There are more mobile devices in the world now than toothbrushes, was the attention-grabbing opening remark from Matthew Schwartz of SAP in his introduction to the mobiles and tablets panel discussion at DCM East in New York. A series of workshops and discussions the day before the main conference focused on how to engage consumers and – ideally – monetize content through mobile delivery. At these discussions, as throughout the event, the iPad, for many DCM East speakers and attendees alike, was the 500- pound gorilla in the room.
However, Amazon’s Kindle Fire attracted a great deal of attention and discussion. “A recent study showed that the iPad accounts for 97.2% of all tablet traffic in the US,” said Jeff Bercovici of Forbes magazine in a one- on-one discussion with Keith McAllister, Global Editor and Publisher of Consumer Media for Thomson Reuters. Bercovici queried: “What would diversity mean for the tablet market, or is it better/easier to have one platform for content consumption?”
“The Amazon Fire is a great product,” said McAllister, “and competition is good” – particularly with the tablet adoption rate worldwide what he called “startling” even though it is “still really early days”. That meant having to adapt and change mindsets, he pointed out: “We have to keep pushing the learning curve. A lot of the future is going to be about delighting the audience.” No small feat in the dawning age of the table and multi-device consumers, he said, noting that there are different usage patterns in the digital content lifecycle. “Laptops are for the day, iPads are for night, smartphones are for snacking content or quick communications. We need to figure out how to provide content to fit in with those patterns.”
Another conference theme first aired by McAllister and revisited constantly by speakers over the next few days was, he said, “It is essential for people to be able to access data – that is an important part of the future of tablets.”
And, it would seem, tablets are an important part of the future of content delivery and monetization – a notion that was reinforced by David Sidebottom of Futuresource Consulting who said: “Tablets are one of the fastest ever growing CE devices, with an increase this year of over 200%. There have been 50 million shipped this year and we expect to see that grow to 400 million by 2015.” This means 15% penetration by 2012. In addition, 2012 is set to see one billion smartphones shipped worldwide. These figures, Sidebottom stressed, point to a fantastic opportunity for those in the mobile delivery chain, particularly the content owners.
He, too, touched on the Fire during an overview of the market. “The Kindle Fire is a platform that could provide a healthy alternative to the iPad,” he said, “the market has been crying out for such an alternative.” This year, tablets and smartphones are the ‘must have’ products, seeing 54% growth with 450 million units shipped this year. “A key to this has been Android,” said Sidebottom. E-readers have also seen a 77% increase from last year, with Smart TVs doubling.
While the growth in tablets is not currently cannibalizing the laptop sector, they will eventually start to erode the notebook and laptop market share, Sidebottom noted. In addition, there are a lot of different companies getting involved in mobile video content, with mobile apps impacting other entertainment sectors.
GAMIIFICATION AND MONEY-MAKING
Another big buzzword over the course of the event was ‘gamification’ and in the pre- conference workshops it was a key concept in the success of making money from digital content delivery. That, and engaging the consumer, as Cachita Hynes of Metro Goldwyn Mayer pointed out. Content is only king if the customer is engaged, and despite what other content owners may think, it is not just new and blockbuster content that can be successful. “Studios all need to expand their thinking and learn from each other on new ways to provide content,” she stressed.
Mobile content delivery can bring in whole new demographics – as an example, she pointed to Army of Darkness, which is not a new movie, but was given a new lease of life through its release as a game. “Following that, we have seen the numbers go up on iTunes both for sales and rental of the movie itself,” she said, “people play the game and then want to watch the movie.”
Gamification is a great way to make money out of ‘old’ content, was the consensus; as Evan Silverman of A&E put it: “Gamification is not just hype but, as with most things it is not always the right fit for everything.” When it was right, it worked well, he said, with the very popular Pawn Stars, which was integrated into Facebook, generating seven-figure revenue. “The right property done well can drive revenue,” he said.
“There is no one way to monetize mobile content,” was the view of Regan Fletcher of Polar Mobile. “You need a digital strategy.” He provided two extreme examples of how what worked for one did not work for another: one weekly print magazine customer with 100,000 paid subscribers provided a free daily news feed app. “They got one million downloads and their paid subscriptions went up by 50%.” This was, in part, because the daily free app supplemented rather than cannibalized the weekly print magazine.
In contrast he pointed to a studio that wanted a mobile strategy to “get more people into theatres” for a big upcoming release. Following a huge amount of work and an extensive pitch on a content-rich app around that particular franchise with games a big part of it, the reaction of the studio executives was that they had been hoping for a ‘cool screensaver they could charge for’. That, he said, was “very shortsighted”.
Engagement was another key word during the panel discussion and, panellists agreed, that was the key to monetization of content. Interestingly, it would seem that many forms of content delivery are still not, in themselves, generating revenue – rather, it is often the engagement of consumers and building on brands and customer loyalty that are key to enhanced revenue generation in more traditional means.
The need for loyalty was driven home by Linda Perry-Lube of The American Museum of Natural History, who provided details of a mobile app developed to encourage visitors as well as to enhance the visit and provide post-visit added value.
Perry-Lube echoed the statement made earlier by Regan Fletcher of Polar Media – there needs to be a sound digital strategy. “Our goal was to develop a worldwide community – we are a global institution despite the ‘American’ in our name.” The aim was to deepen engagement onsite and online, which meant “It had to be mobile because of the growth and ubiquity of devices. We also felt it was better for people to be able to use their own devices.” The iPhone was a “no-brainer” as a device, given that 30% of visitors had an iPhone or an iPod touch. She too, believed that the content needed to be tailored to the device. The aim was to create content that was snackable and not like the content already available on the museum’s website – though it should serve to drive users back to the website.
Among the lessons learned, she concluded, were that mobile apps are for branding, mobile web is for revenue generation, and tablet monetization is best suited to magazine or book-like content.
AWARENESS AND ENGAGEMENT
Day one of the main conference agenda saw much discussion about engagement of the digital content consumer, along with the double-edge sword of opportunity and challenge. “We’re all here because market forces are changing,” said opening speaker Stephen Snyder of Wipro Technologies (pictured), who described the company as like “Thomas the Tank Engine – a helpful little engine, helping customers monetize their content. Seven years ago, he told his audience, twitter was something only non- angry birds did. “We’re all here because market forces are changing how each of us is dealing with content and the consumer as we move from physical to digital – it’s not new, but it’s a matter of degree and pace.” New devices and connectivity are changing the dynamics of content and commerce, he pointed out.
Snyder followed on from his presentation by moderating the keynote panel which he described as comprising companies from different sectors of the industry, not “people fighting over the same hunk of raw meat”. Panellists, who discussed the keys to success in a digital world, included Alex Barkaloff, Executive Producer of Lionsgate Digital; Ezra Kucharz, President of CBS Local Media; Howie Singer CTO of Warner Music; and Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, VP Digital, News Corporation.
Most agreed that while there was a challenge from iTunes and Amazon whose own aims were to control the end consumer, they were also good partners and a good way to help distribute content. There did, however, said Van Rensselaer, need to be a level playing field for all competition, not just a two-horse race.
Knowledge of the consumer was another important aspect of success, as Singer pointed out, with apps driving commerce and the connection to consumers. “In the physical world we knew nothing about who bought our products,” he said. “We still don't get as much info as we would like but we now have access to a lot more and there are more direct to consumer opportunities.” All music companies now need to strive for broader rights: “People always have the choice of either buying music from us or finding it and downloading it for nothing.” Barkaloff agreed that apps were one good way to engage consumers in many ways and channels, and help find out who the core audience is.
One cautionary note came from Van Rensselaer who stressed that success also entailed having a great brand: “It’s not just about spending a lot of money on advertising.” True, agreed Kucharz, “Social marketing is good for building awareness but it doesn't translate to dollars. We are big fans of social media but it isn’t a cure- all and it has to be implemented correctly.”
In a ‘now for something completely different’ at the event, four startup companies presented snapshots of their own products and USPs to a panel of digital delivery experts and VCs. Each presenter was grilled by the panel and scored, with Rodney Gibbs of Ricochet Labs taking the honours for highest score.
The Ricochet Labs offering was the concept, as Gibbs explained it, of providing “a game layer across all knowledge” with the Qrank platform of quiz-style gaming, described by the New Yorker as “interactive jeopardy on steroids”.
The Q&A quiz format which, Gibbs pointed out, dates back to Socrates, was “sticky gamification” and a way to provide the right amount of content for people who, he said, “consume little bite-sized chunks of content throughout the day – the challenge is to engage them and maintain stickiness”. The concept stuck with the panel as a winning concept, though the other three companies were also received with positive responses.
Those companies were Plyfe (“Life is a game, play life with Plyfe”), a universal incentivization platform providing rewards for consumers’ daily digital activity; Liveintent, which provides a prediction engine with an ad management and targeting facility to help deliver advertising through email (“Email ads perform higher than display”); and NewsCred, which helps content producers generate new outlet of revenue by syndication content via the company’s API (“Vision: to be the definitive syndication platform for the world's best content”).
SECURITY AND THE CONSUMER
One of the DCM East sponsors, Irdeto, used the event, along with the Frankfurt Book Fair, to announce the launch of its new ActiveCloak for ePublications solution. The new solution is already in implementation with one of the industry’s top online publishing companies, to be publicly revealed at a later date.
Christopher Schouten of Irdeto was enthusiastic about the event and its opportunities. “It’s an excellent and unique opportunity to look at all aspects of digital distribution across multiple platforms,” he said. “Many conferences are vertically focused whereas this deals specifically with monetizing digital content.”
Schouten moderated a panel that kicked off the second day of the main conference; the first, entitled ‘Digital distribution - security, quality and cost’, included panellists Ellie Hirshhorn, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Simon & Schuster; David Brinker, SVP Operations & Business Development, The Daily; and Harvey Schwartz, VP, WhoSay. Schouten began by discussing the fact that there was “no more tyranny of the scheduler – people have taken control of what content they view”. Content now, he said, is personal, portable, and flexible.
To the question “What is one consumer service or device that has delighted you?” Brinker responded, “Services like Evernote and Dropbox as good examples of the cloud, which is ultimately where the app universe is going to go”; Hirschhorn had no qualms about “going for the obvious - the iPad because it’s revolutionized the way we watch TV, read, even talk to each other”; and Schwartz admitted to being a “Twitter addict. It has changed our daily activities – for me it is a news source and a way of getting client information on a timely and regular basis.”
Most of the panellists, pointed out Schouten, had come from a more traditional paradigm, which was now shifting to digital but was not quite there yet – what were the opportunities and challenges? For The Daily, said Brinker, there are great opportunities for marketing. For instance, he said, “With the music business in 1994 marketing was going to clubs and handing out flyers and cassettes”, but now marketing is much more convenient. With a publication made natively for the iPad, the goal is to get users to read it and experience it: “Social media has allowed us to go to consumers and drag them into our brand.”
For Simon & Schuster, said Hirshhorn, the challenges and opportunities were also to work directly with the consumer. The publisher had recently launched a Facebook tag, she said, which provided a huge amount of feedback, which was good, but led to its own challenge: “What do you do with it all?”
Social media and services such as WhoSay, according to Schwartz, gave back to celebrities control over their own personal content so that they could post photographs and information themselves. “We enable the content creator to take control of that content and participate in a way they choose.”
Returning to the over-riding theme of security, some of the concerns aired were protection of customers’ databases and unauthorized copying and distribution of content. “The bulk of people will be honest with a good experience and the right price,” Hirshhorn believed. The importance of pleasing the consumer was another theme reprised throughout, particularly in another panel on how future devices will influence content distribution and consumption. The panellists agreed that it was indeed devices, plural, and their respective companies were all focusing on providing content across multiple platforms. There is no one device; as Noah Gellman of Kaltura pointed out: “As we move into a world where we have freedom of choice I am going to choose what I want as a consumer and force content creators to raise the bar.”
WOMEN IN DIGITAL MEDIA
Monetizing digital content is what the industry is all about these days, and the DCM series of events provides a unique opportunity to learn about it. DCM East in New York provided another unique opportunity with its Women in Digital Media Networking session following a day of pre-conference workshops. The women-only session highlighted the importance of women in the digital delivery arena, while underscoring the fact that they are seldom in evidence at events such as this. “I think it is important to provide an opportunity for women in digital media to meet and discuss the industry and their own roles within it,” said Frances Rose of event organizer Clarion. D2D
