This is a great visual story of the past 30 years in music formats. Will be interesting to see where it goes next…
Author: David Griffith
Nielsen redefines the definition of TV
TV is rapidly moving from a 100 million household world to a billion+ screen world. This was officially validated last week when Nielsen decided to change the way it defines television to include non-traditional sources of TV viewing such as Internet-connected devices in its TV ratings sample households, and will make those changes effective with the start of the 2013-14 television season in September. The two most significant implications of those changes are that Nielsen will begin including Internet-only TV households in its sample, and will also start measuring viewing on Internet-connected TVs in its existing sample households.
While Nielsen will also modify its official TV universe estimates as a result of the changes, executives said the impact will only be about six-tenths of a percentage point. The material impact on actual TV ratings and usage levels is expected to be small when the changes are made, but Nielsen executive said they need to make the changes now because the role of Internet-connected TV is likely to grow and become more of a factor in the future.
One of the most interesting aspects of the change is the fact that Nielsen will be including so-called “zero TV profile” households in its samples — homes that don’t receive any traditional TV signals via terrestrial, satellite or cable TV. While they represent a small percentage of total viewing, and typically are either younger (college or post-college) or economically challenged households, their demographics and behaviors will be new to television audience measurement, and could represent valuable insights for the future as more homes become Internet-only connected.
Nielsen has been weighing both sides, but made the decision to redefine television now, because the changes manifesting in the way consumers actually watch television are moving so fast.
A second phase of the redefinition of television that would include viewing on wireless connected devices including smartphones, tablets and even TVs connected to wireless gadgets is planned for the near future, but a firm date has not yet been set.
Multi-screen marketing requires a new marketing approach
Now more than ever, consumers want content at their fingertips and they can obtain it across multiple screen platforms whether it’s by a television, computer, tablet or mobile phone.
The use of non-screen media has declined by 22% since 2008 while television, computer internet and mobile have increased by one hour and twenty minutes during the same time frame.
Consumers have also become more efficient in multitasking since they can retrieve information various ways. About 40% of consumers use their smart phones or tablets while watching TV.
Video advertisers in the past had only one screen to target: the television. However, the rise of computers and mobile devices has boosted video viewing consumption across devices.
Yet, while the TV is no longer the sole video option for consumers, no single alternative has replaced television as the clear top choice for media consumption. According to a new report from ad network YuMe, 49 percent of all media consumption still comes from a television, 16 percent from the internet.
In addition, the report found that the average American owns close to four devices, and total figures show that there are more than 37 million tablets, more than 86 million PCs and close to 287 million TV sets owned in the United States.
So while the television is still the dominant media consumption option for many Americans, the proliferation of internet-enabled devices has cut into TV’s lead. As a result, consumers see video ads more than ever, which can make one spot appearing on only a TV or a computer less effective. YuMe’s report found that TV ads were only recalled about 27 percent of the time. In comparison internet video ads were remembered 43 percent of the time and mobile video ads had a 35 percent recall rate.
While the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and PCs may seem like it would hurt brands, but the key, is to think outside of traditional siloed efforts and focus on a new approach that reaches consumers across screens.
While TV is still the dominant platform for video, we are rapidly moving from a 100m+ household TV market to a billion+ screen based market. Now is the time for marketers to start thinking differently.
How the Harlem Shake became a global phenomenon
The Harlem Shake is a nearly perfect internet meme because it almost perfectly erases its origins. If every imitation of “Gangnam Style” inevitably leads you back to the deceptively subtle, near-perfect original, the Harlem Shake does the opposite. Every imitation leads you to another imitation, the lower its fidelity the better.
The videos themselves are quite literally viral. A YouTube search for “Harlem Shake” turns up 60,000, with 45,000 uploaded within the last week. One person starts out with symptoms — dancing, a motorcycle helmet, etc. — and within moments, someone else is infected. A few minutes after that, everyone who saw the video has the same idea, and the meme spreads further, a domino effect of cascading bass drops. Like the punchline of a joke, the archetypes propping up a folktale, or even its decades-old namesake dance, the Harlem Shake circulates without an author, needing no authority but its own deliberately stupid sense of fun.
THE HARLEM SHAKE CIRCULATES WITHOUT AN AUTHOR, NEEDING NO AUTHORITY BUT ITS OWN DELIBERATELY STUPID SENSE OF FUN
Of course, this is a lie. Nothing moves without a mover, there are no chickens without eggs. Likewise, there is no breakthrough meme that doesn’t get its velocity from something that’s making it go. And so it is here: a nine-month old, three-minute song called “Harlem Shake,” by a nearly-unknown artist named Baauer, whose freshly-scattered thirty-second fragments of awkward dancing have peppered the video memescape since video blogger / comedian Filthy Frank established the template in a 34-second February 2nd video called “Do the Harlem Shake” that’s already gathered 10 million YouTube views.
It’s Filthy Frank and his dancing posse that everyone’s been imitating and on February 14th, “Harlem Shake” first broke through to number one on iTunes’ best seller list. At the time of this writing, the iTunes charts put “Harlem Shake” at number one overall, in the US, Australia, Belgium, Canada, and Luxembourg, and in the top five in most of the rest of Europe. It’s also crossing over from digital: “Harlem Shake” debuted at number 3 on the BBC’s radio charts on February 17th. In an interview with Billboard, a representative of Baauer’s label, Diplo’s Mad Decent records, describes the song as “the biggest thing we’ve released on Mad Decent as a label, and it’s happened within six days.” Baauer also sold out a February 15th show at New York’s Webster Hall, based almost entirely on the song’s popularity.
Even all those YouTube views, scattered across the dozens or hundreds of fan-made videos, add up. Baauer and Mad Decent have generally been happy to let a hundred flowers bloom, permitting over 4,000 videos to use an excerpt of the song but quietly adding each of them to YouTube’s Content ID database, asserting copyright over the fan videos and claiming a healthy chunk of the ad revenue for each of them. All this happens more or less automatically through Mad Decent’s partner INDmusic, There’s no pressing need to herd fans to a Facebook page or rig the YouTube search to drive “Harlem Shake” queries to an “original”: all of the videos can make the artist and his label a little bit of money. Hence the proliferation of the “Harlem Shake.”
After all, these Harlem Shake videos are just the last link in a chain of gently borrowed content. Before Filthy Frank, it was just a song, and not a terribly lucrative one. Before that, it was just a sample, a young Jayson Musson saying, “do the Harlem Shake” on 2001’s “Miller Time,” a track an even-younger Baauer probably mixed as a Philly-area DJ. Before that, the Shake was just a dance of uncertain provenance, something anyone could reference. But each step meant borrowing from something that already existed. Nobody involved was ever terribly keen on asking for permission. Why would they be? For the most part, neither the borrowers or the lenders even noticed what was happening.
But that open spirit has a limit, and embracing most of the song’s copies doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. When hip-hop artist and Harlem native Azealia Banks tried to upload her own remix of the track, Baauer had SoundCloud take it down. When she asked why, his response was simple enough: “It’s not your song.”
As long as it’s Baauer’s song, he’ll decide who can remix, and who else can appear on it. There’s real money and real control at stake here. This means the Shake gets to be open culture and it gets to be big business. But for most people the business, just like the original dance, just fades away.
New Report highlights online video growth
FreeWheel has released a new report that highlights video viewership trends in 2012, based on aggregated data from the company’s entertainment clients, including FOX, ESPN, VEVO, and AOL, among others. The company says its findings are derived from more than 13.5 billion video ad views. Among the major findings:
Web video ads are becoming more like TV spots: In 2012, the standard 30-second TV spot became the most used format on the web (42% of all digital video ads). This is at the expense of 15-second spots, which now account for 34% of video ads.
Ad volume continues to grow: Q4 video ad volume rose 47% year-over-year, fueled largely by holiday spending and increased ad loads. In fact, web videos of 20+ minutes now have 9.4 video ads per video view, which FreeWheel says is the most since it began reporting this data in 2010, and up from 6.9 per video view during Q4 2011. Q4 pre-roll volume increased 45% year-over-year and Q4 mid-roll volume jumped up 60%.
Video ad completion rates are at an all-time high: 93% for long-form content (20+ minutes); 81% for mid-form content (5-20 minutes); and 68% for short-form content (less than 5 minutes).
Video viewing on non-PC/Macs is growing, and iOS is leading the charge: In Q4 2011, viewing on devices like smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles accounted for 2% of total video viewing volume. By Q4 2012, that number is up to 12%. More than 1.8 billion video views occurred on these devices in Q4 2012. Apple devices continue to dominate, with iOS devices accounting for 60% of non-PC/Mac video viewing. Android devices represent 32% of such video viewing.
Super Bowl XLVII is the Most Social Super Bowl Ever
Super Bowl XLVII is the Most Social TV Telecast Ever
This year’s Super Bowl XLVII has garnered the most social activity in Social TV history. See all the data and details in Trendrr’s infographic below!
What a $4 Mil. Super Bowl Ad Could Buy in Digital
TV ads during the Super Bowl are expensive: $4 million for 30 seconds of media, to be precise, and that’s before paying for things like production costs, agency fees and celebrity endorsements. They do, however, allow advertisers to reach over 100 million viewers at a single time — and be part of the cultural zeitgeist.
The digital industry regularly complains it doesn’t see the level of big-brand ad investment TV does, so I thought it’d be interesting to figure out how far $4 million would go in the world of digital advertising. Here’s what it’d buy, in theory at least:
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A portal roadblock every day for at least a week
AOL, Yahoo and other major publishers sell day-long homepage takeovers for around $500,000, media buyers report. That means $4 million could ensure your ads are plastered all over a major homepage non-stop for at least a week.
$4 million / $500,000 = 8 days
Over 100 million video impressions on Hulu
According to media buyers, Hulu currently sells its video ad inventory at around a $30 CPM. Therefore:
$4 million / $30 CPM = 130 million impressions
YouTube homepage takeover
An eight-day YouTube homepage ad
Instead of a Super Bowl ad you could buy out YouTube’s homepage ad units for at least 10 days, based on a price tag of up to $500,000 a day.
$4 million / $500,000 = 8 days
50 million Forbes.com first-page interstitials
Media buyers say Forbes charges around an $80 CPM for its welcome interstitial ads. At that price you could buy around 50 million impressions, but even if every impression hit a unique user, that’d still only be half the potential audience for a Super Bowl ad.
$4 million / $80 CPM = 50 million impressions
Twitter’s Promoted Trending Topic every day for a month
Promoted trending topics on the social network currently sell for up to $120,000 a day. Based on that figure, $4 million would afford you the paid placement every day for at least a month.
$4 million / $120,000 = 33 days
Over 100 million video network impressions
A typical video ad network buy is charged in the region of $10 CPM. On that basis, $4 million could buy around 400 million impressions.
$4 million / $10 CPM = 400 million impressions
Source: digiday
Connected TV usage growing in US
In Q4 2012, 40% of connected TV owners in the US watched Netflix content, according to the Connected Intelligence, Application & Convergence Report from The NPD Group.
When breaking it down by different age groups, NPD finds that 51% of 18- to 34-year-olds who have a TV connected to the web watched Netflix content on TV during Q4 2012. These include those who own TVs directly connected to the internet as well as those who have another device hooked up to the TV in order to access Netflix content.
What’s more, NPD says it appears Netflix users are migrating to the TV set. 21% of connected TV owners surveyed said they have shifted from using OTT video services on the computer to now accessing them via the TV instead.
Following the TV screen, The NPD Group findings show that among those surveyed, 14% watched Netflix content through laptop/desktop computers in Q4, while 13% did so on tablets, and 8% via smartphones.
Akamai’s plan to fix Social TV
Akamai, the Web optimization company whose servers deliver up to 30 percent of Web traffic, is setting its sights on creating a TV technology that can detect what a person is watching and stream secondary content to a smartphone or tablet in near real-time.
The aim, the company says, is to take today’s fast-growing but chaotic landscape of TV “companion” apps – such as ones delivering athlete stats to people watching the Olympics, or crime-fighting details to CSI junkies—and make it easier to create and see such additional content.
Nielsen, the measurement firm, recently reported that 40 percent of U.S. television watchers are now in the daily habit of using their smartphone or tablet in front of the TV. Many networks and shows have tried to reach such people with apps providing auxiliary content—often to encourage viewers to watch the show live and thus please advertisers.
At the same time, aggregators such as Shazam and Zeebox are cutting deals to deliver this so-called second-screen content. Shazam makes audio “fingerprints” of 160 channels of U.S. TV programs and delivers various bundles of content to people who open the app and record three seconds of whatever they are watching. “Consumers don’t want an app on the phone for every show they like—not everybody is that motivated,” says David Jones, marketing vice president for Shazam, which is based in Menlo Park, California.
But these technologies have only scratched the surface of what’s possible. People who use smartphones and tablets while watching TV are often checking e-mail or Facebook, and show-specific apps mainly serve the most devoted fans. Only half of Shazam’s 85 million users tune into TV-related content weekly or more often.
What Akamai sees is a chance to bring some order to this chaos and make everything run a bit faster—and through the Web, not a collection of apps. Indeed, Shazam takes one to four seconds to detect which show someone is watching, and it lacks something to offer for many local channels.
The Akamai proof of concept—shown for the first time to MIT Technology Review last week—consists of a few parts. The first is a piece of software that would reside on whatever device you use, whether it’s a television set fed by a cable or satellite service, a set-top box delivering content over the Internet, or even a DVR playing a recorded show. A one-time authentication process links your tablet or smartphone to the device.
Real-time information on what show you’re watching—even as you change the channel—gets sent to Akamai’s servers. Relevant secondary information then gets streamed directly back to your smartphone or tablet in near real-time.
Kris Alexander, an Akamai strategist, demonstrated the technology while showing a scene from Mission Impossible II, in which Tom Cruise’s character was visiting a racetrack. In the tablet in Alexander’s hand, a link popped up leading to information about the Randwick Racecourse in Australia, where the scene was filmed; later, a link for buying Cruise’s brand of aviator sunglasses appeared.
A New York-based industry consortium called Second Screen Society projects that the market for second-screen apps is $490 million today and could be $5.9 billion by 2017. Guy Finley, executive director of the group, says that while he’s not familiar with Akamai’s technology, faster delivery could be crucial. “Second-screen apps are all about user interface, user experience—so anything that impacts that user experience to make it more seamless and enjoyable is going to make a difference,” he says. “It will help the whole proliferation of the format in general.”
Akamai is still demonstrating the technology to broadcasters and other potential customers. Many other players are working on new strategies; in the past year, for example, Zeebox took on investments from Comcast and NBC Universal, and partnered with HBO, to deliver companion apps.
What could a widely used, super-fast platform lead to? One can imagine deeper dives into news content, or real-time polling during a presidential debate, building on the existing phenomenon of people tweeting their impressions about television shows in real-time (see “A Social Media Decoder”). But the most popular applications of new communications technology platforms—whether the World Wide Web or Twitter—are often far from clear at the outset.
Nielsen broadening TV household definition
If a viewer watches a TV show on a tablet, should that be reflected in its Nielsen rating?
That’s a question at the heart of a complicated decision Nielsen hopes to make by the end of the first quarter regarding a new definition for what constitutes a TV household.
The new definition is almost certain, according to sources, to include for the first time viewing on TV sets that show video via broadband connections, whether from a device like Apple TV or directly into the set itself. In addition, that viewing would not have to come in the form of linear channels, which would open up measurement to on-demand options like episodes posted on a broadcaster’s website.
But what is currently being debated is whether homes that restrict their viewing to smartphones or tablets will also be considered TV households. Those devices may have to wait until their measurement can be integrated into the TV ratings system.
A proposal from Nielsen is currently being reviewed by a special committee comprised of representatives across its client base. Nielsen is said to favor an approach staggered in stages, say sources, the first of which would be ready for the 2013-14 TV season incorporating broadband-connected TV sets — but not include measurement of video consumption on wireless devices.
While the TV industry is in general agreement on the long-term goal — one measurement of all viewing regardless of platform — the dilemma is how best to proceed in the short term.
Either all viewing — regardless of the separate measurements being made on other platforms — gets counted into the TV household total, or only once Nielsen is ready to integrate any one of the separate measurements with the TV data should it be counted into that total.
Nielsen will huddle with the committee before the quarter is over to get input on the proposal before rendering a decision that will give the TV industry time to strategize how best to sell programming at upfronts and for Nielsen itself to make the necessary changes to its reporting software.
Nielsen isn’t leaning in either direction, according to Pat McDonough, senior VP insights, analysis and policy at Nielsen, who indicated there’s no chance the status quo will remain.
“The question we have with our clients is do we do that in stages or do we do that all at once?” she said. “Committee members are in process of discussing with their various companies and we expect to come back after the new year with the direction for the industry that we’re going to take.”
Given criticism the company has long endured over both its current TV measurement and the pace at which new platforms are being tracked, it’s a decision not being taken lightly at Nielsen, where the new policy will likely represent as fundamental a shift, if not more so, as the adoption of people meters or C3 currency.
The current definition of a TV household is a home with both a TV set and video delivered via over-the-air broadcast or a multichannel package supplied by either cable, satellite or telco sevices. Watching on PC, smartphone or tablet isn’t included.
What’s known internally as the “What Nielsen Measures” committee was convened in mid-2012 to reckon with back-to-back declines in the annual number of TV households, which fell from 115.9 million in 2010-11 to 114.7 million the following season — the first such drop in 20 years. An additional 500,000 households disappeared before 2012-13, leaving a total of 114.2 million.
There are various theories as to what accounts for the decline, chief among them that a new generation of viewers are doing without TVs as they embrace digital alternatives.
But while broadening the definition of what constitutes a TV household could shore up that shortfall, advocates for waiting until measurement of viewing on devices can be integrated warn that increasing the number of total homes prematurely runs the risk of diminishing ratings. If the number of screens is increased without a corresponding increase in the measurement of the viewing on those screens, that can inflate the base number against which the number of viewers is calculated — potentially skewing the rating downward.
And yet there are others that are willing to see some destabilization of measurement from year to year in the short term for the greater good of getting a truer reflection of the range of screen across what’s being watched.
At the very least, Nielsen is likely to extend measurement to broadband-connected TV sets. That is good news for companies weighing virtual MSO plays like Intel, Sony and Dish who want to convince programmers that viewing is being measured across their systems. However, in the event they also provide content
Source: Variety
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