New (ways of using) Media

Future of iDTV: opportunities, consumer behavior and business models

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 | New (ways of using) Media | No Comments

In the current context of digitalization and technologies convergence, a radical change is occuring in the world of Marketing and Advertising. At Cleverwood, we believe the radical change will be particularly important for the Television, this industry is facing big challenges and traditionnal Broadcast probably has to be re-thought.

Due to this growing complexity and the difficulty to anticipate the rapid technological evolutions, future is blur and many questions are raising for the entire ecosystem in this sector:

• Is interactive digital television a commercial and strategic opportunity ?
• What are the possibilities to bring new revenues ?
• Is interactivity a response to technologies convergence and why this interactivity is changing consumer behavior ?
• Are traditional business models changing and what will be the future ones ?
• …

With all those questions in mind, Cleverwood asked me to take the opportunity of my traineeship in 2009-2010 to produce a white paper taking a deeper look at these radical changes.

The document focuses first on the environment by pointing out the effects of digitalization and technologies convergence on Television industry which can be summarized in the following elements:

• Audience fragmentation
• Media consumption evolution
• Competition intensification

In the second chapter, I decided to address the reasons why traditional TV seems to be threatened and explores how interactive digital television can be a leverage for the market. To answer this question, it points out the reach of iDTV today and its strategic opportunities.

Strategic analysis: in the third part of the document, I decided to also bring a view on all industry actors and their role in this new television landscape, followed by a Marketing analysis focusing on the impact of interactivity on consumer behavior.

In addition to that, the white paper argues that even if interactive digital television seems to be an interesting and valuable new channel for advertisers, budgets allowed to it are yet insignificant, and try consequently to explain the causes and bring creative solutions.

Finally, I decided to work on future business models, describing value propositions and new possible revenues from content and advertising by analyzing on-demand content opportunities and new interactive tools on TV such as “Walled Garden”, “DALs” or “iADs”.

After having discussed these questions and the opportunities linked to interactive digital television in Belgium with many different actors and with several Cleverwood consultants, I got the opportunity to present and debate this white paper during a Cleverwood Friday Session on Friday 26 of February.

Here is the presentation that I prepared for the session, it summarizes the complete version of the white paper which can be requested by sending a mail to idtv [at] cleverwood [.] be .

A pdf version of the Executive Summary (in French) can give you an idea of what the entire document is about.

Tags: Belgacom, business models, consumer behavior, Executive summary, friday session, ICHEC, idtv, new media, opportunities, saky kourtidis, telenet, TV, voo, white paper

Innovative Mobile Services: What’s hot in Japan?

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | cleverwood Friday Afternoon Session | No Comments

Jap’Presse / InnovAsia Research is a consulting company specialized in High Tech business in Asia, especially in Japan and South Korea. Philippe Le Fessant, managing partner, was the special guest of a Cleverwood Friday Session and introduces innovative mobile services in Japan.

Japan counts around 112 millions of mobile subscribers, of which 97% have 3G dataplan. The key factor for the uses of mobile Internet in Japan is the importance of the unlimited data plans in the market: around 50 millions Japanese subscribers pay for such a plan, and use mobile Internet in their everyday life.

Many differences with the European market explain also the surprising uses of mobile Internet in Japan: history, relationship between carriers and handset makers, importance of unlimited data plan, Japanese way of life.

One of the interesting points of the Japanese market, for European professionals, is the way

marketers use the mobile as a media.

For example, in 2007, the brand Cup Noodle, launched a very important campaign, called “Freedom Project”, proposing mobisodes made by the famous maga-ka Katsuhiro Otomo (movie maker of “Akira”). Major brands, like Coca-Cola and Mc Donald’s, massively invested in mobile marketing in Japan, up to the point they made the mobile phone their 1^st media to reach the young customers. Mc Donald’s is already massively using mobile couponing, in all its archipelago’s shops, and develop customized loyalty program, thanks to the mobile.

About the future trends for mobile business, we can already see some in Japan :

• Mobile social networking services (SNS have more traffic on mobile than on PC),
• video recognition on mobile (to create a link between TV and mobile),
• or Virtual assistant.

In late 2008, NTT DoCoMo has launched its virtual assistant service, called i-Concier. This little character appears on the screen and gives shopping advices to the user, information, couponing, etc. Something impressive is how NTT DoCoMo connected this service to more than 250 brands, retailers, and contents providers. This service is very successful, with almost 4 million subscribers 1 year after the launch. Philippe Le Fessant believes virtual assistant is a major step in the User Interface history, and Europe should try to move quickly to this new kind of mobile user interface.

If you missed the session, you will find below the entire presentation. You can also see it on SlideShare. For the pics,  it’s on Flick’r.

Tags: friday session, i-concier, innovative mobile services, mobile couponing, mobile marketing, Mobile social networking, Philippe Le Fessant, video recognition, Virtual assistant

Traditional media planning: What are the reasons for conservatism?

Friday, April 9th, 2010 | cleverwood Friday Afternoon Session | No Comments

Online advertising still struggles against the traditional medias. TV, Radio, outdoor and print still trust a huge part of the media investments. The presentation and the discussion animated by Philippe Deltenre was an opportunity to (re)discover the value chain of media planning and the ways media buyers are measuring impact. We also had a quick look at how the audiences are measured for each medium

The main difference between digital and traditional media planning is that the traditional media planning focuses on pressure (frequency x coverage) while digital advertising intents to maximize efficiency (pressure, but also response). Basically, the high measurability of online advertising is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

In the second part of the session, we had a debate about the perceived weaknesses of online media and the reasons why some advertisers are still scared to invest (more) in digital communication.

If you missed the session, you will find below the entire presentation. You can also see it on SlideShare. For the pics,  it’s on Flick’r.

Tags: Cleverwood, digital media, friday session, media planning, online advertising, philippe deltenre, traditional media

iDTV : opportunities, consumer behavior and business models

Thursday, March 4th, 2010 | cleverwood Friday Afternoon Session | 1 Comment

In the current context of traditional mass marketing reduction and intense media fragmentation, the debate at Cleverwood Friday Session on Friday 26 of February turned out to be a interesting exercise to discuss challenges that Television industry is facing and the rise of Interactive Deigital Television in Belgium.

The session was animated by Saky Kourtidis, Trainee Business Consultant at Cleverwood and student in Business Engineering at ICHEC.

Saky Kourtidis (click for more pictures)

During the presentation we all had an interesting discussion about the impact that interactivity could have in future marketing practices.

New models will appear in this new era for Television. During many years, consumers were forced to waste their time watching linear advertisements that were imposed to them. With the new IDTV it remains to be seen if they will accept to play the game of interactivity with advertisers. Industry actors, their role in this new television landscape was also a source of passionate debate.

Saky Kourtidis explained his thesis work and exposed his vision on how advertisement budget will evolve in this new scenario. Despite the sometimes, and typical, disruptive atmosphere, he managed to answer rather complex questions asked by experienced consultants. “It was an amazing experience but also an exercise sensibly different from a presentation in front of my ICHEC class because I was in front of expert consultant that have been researching innovative solutions, pursuing knowledge in their core competences and looking for interactivity Saki said after the presentation.

video by Manuel Pueyo : www.oole.eu

You missed the session? watch it below:

Tags: Belgacom, friday session, ICHEC, idtv, Interactive digital television, interactivity TV, new media, saky kourtidis, telenet, Television, TV, voo