Online and Mobile Media are Here To Stay –Social Collaboration & Location Technology Will Figure Prominently

Implications: However, I don’t think anyone believes that the professional media folks are ever going to drop current viewing methods or processes or advertising methods anytime soon. I believe all of the new-bees to media are making those kinds of outrageous statements about supplanting current media.

Analysis: I believe that online media will continue to grow and will make a significant contribution to the content and advertising industries.  If the goal of the study was to show that broadcasters will not drop their existing advertising revenue streams than I think the Convergence Consulting Group wasted their time.  What sane broadcaster will abandon an existing revenue stream without another revenue stream to take its place?  There is no rocket science to understanding that business principle.  I am not quite sure of what point the study was making.  What person or group would ever abandon an existing revenue stream for a new and undeveloped revenue stream?  DUHHHHH!!!!

Like any new revenue stream being explored, the broadcasters and content creators are testing the new online and mobile media space.  It is an issue of spending time “testing the new environment and learning from the results”.  The study’s comment about broadcasters or advertisers not generating large revenues in the near term – another DUHHHH!!!!  The industry has been experimenting with the online media space for the last dozen plus years; evolving just as the Internet has been evolving.  In regard to mobile media, the advertising industry has only been involved in the sector (seriously) since 2004.  Yes, the time frames may be slow for the traditional advertising industry but what can I say “welcome to telecom”.

The study’s conclusions need to be reviewed in the correct context of evolving sectors.

Targeted advertising is going to be a key tool of the next generation of advertisers.  As I have said in past analyses, location-based technology will figure prominently in the development of targeted advertising for the wireless industry.

It is not just a matter of transferring advertising and content from one medium to another medium, it will require adjusting and modifying the content and the advertising to fit the environment.  Most advertising agencies are struggling to know what to do with mobile or online viewers.  The metrics needed to measure viewer demographics is fairly new.  Metrics to date have been a matter of measuring the number of pairs of eyeballs.  To date, mobile and online advertising has  been largely nothing more than blind pushing of content to a broad base of users; just like plain old broadcast and cable television.

A classic example of mega advertising just blindly promoting is the Super Bowl.  I love the Super Bowl.  However, the one thing advertisers know about the viewers of the Super Bowl is: People from the age of 1 to the age of 100, of all economic classes, genders, ethnic groups, racial groups, and religious groups are watching the Super Bowl.  This is great data but no information about any of the viewers of the Super Bowl.

The online and mobile viewing experience will require smart advertising.  Data mining tools are being developed.  Location technology can and is transforming the mobile advertising experience by enabling advertisers to target the user with the appropriate product/service ad – i.e., something specifically of interest of the user.  Call it customizing advertising.  I am not quite sure at this time how location technology will assist a desktop online experience; I need to think about it.  However, I do believe the desktop online media experience will benefit greatly from a new development:  Social Collaboration.

There are companies today experimenting with Social Collaboration.  If successful, we will be seeing a new ways of mining user data and creating value from such user data for the advertisers.

Is it fair to slam online media and mobile media at this time?  No.  Like any new business sector, the online and mobile media sectors are developing.  To investors I say this:  This is an opportunity.