Look at the incredible growth of Netflix over the last year!  9Million new subs… ( Approx 40% of their total subscribers).  They have embraced cross-platform convergence as a core strategy. Not only are they on every mobile platform that will port them today, they exist on as many platforms they can port to.  Try Nintendo, Try Playstations, X-boxes you name it Netflix is there… They started out as a humble service provider that leveraged snail-mail and now they are the top of the  rich-media content delivery business.

Media companies today need to really embrace cross-screening ( a term I created to describe the phenomena of users experiencing content on Multi-Screens.

Another company that has done a great job at the cross-screen strategy is New York Times.   Not only they marketing everywhere that they are leveraging all screens for users to consume content ( pay once and get all, they are advertising this just as well).  I see their Digital Subscriber Ads in the New York Subway everyday, and here is an ad that I recently saw in the CBSlocal.com website.

Not only is NewYork Times building themselves very strongly across all mediums, what is equally important is how much emphasis they put on Mobile.  Just recently, New York Times was awarded the 2011 Webby for the Best Mobile News Website . In today’s landscape media companies need to not only embrace mobile, but make it a very strong priority like Netflix and NYTimes.

If we look at Comcast, they do have a strong mobile strategy but as media consumption patterns are changing it is critical they embrace all platforms.   My gut tells me that they should just buy Hulu and start to change the game with Online content distribution streaming in a bigger way as well.  Put Hulu a bit out of their misery by trying to do it alone with those tough Networks.   Netflix has evolved with those relationships that started with physical plastic boxes with Tape, then DVD’s (some may say this could be considered an advantage), but they got the business model right and have expanded like crazy.   Hulu on the other hand, has had an uphill battle from the start with the content providers.  My recommendation for Comcast is to buy Hulu and start to change the game a bit with Netflix!  Make it cross-screen for all Digital Subscribers…

“]

TV and Mobile Universe's collide [ Nielsen Media Universe

Nielsen’s published this great diagram that compares the TV universe and mobile.  Although these are treated separately, I believe we are in for an exciting evolution of the convergence of TV and Mobile.  This year at CES many of the large consumer TV manufactures have embraced internet TV as the next big wave with their own “Cloud” based frameworks for managing and distributing content.

This diagram shows the different sizes and breakdowns of the market in North America.  It is clear the Google TV and Android coming together is a “strategy” many of the players of the ecosystem need to reckon with moving forward.

Recently, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Vizio, Toshiba, and LG have all show cased their own unique platforms for interactive TV.  It appears like the big winners that are providing services cross many of these platforms,  NetFlix, Huluplus as well as YouTube ( Google) are all leveraging this new channel to bring interactive content to the large screen.  They also have solutions and apps for the little screen, and this next step of a remote that is in the form of an application is something that will be big in 2011.

Here is an ad from LG’s new offers as well.  They have a great dynamic website that showcases this new interactive TV.  They actually have a separate “remote controller” in this demo, but in my mind it is just months away before we see this completely integrated as well into an application controlling the screen.

It is no coincidence that the term “Smart” TV has started to come into play around the connectivity. Of the Three Screen, it could be that the TV drives smartphone and tablet buying decisions for consumers led by the OEM’s and the Carriers.

Besides, LG, Panasonic and Sony, Samsung presented its own revitalization of the TV market by adding live and on-demand content to its Smart TV and turning mobile phones and tablets into remote controls and guides. The mobile device will become the way to guide, select content in the future and with their announcements with TimeWarner, Hulu and Dreamworks it is clear that the majors are on board with the Samsung smart solution.

The cloud will provide unique storage and access via a connected mobile device that can give the users the ability to search the content and web in a unique way moving forward.

The big industry concern has been around the fragmentation of these different TV formats.  Will users purchase decisions be driven by what TV they purchase to buy a complementary smart phone? or will it be the other way around?

If it were me, I would give away FREE phones ( and specialized data-plan)  if you purchase a TV and package from the Carrier.  This would be a very interesting approach by Verizon and Cable providers.

We have entered 2011 and I have to say the first decade did fly by rather quickly for us in the mobile industry.   I am a big fan of JWT and their things to watch deck.  I thought I would share it and highlight the top 10 in my mind for those realigning and creating a  mobile strategy this year.

Come and meet ADO at the Future of TV Event. Nov 19th 2010

In a recent Media Post article yesterday, Steve Smith gives another jab at the mobile video industry- Lets Give Mobile Video a little Push.  However, even though I am a mobile guy myself, I have been quite frustrated with the lack of true delivered content online.  Well, I have looked at the $8.99/month on Netflix and I am avidly scouring to find good movies to watch on Hulu, but the world of mainstream movie media going online has yet to begin.  What will it take for this revolution to begin?  We saw the problems that surfaced in the TV industry between National and Syndicated TV over the major upheaval between Conan and Leno, but with broadband now so prevalent, and some shut-down of services such as Limewire and now the debate over Bittorrent, It makes you really wonder why the MPAA and other organizations are not taking this “horse by the reins” and moving forward with a better model for more distributed cross-channel media in the 21st century.  As it is 2010, how much longer will we have to wait to get proper available new titles and shows to be launched multi-platform. We saw how effective cross media distribution started to work for the Olympics in Vancouver 2010, as well as the World Cup 2010.

Will we need to wait for Steve Jobs to bring all of this via the Apple storefront?  Will it become Amazon’s next mission over eBooks? …Or will it take more file-sharing to just get this Industry so antagonistic and pissed off in order to make change?

As we can see in the advertising space, Hulu is clearly leading the charge with Ads served, but I feel for myself that users would be willing to pay for a reliable convenient service, even with some advertising like Hulu.   Look at what Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon has been able to achieve with Amazon and the Kindle.  His goal is to get every book available with a 60sec search and download lead time.  They were able to get 600K titles in 33 months.  It should makes sense that we would be seeing this today for all media.  Where is this real giant to make this happen?  Google’s  Youtube just increased the upload lengths to 10minutes, but we need that one-shop-stop of 100′s of thousands if not Millions of movies…. Will Google Video and Google TV in the end be this answer for bringing this all together?  Well the alignment with the Hardware companies has in someway started to attack right in the gut of it all… Having this possibility from the get go right in the box might push users to drop those media cable payments only for more of these online subscription services?

As I have just relocated 50/50 to New York City, I have been subletting a space and do not have a TV.  It has been refreshing to be able to do everything online, but now and again I would like to kick-back and watch a new movie without having to go out and get the DVD ( or go to the theaters and pay $5 for Popcorn).   When I use Hulu, my choices are rather limited and I seem to be browsing through so much stuff from the 1990′s and older, that my interest level has dropped to zero.   Not much of a catalog for the 21st century.   Here is a snap-shop of what comes up in Action and Adventure titles in Hulu…. not that much leading edge stuff ( good, but not great as far as I know what they could do!)

So I then thought to try Netflix… for the $8.99 a month they do seem to have a bit better selection, but still they advertise with  21 leading titles, but this is really it! … Did not entice me to want to get locked into that payment scheme yet until I can feel that they are on-top of getting the best stuff, all the time.

I guess spending the $10~15 at the movie theater is the only real way to see the latest and greatest.  I beleive having a strategy that works along side the DVD releases could possibly be the way to go.  As Computer screens are getting better and better like true TV sets and TV sets are now becoming computer screens, why not have the same kind of pricing structure for starters that mimics the rental DVD business.   I know Netflix and Hulu guys are working hard at this everyday, but just making the movies available at the same price point would not only eliminate the need for me to either drive to pick up a DVD or even pay for the mail back and forth.   It would not only be convenient and add a bit more liquidity in choice that would most definitely bring more distribution and volume….. and think of how green it would be to not expend all that Gasoline.  I am not sure of the carbon footprint between a video stream and a ride to the local Movie Theater, but I would guess it is much less.  I guess the fear is still too great to digitize everything do to piracy, but is this not happening anyway. Does not take long to rip and upload a DVD that has been hacked these days. If Steve Jobs has shown everybody in the music business and the mobile application world that getting stuff out there in an easy and effective way to consume, users would be willing to pay…. We all know he is driving a low cost structure, but does it have to be so low to begin with. Get the stuff out there at the same standards and see what happens!

I feel that it is about time for not only a “little push” as Steve Smith says, but a ” big push” and gripe from consumers to bring us to the 21st century with all the content online and mobile.

Liz Gannes, published an article on NewTeeVee in 2008 decribing that by 2010 we would see 25% of all traditional TV viewers go Online to watch TV…. so is 25% not enough to kick start this revolution?   We are all waiting…. at least I am.

It seems like this week was a key milestone for the HTML5 world. Google opened our Friday morning with an example of HTML5 Game ( PacMan) being added to the Google logo of search.  With approx 2B searches a day, this shows the scalability of having an active game embedded just as there was once a static logo.  Did Google pay for the rights of Pacman for the day? My wife thought her PC was attacked by a Virus!  Today was a great day for the progress of the web.

The Google I/O ( Input/Output) or ( Innovation/Openness) Conference was a great success in bringing more transparency and openness to web standards, and with the announcement of opening VP8 to the world as a royalty free licence ( I did not see the word perpetual???).  They launched Google TV, Music Streaming for the Android platform, and a wide variety of new announcements surrounding the Chrome App Store.  As for Wave, it has now moved from the closed invite only option that makes it very difficult to have a social network to being officially launched.

Yahoo announced the launch of a new class of interactive mobile display ads leveraging HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript technologies.  Yahoo stated that traditional static banners across the top and bottom of the mobile device screen were not optimal  and with–the new format promises to solve those issues via rich media content optimized for next-generation HTML5-based browsers. Yahoo Mobile product marketing staffers Mandar Shinde and Calvin Hung stated that this will enable  ”creative executions of interactive advertisements” on the Y! Mobile Blog.

Yahoo will launch its first interactive display campaign  with Paramounts and DreamWorks Animation release Shrek Forever After. “Going forward you can expect to see more ads that are tailored to the way people use mobile or that take advantage of particular attributes of mobile devices,” Shinde and Hung add. ”For example, we know users like to ‘content snack’ on mobile and ads that offer video or creative interactivity can be very successful.”

Now Adobe…. With all the chatter back and forth between Apple, iPad and the release of Flash, you think that Flash was the lifeline of Adobe.  Looking at this revenue breakdown of the company, it is clear that Flash is only a small part of the overall revenue strategy of Adobe.  What was very assuring is that now with HTML5 being the next coding platform for the Web, everybody is working together…

HTML5 aims to eliminate the need for web plug-ins like Adobe Flash. Instead, the functionality of Adobe’s Flash platform will be available right in the code of the web.)

The gradual elimination of Flash sounds like a bad thing for Adobe, but it’s actually not a huge problem. From a revenue perspective, Flash only accounted for 7% of the company’s revenue in fiscal 2009, or $231.2 million, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard.

While losing a revenue source is never a good thing, the widespread adoption of HTML5 can actually be good for Adobe. The company is introducing a bunch of tools for web developers to make HTML5 sites. Its Dreamweaver software, in particular, is getting an update to help web designers. There’s no reason that Adobe couldn’t even built an “export to HTML5″ command in Flash. As HTML5 grows, Adobe can offer new tools, and thus drive revenue growth.

Both Flash and Dreamweaver are part of Adobe’s core business — “Creative Solutions” — which generated half of Adobe’s revenue last quarter.

I was really touched by this technology by Rationalcraft on Winscape.  The fact that a user is connected to the screen with there mobile device is definitely where things are going in the world of cross-media.   This example is only for the purpose of Augmented Reality of landscapes, but think of this kind of TV display and the ability to zoom-in and out of a sporting event like you were there live.  Almost like what we can do with maps, but with live streaming.  Very cool stuff.

There are many early adapters already out there that just watch media on their PC’s, Mobile and do not even own a TV set.   Most likely they are in their 20′s or even younger and part of the new generation.   I myself grew-up with TV and still can not help coming home in the evening and turning on the Tube.  I like to lean-back and relax over my favorite news shows, sports, re-runs of Startrek and occasionally catch a move that I have either seen in the past or just never had the time for.  I have been frustrated with the programming of SHAW cable, but have not felt the need to pay more for additional channels.

However recently, I have felt a certain lack of need to turn on the TV set as much as I used to.  I am definitely an early adapter, but with media, I still enjoy the feeling of the newsprint through my fingers and the sensations of enjoying the high-quality content of a paper magazine.  This can not be helped as I grew up with this form of media, and it is definitely ingrained in my senses. TV had definitely been my main form of media consumption, but with all of the recent advances with content online my mind seems to be shifting.

I now imaging a great LCD hanging from my wall,  but with a connection to the internet as a main source of content to consume.  We just in fact might drop our monthly SHAW cable subscription, as the availability of free content on the web has started to embrace me more then the poor programming and choice over at SHAW.  Again, even though I am in my 40′s and a lover of traditional media, it has really started to die for me in the method of delivery.  Today already, I consumed several video’s from youtube, watched some favorite shows on Fora.TV and caught a couple of pod-casts.  I even watched some of the Masters over the weekend that was streamed.

So it  is starting to happen to me, then it is clearly a point in time that this transformation has really begun I believe.  Unless SHAW gets better at programming, the need to pay that monthly $50 or so will go away…

As we all waited patiently for the Third Quarter of the Super bowl on Sunday to see for the first time Google’s brand ad as part of their media strategy, it dawned on me an interesting thought about how Google really does marketing in this Web 2.0 world.

We all know that after the Superbowl on the following weekend starts the Vancouver2010 Olympics ( #VO2010, #Olympics, #Van2010). Even though there is a usage case  for people  to use search the web during the superbowl, it may not be as much high-density searching as we we are going to probably see globally during the Olympics.  Google’s ad campaign was considered Brand building, but given the fact that Google has over 70% of the search penetration in most countries around the world and on average more then 50%, most likely people at some point during the Olympics are most likely going to be coming to Google and searching for an event information, results, etc… anyway regardless of brand building. Why was it so important to start this now when Google has made a statement they do not believe in this form of advertising in the past?

Up until now, Google has not been spending money on traditional media. Moreover, for an event like the Olympics,  sponsors are dishing out 100′s of Millions of $$$ for brand building. Google has traditionally used search and its own assets in search results at the top of the page as their form of marketing.  As they have said, “We are not keen on tweaking the organic results, but always like to follow their regimented strategic algorithms for determining what gets on the top of the pages”.  Some of the best marketing during the Olympics is going to come through Search during the weeks the events are live.  What I found interesting was that Google has really built up  its own strategy as a method to get the maximum exposure to their own properties without spending money on traditional media.    Have you seen their initiative around Google Earth and the 3D creations of all the different venues as a form of sponsorship?  Google offered to do these 3D models of the venues as a service for the Olympics Events.  I find this a very interesting offer, but can only imagine that the real reason behind this is to give themselves good ranking if the Olympics puts these links on the pages of Olympics site.  They become the masters of their own game, a way to use their own algorithms to finesse the system to give Google assets high-ranking during the events; thus driving traffic to Google maps for visitors to find local information on the go during the events.  With the billions of Dollars spent by the sponsors during the events, Google may have just again gotten away with a kind-of-freebie for its own marketing efforts to potential spoof the traditional marketing system.  This is only my guess, but it somehow makes sense to me. Would love the gamet of SEO experts out there to comment on this if you can?

Back to the Superbowl…..so then why did they buy advertising the week before?  Again I am only thinking and guessing and I do not have facts to support this, but again it makes sense to me in the greater scheme of things this kind of thinking:

If Google is getting all this search traffic during the Olympics for somewhat free at the expense of the traditional sponsors by leveraging their own algorithms to their own advantage, it might just kick-up a stir amongst traditional media  in the effect that Google using its own engine to get marketing value and  not spending money on traditional media.  ” Oh No”, they can say….. did you see we do spend money on traditional media as well. Did you see our ads that ran last week?  So by spending money on traditional media from time and again makes for a good balanced media strategy when the pundits start to sniff…..Smart I would think.

Again, I am only thinking from the standpoint of business strategy and it makes perfect sense to master mind the shell game of spending money on different media.  In this case for them,  the pea is under all the shells?…… for us, maybe there never was a pea?