"E" For Everyone - Gaming & It's Hypothetical Pool of Data

While watching iCarly yesterday (because it’s that cool), I was reflecting on all the holiday ads directed at kids and the incredible advancements that have been made in the world of toys. I’m not just talking about the Easy Bake Oven that now comes with awesome new frosting tools and a sleek, smooth shape or the doll that does number one and two (why????). I was particularly interested in the video games that were coming out this season, specifically for the Nintendo DS.

The Nintendo DS comes equipped with a built in camera that allows you to take photos and upload them directly to Facebook or to play around with them within the unit. There are hundreds of games available and it’s got wireless connectivity so that you can get online using the DS browser, chat with your friends, play games online and do all sorts of other cool things that the internet affords you to do.

There’s a fairly new (launched about a year ago) series of games out called “Imagine”. There are about 25 titles under the “simulation” series including Imagine Fashion Designer, Music Fest, Secret World, Interior Designer, Wedding Designer and Detective.

It occurred to me how brilliant this would have been a few years ago when I was working with a major automotive company that really wanted to get a handle on what kids were thinking and doing online and off. We ended up building a (today archaic) social network to cultivate conversations and link trending. Even then, we had categories designed for different groups of interest. The Imagine Series has 25 categories allowing kids to fully interact with a vocational interest or hobby. You can design clothes, create a band, enter your deepest secrets and of course...share everything!

I’m always fascinated by the organization, collection and ultimate use of information and so I can’t help but view this series as such a great opportunity to source qualitative data from an otherwise extremely elusive target. As the users dump their details into the network, there are all sorts of trends that can be observed. Nintendo could theoretically collect anything from emerging fashion to musical tastes and behavioral information (through all the “fun” quizzes) and align them geographically by age and any other identifiable traits collected through registration. Even dialogues can be scraped for content over the chat and email systems.

Here are a couple of examples of how the games are marketed:

My Secret World

· Express yourself in the diary, which is fully customizable like an interactive scrapbook

· Know yourself better with dozens of fun quizzes and your personality star

· Socialize with your friends trading tons of customization elements, sharing secrets, taking quizzes together or playing mini-games

Music Fest - Create a Band, Run the Concert!

· You’ve just scored a chance to attend the premier Music Fest, where you’ll be in charge of creating a band, designing their look, and putting on a rockin’ concert! Design your band's logo, customize the look of their instruments, hair, and wardrobe, and earn cash to buy cool new clothes and accessories for your band!

Fashion Designer World Tour

· Design the next big thing in fashion and travel the world to build it into a worldwide fashion label. Create unique fashion collections; even use the Nintendo DSi™ to take pictures and apply them to your designs! As a young designer, launch your international brand, open boutiques around the world, and design the hottest, most wanted fashion in the world!

Last year Nintendo reported 96,220,000 units sold with roughly a quarter between April-December 2008. A separate analyst’s report stated that by 2011, Nintendo DS would penetrate a staggering 89% of Japanese households.

100 million (by now) units is a lot of hands. Nintendo’s market has primarily been focused on ages 5-17. A few years ago, this was heavily skewed to males but with the introduction of games like Zelda and the understanding that mothers were a prime target (mother influence 85% of all household purchases), the market has broadened significantly to include girls 5-17 and women 25-45.

Now…take all of this with a grain of salt. It’s really just theoretical but it's so deliciously viable. I'm not suggesting that there's a play here for children's intellectual property (not blatantly at least) but I did check the general privacy policy and found this line fairly close to the top:

“we will only collect the information deemed reasonably necessary to fulfill your online requests and our legitimate business objectives”

I'd be curious to see the policies for the individual games.

Data mining has become a game of survival let alone a "legitimate business objective".

In Short...A Behavioral Masterpiece

Consumed with the topic of behavioral targeting over the past few days and then experiencing what seemed like a catastrophic outage on Twitter recently, I started to reflect on the incredible amounts of data that Twitter has at its disposal and the many uses it has to target consumers behaviorally.

There are so many solutions that are available to target behaviorally. To avoid some of the red tape behind the creepy privacy issues, some solutions providers are labeling the systems “re-targeting or re-marketing tools”. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, keeping tabs on an individual’s user activity and then formulating a profile with rules attached to it and an ad server is behavioral targeting.

Now, let’s look at what Twitter is sitting on in terms of data. Here’s an example of a timeline:

• Beautiful Toronto day…sun is shining and the lake is gorgeous.
• @exampleA I can’t wait to go to Cuba next week.
• Driving the kid(s) off to school – 12 month old is jealous of 4yr old brother going to kindergarten - must be a girl thing...
  
• Looking at cars this weekend…can’t wait!
• Loving the Car1 but the Car2 is good too. Any suggestions?
• Ugh Air X sucks – lost our luggage – time for mojitos
• Planning hubbies 40th – glad I’ve got 2 years to savour my youth.

This 7 entry string provides us with:

Age, gender, location, car purchaser, leisure traveler, # of children and their ages.

Now imagine millions of individuals with hundreds and thousands of entries.

Mining this data for advertisers is a huge step forward in marketing. With an integration like what Google is proposing with Wave - communication could be served in real time to garnish any behavioral cue. Sunscreen promotions leading up to the trip to Cuba, financial offers from car companies etc.. But what about analyzing this incredible amount of data from a more general perspective?

Having the ability to understand trending of global car purchasing intentions, travel profiles, financial profiles and the list goes on. Heck it’s almost as good as having access to someone’s personal email content only better because:

• "Contained context" - 140 characters are much easier and faster to crawl than email communication
  
• Micro-entries are not as filtered and contain raw, impulsive communication
• The ability to index one individual within a network of followers and trend consequential behavior across the individual’s network (influence factor)
• The real time factor is subtle but enormous in value – the speed of crowd sourced content is unprecedented and can be indexed with news and current events

Those are just a few examples. There are many more.

In closing, here is some food for thought.

On May 29 I tweeted this:


On June 1st, this appeared in my gmail box.


If you’re wondering why Twitter is taking so long to monetize, picture yourself realizing how much data just landed on your entrepreneurial lap and ask yourself what you would do with it all.

Taking Online Video Shots on the Net...Targeting Men

Here are notes and thoughts on the male focused presentations from the IAB Canada Video Day conference in Toronto last month.

There were two presentations that dealt with male audiences and while most of the rules of creating engaging content apply to all demographics, there are some properties that have a clear advantage when brands are looking to reach men.

These discussions showed how Molson Canadian and the US Army deployed online videos to reach their targets and engage them in fresh new content.


Branded Content - The Future of Online Video

David U.K., Managing Director, Worldwide of Heavy.com presented a neatly packaged perspective on the power of video and how it has evolved to become a high impact media vehicle.

Heavy.com is a leading online entertainment brand for men. The Heavy Men’s Network is a distribution network reaching more than 45MM men worldwide through music, urban lifestyle, gaming and comedy. The company has been working with brands to create branded content and has done some interesting experimentation in video production.

U.K. stated that brands are a part of the modern fabric of society and have as much legitimacy as consumers to create and share content. He also shared his opinion on the shift in advertising roles from the interruptive model towards less interruptive formats such as video commercials, sponsorship and branded content which help consumers access new content.

Based on the premise that we have the tools and we have the critical mass, the current environment is perfect for the creation and distribution of branded content. U.K. argues that consumers are creating content in unprecedented numbers and that brands that have far more resources at their disposal, should to the same.

"Consumers expect to see and are happy to share it if the content is good" says U.K. So it's clear that creating branded content to be distributed across the global social media platforms, vertical publishers and the web is an effective way to engage this new breed of open mindedness and sharing mentality.

U.K. presented the Molson Canadian Code as an example of engaging content that speaks to the core standards of today’s media consumption – the time people make for humour, brevity and entertainment that can be easily shared.

Molson Canadian Code recently won the MEC Global “People’s Choice Award”


Men Like Custom Content Too: NHL.com Brings The US Army's Core Values to Life With Their "Hockey's Finest" Integration

Larry Gelfand, SVP Media Sales at NHL presented the league’s approach to video integration and showed the tremendous growth in video consumption on the site.

Quick NHL Stats:

• 54 million fans in North America
• 13.5 monthly unique visitors to NHL.com
• In Canada almost 50% of the country are NHL fans (14.2 million)
• The #1 sports property in Canada
• Over 5 million unique visitors per month on the NHL.com Network
  

When the NHL launched video on their site, there were seven channels with aggregated videos from the league and its 30 clubs. All programming featured on the site was original, exclusive and all-access.

NHL has invested in their functionality by:

• Built in flash for optimal consumer experience
• Embedded in-page player
• Extensive, searchable Video archive

The NHL broadband platform has been extended across all 30 team sites providing advertisers a seamless way to reach hockey fans across the entire NHL network – nationally and regionally.

Total video “starts” on the site – including live streams have increased 50% year over year.

82% of fans who started a Video, watched at least 50% of that Video

61% of people who watched a Video, finished watching the Video

Gelfand presented an example of customized content that (clearly) targets males using NHL.com content.

NHL.com is currently producing an original broadband series (12 features) exclusively for the U.S. Army. The show spotlights U.S. born players and teams who best embody the Army attributes, as it relates to hockey. The featured players will be from amongst those playing in the NBC Game of the Week on Sundays at 3PM ET.

While there were no details on the results, it was clear that the NHL had made a significant investment in customizing their content for the purposes of producing media properties that were once removed from their core focus. On YouTube, the videos are averaging over 5,000 views each, add the home site and other distribution channels, and the U.S. Army appears to be reaching its audience in an engaging way.

Here’s an example featuring Chris Chelios:



Aligning sports with the military…it’s like peanut butter and chocolate I guess…

Notes & Observations:

It’s interesting to see how brands are working out diversification strategies and expanding on their existing content to create new opportunities.

The Canadian Code plays heavily off the trendy quest for Canadians to identify their cultural fibre while working the male camaraderie angle to gain consensus on general life issues. It's simple and that's why it works.

One-dimensional sponsorships of the past relied on multi-media exposure for added effectiveness (PR, rink boards, TV mentions etc.). Now, the sponsorships have morphed into synergistic new productions.

For men, based on the success stories I've seen - Beer, Sports & Chicks – in any order… work.

IAB Canada...Video In Canada Event 2009 - Part Two...

Here are more notes from this week's IAB Canada Video In Canada Event. This post covers the perspectives from the Canadian broadcasters. All three presentations showed a great deal of confidence in the future of online video. It was clear that online video was booked, boarded and has taken-off...

Content Distribution: Secrets For Driving Reach + Monetization

Dan Hill, Senior Director, Digital Programming, CBC English gave an in depth presentation on how CBC views the new online video distribution platforms.

Here are the three salient points they are focusing on:

Promotion:

• Drive audiences to broadcast and digital.
• Use new methods of attracting audiences (e.g social).

Creating Deeper Engagement:

• Use of digital content to form deeper bonds between audiences and CBC.
• Increased loyalty, participation, community, public value, brand awareness and advertising value.
• Opportunity to “monetize” the brand

Extended Distribution:

• Enable audiences to access core Radio & TV content wherever and whenever across multiple platforms.
• Maintain or grow audience / relevance against fragmenting market.

To reach their objectives, CBC dealing with the following challenges (opportunities):

• Content Development - They need to create content that can be re-formatted, re-purposed and re-packaged to exist on a myriad of platforms.
  
  
• Focus on Core Business - Success depends heavily on the network’s ability to match audiences to content (targeting) and to adopt new methods of promoting the content (viral etc.)
  
  
• Windowing - There’s a need to manage the content release across a complex portfolio of platforms.
  
  
• New Gatekeepers - Work with the new gatekeepers of distribution – that include traditional and narrowcasting to on-demand.
  
  
• Diversification - Revenue opportunities come from many sources including advertising, syndication, purchase, rent, affiliate, partnerships etc. Diversification strategies are data intensive (data mining, revenue sharing, royalties etc.)

I really enjoyed this slide (among others...) using "being Erica" as an example of distribution:


Hill ended his presentation with some powerful questions that are challenging the network:

• How do platforms cannibalize each other?
• When is it important for content to be only available within our environment?
• Is there a market for professional video content that is not tethered to TV or motion pictures?

Online Video Integrations and Multi-platform Media Executions

Stephan Argent, Vice President, Digital Media, CTV Inc. talked about how “video online and television create an unparalleled opportunity.”.

Argent pointed out that CTV’s (or any traditional television network’s) key differentiator isn’t just online video but that it is “television on the internet”. He cited that the internet has provided television with a highly responsive medium that encourages active participation from their audiences.

Over 1 million Canadians engaged with us to watch TV on ctv.ca last month. CTV served over 300 million videos in 2008 and they anticipate that this number will double in 2009.

Using the 10 X multiple, Argent cited that CTV ranks at similar levels to the size of hulu in the US.

CTV gives a lot of credit to its proprietary platform technology as it allows the network to “respond nimbly and customize solutions”.

CTV recently partnered with Akamai and Microsoft to launch the first ever, Canadian network HD trial online.

Argent discussed the online environment as a conduit to a “meaningful interaction between shows, audiences, and marketers” and shared several nice case studies:

So You Think You Can Dance Canada & Clover Leaf Energy Zone

• Fully branded engagement opportunity
• User generated content upload
• Voting
• Comments
• And views display

Sponsorship Results:

• Over 400,000 views
• 434 submissions
• And an average time spent of more than 12 minutes

The Hills & 17 Again / H&M

• Over 1.3 Million streams in one week
• 52% increase over previous season

TSN Trade Deadline Day

• Multiple Sponsors
• Close to 1 Million unique visitors for this 1-day event
• Over 500,000 streams
• A peak of 35,000 concurrent live streams
• Average view time of 24 minutes

To wrap things up, Argent said that despite the advertising dollar split between search, classifieds and online video, television online delivers better than any other online advertising opportunity that’s out there today. (I’ll follow up on efficiencies later…)

The Rise Of Long-form Video: Project Runway's Advertiser Integration + Custom Content Builds For L'Oreal

Paul Burns, Vice-President Digital, Canwest Broadcasting presented an impressive case study showing the value of full-length content online.

Burns took us through some points on what Canwest knows about their online visitors:

• 44% go straight to video
• 16+ videos per user/per month
• 40 min + monthly time spent/user viewing videos
• 80% of streams are full-length TV shows
• 4x growth with the video centre

Here’s a summary of the Project Runway Case Study

Project Runway is an award winning American reality television series presented on Canwest which focuses on fashion design and is hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum. The contestants compete with each other to create the best clothes and are usually restricted in time, materials, and theme. Their designs are judged and one or more designers are eliminated each week.

Canwest had three objectives for the Project Runway series:

1. Grow video streams using both long and short form content
2. Drive brand integration using both long and short form content
3. Maintain the quality – regardless of length

Canwest created custom content for L'Oreal and made it available to visitors using long and short form content.

Here are some findings:

• Video Centres work – increased streams by 10x
• 82% of streams were full length episodes
• Avg. time spent increased from 40 min/user/month to 60+ min
• Short form works well when it extends full length episodes
• 53% of users watched short form content BUT…
• 94% came to the site specifically for full-length episodes

Burns closed his presentation by reiterating that their strategic web presence of video content has helped to develop very strong audience loyalty to the content.

My questions/observations on these sessions...

• This idea of platforms cannibalizing content is interesting...I'm waiting (or seriously pipe-dreaming) for a solution that lets broadcasters optimize pricing based on channel usage.
  
• Are sponsorships being appraised and sold at levels that are supporting the fragmentation of traditional television?
• What is the growth of the affiliate model within the bigger networks - clickable content = a lot of opportunities here.
• I've seen a lot of interesting approaches to driving traffic online from CBC. Rick Mercer is a good example of a persona that has stepped out of the television set and wandered the social networks creating real community building opportunities to tie into the production.
  
• I think that Canwest's approach to merchandising their TV content is quite slick - reminiscent of the itunes store experience.

Stay tuned for my notes on men and the universe...