We are about to enter a new www ‘dot’ world where business, brands and other organisations will be able to see their name on the right-hand side of the ‘dot’ in the domain-name URL: a brand name will soon be able to take the place of .com; .co.uk; .org etc, etc….

This represents a dramatic and historic development in the online world that will affect every user of the internet.

Despite the existence of millions of possible domain names on the ‘second level’ (www.TAGBOXMEDIA [etc]…..), there are currently fewer than two-dozen possibilities at the top-level (the .com, .net, .biz [etc], bit of the domain).

The introduction of bespoke generic top level domains (gTLD‘s) will see the online naming space expand dramatically, allowing the creation and management of top-level domains for those that want them (and can afford them – see below!).

The benefits to brands are pretty obvious.  dot-brand extensions will allow owners to strengthen their online identity, better engage with their users/customers/clients and will help them reinforce brand security (by limiting the scope for fraud and cyber-squatting).  .burberry for example, will only be able to be owned by the brand itself: better control for those charged with limiting counterfeiting in the world of retail, then.

Ultimately, we see these changes as key to creating new markets in the online space (therefore presenting new opportunity), but as yet, it is unclear how brands will be able to exploit these:

In search (SEO, VSEO) for example, newdrink.cocacola will allow search engines to return content with greater efficiency (better than www.cocacola.co.uk/newdrink), creating a more dynamic market is targeted search.  It will also make the search experience easier.  newdrink.pepsi is easier to add to a URL than trying to second-guess the .com-forward-slash extension.

A new commercial market is also inherent with top-level name conventions, as owners of gTLD’s will be able to sell second level domain registrations entirely at will (IE there is no reason why www.coffee.starbucks won’t be able to sell me www.paul.starbucks if they really want to – let alone the scope for multiple second level domains that allow closed or open domain-networks at the discretion of the owner).

At this very early stage, the value to the end user remain unclear.  But what is clear is the value to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the supposedly ‘non-profit’ body overseeing such matters.  An application costs $180,000 and requires applicants to take on onerous technical and commercial obligations to manage and maintain their TLDs; not to mention the 300-page guide book, 50+ questions and a requirement to convince ICANN of the legitimacy and viability of a  claim to a TDL. Not therefore for an individual.  Unless that individual is a brand. (dotBECKHAM?)

Applications opened on the 12th January 2012 – but don’t expect to see much change for a least a year; such is the pace of ICANN’s review and approvals system.

Do these changes democratise web-naming or hand too much power to the super-brands? Where does all this leave the end users? Ultimately these are the crucial questions that will need answering in the brave new dot-world we are all about to enter….

(Grateful thanks to those developers who consult with us and our contacts in preparing this blog – you know who you are – and we are happy to make the connection if you would like more information.  Just drop us a mail). 

Predicting the future is usually the preserve of mad men (and, in our game, analysts and bloggers with no sense of self-deprecation)!

But as 2011 draws to a close, and January welcomes a New Year, I find myself sat at my ipad and wireless keyboard; midway through a 23-hour flight from Sydney to London, and therefore willing to enter the realm of the insane and the self-contratulatory by offering up six key predictions for 2012!

So here we go:

one – online video: the time is now (because of the ubiquity of mobile app browsing and social networks as distiribution channels):

We’re evangelical about online video. We’ve blogged about the opportunities presented by VSEO online, and data-centric metrics for businesses before – plus, of course, the creative reach available to advertisers using video online.

A quick glance at ComScore’s data sheets proves this growth – but why do I think that 2012 will be a key year? Two words: mobile browsing.

The rise of mobile and tablets is having a profound impact on media consumption habits.

Mobile apps that have put video at the centre of their browsing platform have grown in popularity and will continue to do so. This will drive the popularity and proliferation of online video in 2012 way beyond 2011 levels. Just look at how your social network is sharing video (and static) content these days: apps like Flipboard and Pulse are becoming important new distribution channels, and this in turn will be a driver for the growth in video content online.

two – print media: the dramatic resurrection of the magazine and newspaper industries will attract more online advertising spend to these traditional ‘old media’ businesses.

i-tunes monetised the music industry – and in so doing, saved it. Apple’s Newsstand will do the same for the print media industry in 2012. Conde Nast, for example, recently reported a 268% increase in digital subscribers after launching on Newsstand.

Facebook and Google+ social news apps are also opening up opportunities for publishers. At the end of November 2011, The Guardian revealed that its app has been installed more than 4 million times and is driving more than 1 million additional daily page views for the publication. Big news, because more views equals more advertising bucks. More advertising bucks means more development in content and partnerships with third party news aggregation apps and e-viewers (let’s be optimistic about what large publishers do with profits shall we?! It is the New Year, after all!).

three – the rise and rise of ‘pre-found’ media: 2012 will be the year of bespoke, delivered content.

OK, so I’ve come up with a new phrase (this is what happens on long-haul flights after 3 rounds of plastic food in economy!): “pre-found” content is media served up to you by applications that have understood your social media preferences and browsing habits to aggregate and deliver something bespoke. 2012 will see the rise of apps that wade through the huge amounts of media online and deliver content in a beautiful and intuitive-to-view package. Taptu, Zite, News.Me and Flipboard. All worth a look to pick your favourite platform. RSS feeds are so 2011!

four – the impact of ‘second screen’ viewing will present huge opportunities for the Broadcast industries in 2012.

The impact of mobile devises is being is being felt in the living room too. According to Yahoo/Nielsen, 86% of web users now use a mobile device while watching TV (of which 63% are either accessing mobile apps or browsing social networks) – a huge increase from only 2 years ago. This creates new opportunities for marketing companies to launch more interactive campaigns and for advertisers to really take advantage of multi-platform. Start-ups like Into Now (in the US) have created platforms for engaging with the second screen audience: brands such as Pepsi, Gap and Starbucks have been jumping on board.

I predict that 2012 will also see the big TV networks starting to leverage the second screen factor. Most networks are now offering up streaming content on mobile devices, and some are building more creative and interactive experiences as part of their editorial thinking on landmark series – multi-platform content that will also result in more ‘stickability’ when it comes to audience retention, and increased ROI for advertisers. Even on smaller-scale projects, multi-platform will mean more than simply building a website to go alongside the TV show: 2012 will see smarter, more creative strategies for reaching target audiences and taking advantage of the increase in the second screen. Local boutique content creators (including animators, game developers and film-makers) will have just as many opportunities in this landscape as bigger, more established players. A good thing for all.

five – IPTV and connected TV’s will finally break through….

The promise of internet connected TV’s has been around for several years, and products such as Apple TV and networked gaming platforms (such as XBOX and PlayStation) have delivered little more than clunky platforms and average online browser experiences. Not an accusation that one can usually be levelled at Apple. This will change in the New Year.

Google and AppleTV are both working on hardware; LG have annouced a partnership with online specailist, YuMe to launch an ad network on thier connected sets. Just over 64% of TVs sold in 2012 will be connected TVs – with in excess of 35 million people connecting online via their big screen…

All this will mean one thing: more quality content will be needed, alongside a shift in the way in which professional media content is commissioned and distributed.

YouTube, for example, is investing $100 million in original web-only programming that will also be available on connected televisions, and this will drive the demand for better TV browser expereinces; tipping technology and commercial partnerships over the edge as viewers demand the same functionality for web-on-TV as they do on thier desktops and tablets.

six – mobile commerce will monitise content more than ever before in 2012:

Sat alongside increased advertising revenue as a result of the growth in online video platforms are the opportunities presented by e-commerce and mobile micro-payments – all of which we predict will explode in 2012.

Why? Because the big boys are taking e-commerce more seriously than ever before; drawing together all the other growth elements I’ve identified as being key, above.

Amazon and eBay tell tales of a large percentage of overall sales revenue now coming from mobile – a trend we think will continue – with Jupiter Research estimating mobile transactions to have grown to a staggering $670 billion globally by 2015.

Google Wallet, PayPal Wallet, and Square (in the US); not to mention rumours at the end of 2011 that Apple might be moving into the mobile payments space will provide location, deal-brokerage (such as ‘The Special’s Board,’ launched in Australia in 2011 by our very own James Harrison as a good example) and mobile payments all in one handy package.

When combined with integrated advertising, seamlessly syndicated across multi-media platforms, it becomes easier to make the case for 2012 being the new-dawn in mobile purchasing – and opportunities a-plenty.

So there we have it: 6 predictions – and a good hour and half killed on this long flight home!

Time will tell if 2012 will be the pivotal year we think it might be. However one thing is clear: concerns over global austerity and commercial melt-down can certainly be mitigated by the opportunities presented in our fast-moving and exciting market. So go forth and prosper. And have a very happy and healthy New Year.

This dissenting voice is a rarity indeed: most commentators point to the rise and rise of Twitter, Linkedin, FourSquare, Facebook and other social platforms which provide a greater deal of collaboration and empowerment; not just between social groups, but also between consumers and businesses. Schumpeter further argues that: “most commentary on the social media ignores an obvious truth – that the value of things is largely determined by their rarity.” 

This maybe true; but to see large amounts of content as a “huge problem” for those with an interest in sorting the ‘wheat from the chaff’ is to ignore the huge growth of aggregation technologies that have grown in parallel with the explosion of online content – not just for the end user, but increasingly for businesses hoping to exploit social media platforms.

Take a few consumer-focused platforms that we like: Flipboard, Taptu and Pulse; three news and entertainment apps that intelligently aggregate content for the end user.  Not to mention Google and Facebook whose updates and launches in the middle of 2011 have been all about content targeting: either by location or by interest (both for the consumer and the advertiser).

Lucky old consumer; but what about the ‘B’ bit of B2C transaction, Schumpeter may ask?

He need look no further than online metrics (see my post on online video metrics for an example) and other tools that can help businesses and advertisers make sense of the vast amounts of user-generated media and the data that this inherently produces.

“Social technologies” therefore need to be seen in the context of the wider social media landscape; including new and developing technologies that measure, aggregate and find – not just those that create and generate.

In that context, the opportunities far out-strip the potential problems or threats.

ARRI have announced a major new recording feature for its ALEXA camera range, offering in-camera support for Avid®’s open standard and widely adopted Avid DNxHD® codec.

The Avid DNxHD recording function for ALEXA will be distributed as a downloadable software upgrade during January 2012, and is now entering beta phase testing with selected broadcast productions.

Avid DNxHD codec data rates of up to 145Mbit/s (bit depth 8 bit) and 220MBit/s (bit depth 10 bit) will be supported in the initial release.

Avid’s highest quality version of the codec, Avid DNxHD 444, will record at 440Mbit/s at 10 bit depth and will be provided as an upgrade for all adopting customers later on during the first quarter of 2012.

In addition, Alexa’s new firmware upgrade (SUP 5) offers an optional high-speed function for shooting up to 120fps – excellent news for Production’s wishing to shoot slow-mo and removing the need to swap camera systems for high-speed shooting on set.

On Thursday 1^st December, they announced a radical re-design that not only changes the ‘look and feel’ of the site, but also marks a shift in focus:

Last month Google announced an intention to source more professional content, in a move that many suggest sees the platform gearing up to steal views from traditional media broadcasters.

Not that this signals the end of brilliant ‘animal-based user generated content (a dog chasing deer through Richmond Park: 310,168 views; a sneezing panda 3,559,796 views etc, etc – traditional broadcasters would give their right hand for these viewing figures!)’ – but it does mark the beginning of YouTube’s placing greater emphasis on “channels” and curated categories; ranked and accessed via powerful search tools.

Sign in, and you can arrange your own listings and channels, alongside Google’s own curated ones (and the clips it’s recommended for you); including the predictable syndication and sharing via their own social network, Google+   A ‘cross-value’ proposition, if ever we saw one!

Connected TV’s?  We think so.  Are Google gearing up?  You bet.

Ultimately, it’s all about the advertising dollars.  By aligning the online interface with the sort of GUI that you would expect on your TV, Google hopes to generate more views, and further hopes to target a more diverse audience.  A greater diversity of  viewers = a greater diversity of advertisers.

Brands will have to re-align their strategy accordingly.  The connected TV market will present massive opportunities – but also massive challenges.

More so than ever, a one-size-fits-all video strategy for brands and advertisers will not be sufficient…..

The BBC aired a profile of Facebook tonight (if you are UK-based, you can watch it here): a well put together piece of journalism which benefitted from some decent access (there are advantages to being the BBC after all!).

Blogs, tweets and online commentators immediately jumped on the issue of privacy; especially with regards the placement of ads for products and pages that end-users have ‘liked.’

However, The Next Web (in Zee’s blog post) claimed that the ‘big(gest) question’ put to Facebook’s co-creator, Mark Zuckerberg, related to the ‘threat of Google+;’ a newly released social network from the Masters of Search.

Predictably, Zuckerberg’s answer revealed little – but what was more revealing were his numerous thoughts on the ‘open source nature’ of social media networks; both in respect of shared  information provided by end-users and in relation to app add-ons (decribed in the film in the context of Facebook gaming apps).  Open is best.  Open and shared is better.  Apparently.

One man seemed to disagree: Sir Martin Sorrell – and as CEO of the worlds largest adverting Group, his contrary view is worth considering.

More on this from us later – but for the time being, ponder this: the big question regarding the future of the social media will not be about the tensions between Facebook and Google (or anyone else for that matter) but between the end-user (as content creators, largely) and tech companies who publish and utilise the inherent value of this media (and the data it generates).

Sorrrell’s point needs further exploration, and poses a bigger question altogether: has the ‘open’ and the ‘sharing’ model had it’s day?

All we know is that TV/Video Apps will be top of our hit list.  As will finding the bar probably.  Find James and Paul on LinkedIn.  Especially if your hit list is the same as ours….

When we last blogged about online video, we agreed with commentators that expediential growth in the amount of content (and the number of views) would be seen month-to-month, year-to-year.  By and large, this has absolutely been the case:

According to ComScore’s Online Video Rankings Data from only two months ago:

“Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in September with 161 million unique viewers, while VEVO ranked second with 57.3 million. Microsoft Sites climbed to the #3 position with 54 million viewers, followed by Viacom Digital with 53.4 million and Facebook.com with 49.9 million.”

Some big numbers.  But what can this data tell us?  What are the opportunities for those wishing to syndicate video content online; and what are the threats?  Here’s some ideas:

1 – Think quality, not quantity.  If ‘content is King,’ then strong creative is Queen!

Simply having a well thought-out strategy for content distribution is not enough.  Nor is just sticking video up on a YouTube channel or Facebook Page.  Speak to film-makers. Speak to Editors. Speak to post production people (our day job!).  Speak to people that understand how to communicate your message and your brand.  Engaging viewer/customers/investors is about winning hearts as well as minds.  Have a creative strategy.

2 – Get advice on VSEO – metadata management and site-mapping is crucial:

The business of VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimisation) has grown alongside the increase in content and traffic.  ReelSEO have pages and pages dedicated to this art/science.  They are worth a look.  At the very least, they prove the point that good quality creative is only part of the picture with an online video strategy.  Think about clickable banners, pre/post-roll content, video site-maps, targeted metadata, and embedded ‘sharing-buttons’ to help get your hard work seen.

3 – Think about metrics: if at first you don’t succeed, don’t just try again: re-valuate first:

Use the tools that are often embedded within your video player, DAM or CRM.  Understand what is working what is not by being brutally honest about your creative and the portals you are syndicating to.

4 – Integrate vertically – but avoid cynicism!

We very much enjoyed Brightcove’s ‘Like, Link, Share, Tweet’ webinar yesterday: the main message being: ‘social media and video together make a very powerful combination to drive traffic online.’  But how are you using this to convert viewers to buyers?  Make social media a dialogue, not a monologue.  Talking ‘at’ your audience is a sure way to loose them.

5 – Predict the future:  OK, don’t waste your time – but do be conscious of where this growth in online video may take us!

Web-connected TV’s are here to stay.  Better browser integration, UI’s and more open-source partnerships will make the web-TV experience far better than it is presently.  IPTV.  Digital.  How will these things effect the video content you produce?

Mobile?  We’ve touched on this with specific regards to Facebook in a previous post.  If video is a large growth area for Facebook, and mobile consumption is driving that in growing markets, the conclusion for online and social video seems logical to us.  What is your mobile strategy?  How does your video content work with that?

Faster bandwidth – fibre connections and improved streaming/download speeds will ensure more people can see your video content.  You’d better make it relevant, you’d better make it targeted, you’d better make it good!

In conclusion, we’re not surprised by the growth of online video.  We see this growth continuing into 2012 and beyond.  We see opportunities, but no golden tickets.  For sure, design great creative, shoot great content and syndicate it widely online.  But have a plan and a strategy, and don’t be afraid to tear both up and start again if the stats don’t fall in your favour!

In our last blog post, we wrote about a camera that costs over £14,000.  Today we’ve been playing with some footage at the other end of the spectrum from GoPro: their new Hero HD2 camera, which you can pick up online for less than £190 British Pounds!

With an Professional 11MP Sensor, the GoPro can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps; spitting out H.264, making it easy to grab the material into your desktop editing system. It shoot to SD cards (so just use the ones from your Canon stills camera!), with the 32GB card offering nearly 4 hours recording time at HD 1080p.

But that’s not the coolest bit: the GoPro is fully wearable and mountable, and is waterproof to 60m – great for action sports photography.

The footage we’ve seen today from one of our client’s projects is surprisingly good.  We’ve been grading some climbing footage (from a Hero2 mounted on a helmet) alongside material shot on the Sony EX and, with a bit of professional ‘tender loving care,’ it doesn’t look out of place at all.

For less than £190, you can’t go wrong.  Plus GoPro tell us that come February 2012, a Wi-Fi BacPac and Wi-Fi remote control will be available for the Hero2; allowing playback and long-range control via i-phones and i-pads.

Awesome.  We like.