Becoming more visionary by the day...

Becoming more visionary by the day...
Scott Dennison
1-30-07


Until about 18 hours ago, its doubtful that most of the people watching KeyThing would have been quick to include us in the same sentence with Bill Gates.

Other than loved ones and insiders, there has been no stampede of folks ready to call us visionaries. But now it's official. Based on Sir Bill's comments recently, we have to be admitted to the club.

How so?

In his speech in Davos, Switzerland on Saturday and widely published yesterday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said "the Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets".

Really now? Around here, that is old news...

I have been talking about the convergence of Internet and Television for more than a year, and Andy and I built this company and have developed a series of products to mimic television's power for the web. Those products are all a reality now.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses can combine the reach of their business card with the power of video simply by using our VideoVcard.

Companies of all sizes who already do business online, can dramatically improve their results simply by adding video to key areas of their site. VideoPaste makes it fast, easy and affordable to add a video introduction and quick site tour to the home page, demonstrate the product on the products page or invite visitors to join the email list on the opt-in form.

When existing customers opinions of your products or services are important, using Immediate Proof will allow you to add testimonial videos to your site in about 90 seconds.

If you don't consider yourself technologically savvy enough to do this all without help, within days, Web Master Video Tools will make it easy for your Web Master to do it for you.

I know of several content aggregators who are building massive libraries of niche content for the audiences and markets they serve, knowing full well that their subscribers want to find the content they want on the Internet and watch it on their TV.

If you had overheard any of my consulting calls, I tell clients that they can and should be developing video based products for delivery in a subscription service through the web, and watched on TV.

Truth, when you see it, is often self evident. User generated content is in, and Internet delivery of video content is available to the masses. Bill says it, so it must be true. Even if we have been saying it for a long time.

Now, the real question is - what are you doing about it?

~Scott
KeyThing Marketing Technologies

Meet The New Boss

Meet the new boss...
Andy Stetzinger
1-22-07

Everything is starting to get a little clearer for me today. With a fog that started in the third quarter of 2006, with Google purchasing YouTube for 1.65 Billion. I scratched my head and wondered what they were up to. Now it's all clear, and boy, we were wrong with what we thought.

The knee-jerk reaction was Google had lost their mind. YouTube was burning through US$ 1 million a month in bandwidth charges, and had no business model worth anything. The race to "figure it out" was on. Everyone struggled to come up with something to validate the purchase.

The "Facts" as the public saw them were pretty simple:

1. YouTube has 100 million-plus video viewings a day
2. Google has "the golden touch", not to mention AdSense

So, there is was in a nutshell. Google will put ads on YouTube and make a huge profit.

Not so fast. That didn't make enough sense. So, people looked deeper. What did Google get out of this besides a huge user base and 200 million-plus eyeballs a day?

The answer to that question turns out to be big name media companies.

See, with people going to YouTube to watch the best clips from last nights TV shows, Google could easily make deals with the big media companies. Look what happened when Comedy Central sent YouTube a demand to pull all CC content: a day later, it was back on.

Now the reason behind the purchase was clear - It's Google's back-door into the mass media market!

Still, something didn't add up. People weren't looking at the whole picture. To understand the purchase, you have to know some other things.

YouTube wasn't founded by a couple of scruffs. Chad Hurley's Father-In-Law is none other than Jim Clark of Shutterfly and Netscape fame. YouTube didn't need Google - Chad and gang were doing just fine without them. Google needed YouTube. Hence the billion dollar stock pricetag.

Google has also been buying up dark fiber around the country under different corporate names - taking a page out of Walt Disney's own book. Prices and suspicion never rose. Google is also buying large amounts of real estate close to power sources in small population towns.

Why buy the milk when Google could easily afford the cow? This boils down to a good Public Relations move. By setting up business relationships with backbone providers and purchasing large amounts of land in low populated areas, Google can appear of offer a future for tens of thousands of people.

YouTube is an easy answer to a question nobody has asked: What does Google need with those DataCenters and all that bandwidth?

Go ahead. Ask them. "YouTube", they'll say, "requires a lot of bandwidth".

You'll smile. You'll be happy. And you'll leave them alone.

Which is just what they want.

Let's look at some other facts though:

1. Broadband connectivity is more widely available today than any time before.
2. Internet usage will continue to grow.
3. Demands for bandwidth will increase as usage grows.

Your Internet Service Provider would collapse if every one of their subscribers logged on and used the full potential of their bandwidth. Just recall a few years back when the Starr Report caused such a slow down on the Internet, and it was only about 600KB (a little under 1/2 a megabyte) In contrast, movies online today run about 680 Megs.

Putting it all together, the plan is pretty clear. Google is planning on being THE Internet Provider.

Let's review.

1. Google buys YouTube
2. Google buys cheap, unused fiber (bandwidth)
3. Google buys cheap land by power sources (hydro, nuclear)
4. Google builds huge datacenters at those locations.
5. If asked "why", Google can point to YouTube's bandwidth usage
6. As demand for bandwidth increases, people become less tolerant with slow ISP.
7. Google offers faster access to the content and information users want.

It's all slight-of-hand, really. While everyone was trying to figure out the business decision behind the purchase, it was merely step one in a much larger process.

Once the whole process is revealed, the business decision to purchase YouTube makes perfect sense.

The questions we should be asking now are:

"Is Google going to sell, or give away The Access to faster content, and if they do sell, who do they sell to - The Service Providers, or The Consumer?"

That, my friends, is what we should be thinking about.

Video Is Growing Up

Video Is Growing Up
Andy Stetzinger
1-18-2007

Who would have thought that the Internet Video Evolution would start on TV? The paradox there is fantastic.

On one hand, we have PVR owners who record their favorite shows, then blaze through the commercials. Scott told me the other day it took him just over and hour and a half to watch a two hour show on his PVR.

On the other hand, we have advertisers trying to draw an audience via on air commercials. Over the last few days, I have seen quite a few commercials for online video competitions, suggestions, even shows that are releasing a prequel of the show online.

I asked Scott if he'd seen the commercials for "The Lot". It's a reality show that allows people to submit their own videos to enter the competition. If their videos make it in, they're accepted. Scott quickly reminded me of his "time altering experience" using his DVR that night.

The evolution is simple. Google bought YouTube, and peoples eyes popped open. They looked at YouTube and sat there, puzzled, trying to figure out what the business model behind YouTube was, and why Google would pay so much. In the process, more sites popped up surrounding the use of video on the Internet.

The difference? People are no longer "amazed" by video. People now "expect" video. They want to SEE the product in action. They want to watch. Sure, YouTube still draws it's crowds, but quality now counts.

So here we are. On one hand, the quality of TV programs is increasing (for the most part) to attract more viewers. On the other, advertisers and marketers for VON (video on the 'net) are now reaching out to the TV audience to pull them away.

We've got PVRs that allow you to control your TV experience, including skipping the commercials that the advertisers want you to see.

We've got hardware that connects to your TV that allows you to watch the broadcast on your computer no matter where you are... yes, you can sit in your coffee shop, and connect to your home network to watch your favorite show.

What's this all mean? Simple. VON is here, and it's growing up. The days of pointless videos is gone. If you waste your customers time and money with 3 minutes of "nothing", it'll be the last time you interact with that customer.

Check out our newsletter this week. I'll be sharing some tips on how to ensure your video is not a waste of time or money for your customers.

~Andy Stetzinger
Keything Marketing Technologies

How Are You Getting Your Message Through?

How Are You Getting Your Message Through?
Scott Dennison
1-09-07


A recent editorial in DM News (11/13) reporting on the Audit Bureau of Circulations' 92nd conference speculated that "Newspapers and Magazines face tremendous issues in a digital-enamored world".

And it doesn't stop there.

Because of the popularity of TiVo (digital video recorders) that research shows a 70-75% drop off of viewership of ads with shows recorded by TiVo.

Could this be the end of advertising as we have known it for so long?

Well perhaps...but the emphasis must be on the "as we have known it" part. Because if you look at your attitudes toward most advertising, which has little to do with your wants/needs/desires, and then factor in those same attitudes of your closest friends, I think the results would be instructive.

Do you find that you are busier than ever? How much of your time do you really want wasted by irrelevant advertising? As consumers continue to ignore the advertising, and results fall, advertisers cut back on spending.

This forces content creators to reduce their budgets, which in turn attract ever fewer advertisers and viewers...

At the same time - Andy and I noticed some interesting changes in the advertising done during the BCS National Championship Game last night (Congrats to the Florida Gators).

of course, we saw old-school advertisers continuing to shove their message down viewers throats - over and over again in some cases. Can anyone say, honestly, that Rock-em Sock-em Robots will make you want to buy a Dodge Truck?

A bit better was the major promos for NASCAR driving traffic to a website to see the final scene of their ad for the Daytona 500.

We also saw FOX Network promoting heavily a new program to be broadcast entirely on-line.

On an entirely different front, newspapers and magazines are seeing large blocks of their readers move online and many regularly interact with the stories they read, by commenting in "forum-like" environments attached to the stories themselves.

But how many of the ads can you recall from your last look at your local paper?

What does all of this mean for your marketing? It means that what worked in the past may not work now - and you need to look to the future.

Start with making your marketing direct response oriented. Your creative should force interested viewers/readers, etc to DO SOMETHING. So that you know you reached them.

Next consider making your advertising interactive. Perhaps you can even engage your audience and have them create their own advertising, like Cadillac is currently doing, and Chevy did so well recently.

Most important is to target the audience you want - those few among the masses who want what you have. This allows you to actively communicate with your audience and not waste time or resources on those who are not interested in your offerings.

All marketing from here on out is relationship marketing. Never forget that people buy from people, not from companies. Smartly finding ways to execute on that one concept will increase your profits measurably.

Failure to do so, could leave you out there with the old media, like TV Networks, magazines and newspapers who are in full scale retreat...

~Scott
KeyThing Marketing Technologies

2007 Predictions

2007 Predictions
Andy Stetzinger
1/2/2007

One of the things I really enjoy about the end-of-year time is all the predictions that come out of it. I do watch some of them closely, even to the point of printing some out and tacking them to my office wall.

However, one cannot lean too much on predictions. After all, they're simply biased views of trends.

For example, a lot of sites are predicting the rise of VON - Video On the Net. Now, for us, that's great news. However, jump on over to the next site, and they're predicting that Key chain OS's built into thumbdrives will be the big thing this year. (Oh, did you notice they're selling thumbdrives on that site? What a coincidence!)

Any site with significant traffic can easily position themselves to leverage their own predictions - almost like insider trading.

This is what we do know: The conditions still exist for technology to continue to rise and become more useful in day-to-day activities.

What do we have our eyes on here at KeyThing Marketing?

1. The merger of the Internet & Television
2. The desire for more user generated content
3. The quest for a solid business model around 1 and 2

Why?

+ Google's having trouble with YouTube.
+ TiVo's going to allow their subscribers to view user generated content on their set tops.
+ Hardware Vendors continue to push the ability to watch TV on your PC.
+ OpenSource Projects such as MythTV are gaining popularity.

So, everyone is testing out the water on the whole merger of content, video, and the living room.

It's a race. That much is certain. And to the victor go the spoils...

Andy Stetzinger
KeyThing Marketing Technologies, LLC