RAMP-The Content Optimization Company

Now that we are almost into November of 2007, the Presidential primaries are just around the corner. A few of the candidates started off big on the “new media” angle, with profiles on social networks, personal and political blogs and online videos. Notably, Obama, Clinton and Giuliani fans and detractors stirred up a great deal of press around viral videos about their candidacies.

The press attention to these new media strategies has died down somewhat. In the NY Times article, “Their Look for Fall 2008,” Stephanie Rosenbloom looks at the candidates efforts to sell their images and messages on t-shirts, tank tops and pins. She notes that:

The race to offer the most extensive, fashion-conscious and youthful gear is being won by Mr. Obama and Rudolph W. Giuliani.

While it is certainly interesting to note that candidates are expanding their branded offerings, this is still simply the diversification of an existing campaign strategy—sell stuff with your name on it to finance and promote your presidential bid. What happened to the new media angle? I wanted to take a look at where these campaigns are now—are they keeping current with their media strategies, or has the new media kick stagnated along with the buzz around it?

I looked around online to see what some of the most talked about candidates were up to and to try to get a sense of their different strategies—or lack thereof—when it comes to new media. What I found was not what I had expected.

Barack Obama is on Twitter—now all those copycat Obama girls can find out what he is up to at any given moment! I was disappointed by the videos on the Barack Obama Impact Channel page however. They were not as current as I would have expected for a candidate with such a strong younger following. Facebook was another story. With well over 500 groups related to Obama and his candidacy, the buzz around this social network is certainly Obama-heavy.

Hillary Clinton also commands quite the presence on Facebook, with myriad positive and negative groups devoted to—or intended to detract from—Clinton’s candidacy. There was a rosier tint to her MySpace page where I found a slew of birthday well wishes from “friends”. If you get tired of reading those you can also catch up on her life story there, each section of which offers a video to complement the text. Most of the other videos I found for Clinton were standard TV ads that had been uploaded to the Web.

Mitt Romney also has a number of relatively recent TV ads online accessible on his site and his social network profiles. His own site has a “Mitt TV” section where viewers can watch news clips, promotional videos and reality TV-esque clips from a series the site calls “24 Hours on the Trail”.

Rudy Giuliani also uses this video tactic but takes it even further. A message on his MySpace page reads:

Hey there! I’m Dan Meyers and welcome to Rudy’s MySpace page. I am the host of “Running with Rudy” and I’m here to give you an insider’s perspective of life on the campaign.

Giuliani (or rather Dan and the team) employ interesting widgets and videos giving the page an up to date and digitally focused feel. Giuliani has fewer overall Facebook groups devoted to his candidacy, but also a higher ratio of supporting groups. Overall Giuliani got top marks for his new media efforts. Having weekly video updates and blog posts along with a young personality managing his online identity makes Giuliani’s presence on MySpace seem natural and current.

Interestingly enough, the fastest growing Facebook group at the moment is devoted to Stephen Colbert’s political aspirations. Within just one week Colbert’s group surpassed its 1 million member goal. This demonstrates the potential power of social networking available to candidates. If done right, such online networking can be an incredible political tool; gathering that number of supporters for so little time and money is truly impressive when compared to traditional campaigning methods.

Just as advertisers and old media must adapt to the new media paradigm, the Presidential candidates have found themselves in largely uncharted territory this election season. Everything about social networks, user-generated content and increasingly user-programmed content is opposed to control; outside of their own sites and Web pages, viral videos, blogs and Facebook groups define candidates in ways beyond their power. In light of this, candidates will increasingly need to shift their politicking to integrate their messages into this radically new environment. This may be the only way to reach a younger audience and maybe, just maybe, get them riled up enough to get out and vote when the time comes.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – EveryZing, the world’s most powerful multimedia search and merchandising platform, is proud to announce a partnership with Entercom’s WWL-AM/FM, “The Voice of the Gulf South.”

Under terms of the partnership, EveryZing will power WWL’s online audio and video search capabilities, enabling listeners who visit wwl.com to easily access hot topics, shows and guests. The partnership reflects a broader trend in which radio stations are beginning to integrate their online content and radio programming to compete with non-traditional forms of entertainment, including social networking and online video sites.

“Cognizant of the increasing amount of time that consumers are spending on the Web, we needed a solution to integrate our online content while maintaining and increasing our listener base,” said Ken Beck, vice president/general manager at Entercom. “EveryZing makes our content easily accessible and searchable. In turn, we are able to reach a broader audience, while enhancing our offering to advertisers. If a listener misses an interview with the Saints’ Drew Brees or LSU Head football coach Les Miles, he or she can type in a key word to pinpoint the interview and then listen online or download the interview to their own portable player.”

“Since the devastation of Katrina, WWL-AM listeners have relied on the station more than ever for their hometown news,” said Tom Wilde, EveryZing CEO. “EveryZing provides them with an easier way to access the online information they are looking for, whether it be the latest political news or sports commentary, by providing keyword search and playback capabilities.”

EveryZing’s world class speech-to-text technology has the unrivaled ability to extract a full text output from audio and video files across the Web. The company’s full-text capability creates a new paradigm in the consumption of online multimedia content, aiding the discovery of content within major search engines across the Web. Using EveryZing’s patent-pending “snippet” navigation interface, users have the unique ability to search within multimedia files and find the exact information they’re looking for.

About WWL-AM 870
The Voice of the Gulf South: During and after Hurricane Katrina, The Big 870 WWL-AM and WWL.com were the voice of hope, the “lifeline” that locals and the entire nation depended on for the full story of what was really going on in New Orleans. Katrina forever embedded WWL into the hearts and minds of the people of the Gulf South. Since Katrina, the hunger for news and information in the region has never been stronger. Listeners turn to WWL for leadership and information about recovery from the biggest disaster in the history of America. That’s why WWL expanded our brand to include not only The Big 870–WWL-AM and WWL.com, but 105.3 WWL-FM and WWLOnDemand 1350-AM. Together, these stations comprise the WWL complex that is THE News, Talk & Sports leader. For more information, please visit http://wwl.com/.

About EveryZing
EveryZing is a media merchandising platform that helps content producers and web publishers dynamically increase the volume of consumable online multimedia content while simultaneously enhancing its monetary value.

Unlike other general web search and aggregation services that work only on meta data and tags, EveryZing leverages its unique speech to text, search, and optimization technologies to unlock the content within multimedia and automatically process and organize it to power a compelling ecosystem which easily connects media companies with publishers, consumers, and advertisers.

EveryZing, based in Cambridge, Mass., was recognized as the Best Web 2.0 Application in 2006 by the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange. EveryZing can be found at www.everyzing.com and through its network of affiliates.

Beet.TV

Andy Plesser of Beet.TV recently spoke with EveryZing CEO Tom Wilde about video search. Tom explains that universal search creates the need to better unlock the contents of multimedia files online to deliver a complete user experience. Check out the interview at Beet.TV.

Just a few days after Current board chairman Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Price, the youth-oriented news and information cable network launched its new Web site Current.com. Unlike the old site, Current.com goes beyond a TV station feeder system in its offerings. With an increased degree of user involvement and social networking, Current now looks to be a full fledged multinetwork media solution.

The concept of Current.com, explains Chief Executive Joel Hyatt, came out of surveys showing that 70% of Current TV viewers had a laptop open as they watched. Hyatt describes Current as:

“…a new form of social media where viewers can create, engage, and influence news and information”

Current’s goal is to give viewers a greater voice in media while also giving them context for videos on the site. The network, which already allowed professional videographers to submit video news segments, moves several steps further with the new site by soliciting user feedback over the Web and converting submissions into online news and pieces for broadcast. What is striking about Current’s latest developments is how they address issues of brand control, dual-screen viewing, and interactive media consumption patterns.

Brand control and messaging

Advertisers are intrigued by the potential impact of online video when it comes to messaging and brand awareness, but they are also nervous about control. Video spreads rapidly across the Web, particularly when it is creative and quirky. How do companies get in on the online video trend without breaking the bank, spreading the wrong message through repurposed TV content that falls flat, or having their brand name show up next to objectionable or irrelevant content?

Current offers one possible solution. Gore asserts that Current’s platform gives advertisers the best of both worlds: brand control and zero production costs. Video ads created by consumers must adhere to certain guidelines and advertisers screen the clips to decide whether they should be distributed beyond the Current network. Additionally, Current.com acts as a hub where people can watch ads for the sake of watching ads—viewers are drawn to the clips in part because other users generate one third of the advertising content. When your brand has an ad on a site like Current.com, users may find it more entertaining—Current viewers prefer Vcams (viewer created videos) to traditionally produced spots by a 9-1 margin. Because of the eclectic, interactive nature of the Current network, advertisers may fret less over whether or not an ad will show up next to poorly targeted or objectionable content—at least while the ad is within the Current network. The question of control rears its head once more when the advertiser opts to move an ad into the wider Web.

Integrated two-screen experience

Just as the explosion of web video has advertisers excited yet hesitant, the TV industry is looking for how best to handle the competition and opportunity Web video presents. Current, thus far, is a success story of dual screen and dual industry integration. Realizing that the vast majority of their viewers watch Current programming while using the Internet, Current now actively acknowledges this dual screen viewing. By making the two screens complementary to one another Current provides viewers with an experience that mutually reinforces both TV and Internet platforms. Current does not stream online, so to enhance the web experience users tune in to their TV; those watching on their television set find out they can engage online, so they open their laptops and participate. There is no live feed of the Current TV broadcast on the Web—the cable and satellite companies were not fans of the idea—meaning Web users must turn on their TV to watch; the full Current experience is truly multiplatform.

The way we twenty-somethings want our media

Gore maintains that the best way to reach the younger web-savvy audience is to let us help create the content. Right now Current presumes an incredibly active consumer—the draws of the network and the site are interactivity, topic breadth and, I would argue, brevity of individual clips. There is also the chance that your content could make it onto the TV channel, allowing for the type of exposure my generation seems so taken with from our live journals to Facebook profiles to the videos we upload of ourselves doing just about anything onto YouTube. As Rafe Needleman contends:

“Current milks our fascination with being broadcast for all it’s worth.”

Still, in its present iteration Current—as a dual screen, interactive, multinetwork media product—reaches only a narrow population segment. “This is about being more actively involved in the news,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, continuing, “It presumes a pretty active consumer as opposed to a passive one.” The challenge for Current will be to expand their audience while maintaining the vivacity of their content and the conversational nature of their programming.

Google announced late Monday that it is integrating the AdSense network with YouTube, offering a bold new alternative to current models of supporting online video through advertising. Will this latest move by Google totally disrupt the existing online video advertising paradigm? Will video units become the answer to the YouTube revenue conundrum?

This is huge news for the world of online video and advertising. Google believes these video units will allow more publishers to have video content on their sites while simultaneously offering them the potential for extra revenue. It is also the logical next step, following Google’s release of text-based ad overlays on select YouTube videos. Video unit ads dedicate a small companion banner at the top of the screen to run graphical banner ads. This takes up around 20 percent of the player screen. A text ad also appears on the bottom portion of the video once a user clicks the play button and the video begins showing.

The Google AdSense blog explains:

“You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content.”

Around 100 YouTube video content partners are currently taking part. Google would not release a full list of participants, even so, notably missing from those mentioned were any major media companies. They did mention some of the current content partners including Expert Village, a producer of how-to videos; Ford Models, a modeling agency; and Extreme Elements, which creates videos about extreme sports.

From a video producer angle this looks pretty good—at least initially; imagine your videos syndicated to thousands of websites while you get a cut from each ad. So why are the big media companies holding back? It looks like concerns have already surfaced over who controls the content placement and how well it can be targeted.

Website publishers may abstain from jumping on the video unit bandwagon because of similar concerns. With the video distribution completely out of their hands, both content producers and web publishers will have to rely on Google’s targeting to ensure the relevance and appropriateness of the streamed videos.

For consumers, there is certainly an appeal to the non-invasive, non-interruptive nature of Google’s video unit ads. But will they want to watch these videos outside of the familiar YouTube environment? Google’s text ads have succeeded in spite of irrelevant links showing up where the targeting is clearly not at 100%. Will consumers find it more irksome when the inevitable irrelevant video clips pop up? Online video has proven itself a powerful medium thus far, so odds are where the videos go—so long as they are adequately targeted—eyes will follow.

This is exactly where the fears of publishers and content providers come in. The power of web video, its popularity and viral nature, also make it uniquely challenging to control, target and navigate online. This has meant that in spite of the explosion of online video, publishers have remained somewhat wary of the medium. Google has undoubtedly shaken the world of online video, but the hesitance of publishers will continue to hold web video back as long as concerns over inadequate control linger.

Advertising.com’s Bi-Annual Online Video Study indicates that the majority of consumers, at 62 percent of respondents, are viewing video online. The study also concludes that the majority of these viewers are aged 35 or older and their preference tends towards news clips as opposed to user generated content.

The report notes that while consumers continue to incorporate streaming video into the online experience, a difference remains based on Internet users age group.

As previous studies have shown, older consumers use streaming video to gain information, which can be seen by their preference for online news clips, while younger consumers are streaming content for entertainment purposes, such as viewing movies, TV shows and user-generated videos online.

My question is: which came first, the viewer preferences or the digital content models and media sites?

As a twenty-something who likes to spend my time online getting information as well as entertainment, I wonder if the differences in viewer preference tell us something deeper than, old people like news, young people watch YouTube.

The MediaPost article, “Times Touts ‘All the News that’s Fit to Click’” highlights the shift in the marketing of New York Times online media offerings. After the fall of TimesSelect, NYTimes.com has launched a multi-channel branding initiative to show non-readers (or should we call them non-clickers?) what they are missing.

While NYTimes.com continues to add blogs to its mix, much of the multimedia content the new initiative underscores isn’t even new. Murray Gaylord, vice president of marketing for NYTimes.com explains,

“Internal research showed us that people think the Web site has what’s in the paper, and that’s it…We needed a campaign to show them what’s online–like video, slide shows, interactive blogs, and reader comments. There’s all this content they don’t know about.”

The two year TimesSelect project was by no means a flop—paid subscriptions generated around $10 million a year in revenue. Still, “projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, said upon the announcement earlier this month. Interestingly, while many of my friends enjoy the columnists and other features that were off-limits to non-subscribers, only those in that over 35 bracket seemed willing to pay for TimesSelect. We twenty-somethings came of age with Napster, watch Daily Show clips online when we want, and can now buy the new Radiohead album digitally for whatever price we choose—it is hard to get us to pay for information when we don’t even pay for our digital entertainment.

And what if the majority of online news sites just aren’t hip enough to draw in younger, more digitally aware Internet users? I can barely keep up with all the innovation on sites like Facebook but that is, to a certain extent, what keeps it interesting and engaging. Maybe the Times will get it right for the under 35 set with their destruction of the TimesSelect pay wall and their emphasis on a multimedia, interactive digital news experience.