", today the slogan for advertisers should be "it's the content, stupid" - if broadcasting or other media forms are declining, this is not the fault of technology, but of the content being broadcast. Great content will continue to attract a mass audience - but that audience may exist across a wide variety of devices from conventional televisions to online and mobile devices, scattered across time and space.

Sydney.
Matt Bruce from Nielsen Online is the next speaker at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress; his focus is also on online advertising. There is continuing growth in the number of banners, advertisers, and campaigns online in Australia, as well as in the overall display advertising spend online. As of quarter three, 2008, the big spenders in this field of advertising continue to spend (even the battered finance sector); search advertising is strong and dominated by Google; even spending on Google image search advertising is in itself as strong as advertising on the next closest search engine.

Sydney.
The last afternoon at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress begins with a panel session on the future of advertising. Paddy Douneen, National Advertising Director for Fairfax Integrated Solutions, is opening the debate by highlighting the difficulties established media companies are having in shifting advertising from traditional to online spaces, especially given the uncertainties of the current economic climate. He says that advertising in some traditional media is still very strong, especially now that car manufacturers and department stores have increasing backlogs of stock to clear because consumer demand is slowing.

Sydney.
My talk was next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, and seemed to go down pretty well - I had been somewhat worried about getting booed off the stage by the broadcasters in the room, seeing as I was pointing out the dark clouds on the horizon for them. Here's the Powerpoint, and the paper is online, too - hope the audio recording worked, too! the audio turned out a little noisy once again, but it's better than nothing...

Sydney.
Rachel de Sain is the next speaker at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress; she is Strategy and Commercial Manager for Mobile at Sensis. Her focus is on mobile advertising and marketing. Sensis operates brands such as Yellow Pages, WhereIs, TradingPost and Citysearch, and has recently come around to placing this content in Google and Google Maps as well - in this, mobile has become one of the most fundamental parts of the business.

Sensis gets around 2.5 million searches from mobile devices per month, and this doubles around every four months. Mobiles now have a 101% penetration rate in Australia, but over 49% of Australians have owned a phone for over 7 years, so it's not a new technology any more, even though technological features keep changing. Benefits for consumers are that mobiles are always on, that they choose whom to communicate with, that communication is personalised, and that it is relevant on the fly - if therefore provides confidence for consumers. For advertisers, the always-on nature is also attractive, and customers using mobile phones to connect are genuine customers, not windowshoppers. Also, the return on investment is measurable. Overall, though, the mobile is about building bridges, it takes users from one platform to another, and this is crucial.

Sydney.
The next speaker at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress 2008 is Tiffany Hall, Technology Controller of Nations & Regions at the BBC. She's focussing on the experience of rolling out the BBC iPlayer, an on-demand TV catch-up service (similar to the ABC's iView); programmes can be streamed or downloaded, and the service is funded by UK television licence funding (which is why content at present is not available outside the UK - unless you use an anonymiser proxy with a UK IP address). The player also contains parental guidance features (as timeshifting undermines the more conventional scheduling of differently rated programmes at different times of the day). iPlayer streams at 800kbps, with sound at 250kbps, and there are further moves to maximise the picture quality. About 80% of users use Windows, about 20% Macs, and only around 1% Linux; the player is now also available on the Nintendo Wii and on the Virgin platform.

Sydney.
Following on from the last two very informative sessions here at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, we have a social networking panel. Akamai's Stuart Spiteri kicks off by asking about the impact of continuing change, and Andrew Cordwell answers that this is indeed difficult. For MySpace, local people talking about local issues will always continue; the challenge is to build on this in a more global fashion, and to connect these levels. Francisco Cordero also points to the importance of continuing to develop the technology.