At this year’s Streaming Media Europe in London I moderated a panel that explored the future of monetisation. What struck me as both funny and scary was that publishers are still struggling with the same questions and challenges they have been for nearly a decade; for instance, it’s been accepted wisdom for years that simply repurposing television spots for online use isn’t the most effective way to advertise, but yet everyone is still doing it. Thankfully, our panelists—Chris Gorell Barnes from Adjust Your Set, Adam Gerber from Quantcast, Chris Johnston from Brightcove, and Colleen Kearney from Turner Broadcasting Europe—offered real insights into ways publishers might shake off the chains of convention and find new ways to use video as a way to generate revenue. (Hint: The video itself is rarely going to be the thing that people will pay for.)
In October, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Nordic Media Summit in Copenhagen, organized by Xstream. Xstream’s Frank Thorup and Brynhild Vinskei put on a terrific event, featuring speakers from the region’s leading newspapers and broadcast/cable networks, including Norway’s Telenor, which with Xstream has put together an on-demand service for internet-enabled TVs that is the slickest, easiest to use interface I’ve seen. I talk a bit about that in the interview here*, along with the differences between the U.S. and European markets, as well as what U.S. companies can learn from their European counterparts. Watch this space for interviews with other speakers from the event as they become available.
*I had originally embedded the video here, but for some reason that wasn’t working, so it’s best to view the interview on the Xstream site.
Videos of the keynotes and all the sessions from Streaming Media Europe 2010 are now online here. (All but one, that is; the presentation from Forrester Research isn’t available per Forrester policy. Also, we do not have videos from the Content Delivery Summit or Online Video Strategies). We’ll be posting one video per week here on the blog, beginning with two this week: the keynotes from YouView’s Anthony Rose and Red Bee Media’s Ben Schofield.
Rose talks about how YouView is creating the right environment for Connected TV to thrive in the UK and beyond.
Schofield discusses how broadcasting is evolving from one screen to many, offering not just greater access on a multitude of devices but also greater personalisation and interactivity for the consumer.
