November 27, 2006
Volume 15, Issue 9
Ultramercial Scores with WildTangent Games
At the recent Ad:Tech conference, DCIA Member Ultramercial emerged as the only ad model to do a 180 from all other formats by introducing its patents-pending "value exchange and choice" for online audiences, whom it invites to "either watch an ad in exchange for content or pay for the content."
Ultramercial believes that if an ad is presented honestly and upfront as a way to earn access to content, more than 75% of respondents will complete the ad.
Moreover, placing a value proposition before the viewer or listener - pay for this OR receive it for free with interactive ads - increases rather than decreases the perceived value of content.
Ultramercial asks, "If a cost-per-click is worth 25 cents or more, how much is it worth to guarantee each person will engage with your ad?"
Now Discovery Networks, Sony Pictures, Johnson & Johnson, KIA, Suzuki Motors, and Warner Bros. have signed on to use Ultramercial to sponsor "WildCoins" enabled pay-for-play game sessions across WildTangent Games Network (WGN) reaching 6.5 million unique gamers monthly.
With Ultramercial sponsored-sessions, consumers can choose to pay for a game session (typically from $0.25 to $2.00) or let an advertiser sponsor free game-play sessions in exchange for engagement with their brand.
"With sponsored-sessions, we are able to give gamers free play of the hit title ‘Penguins’ in return for engaging with the trailer for the ‘Happy Feet’ movie, clearly a perfect fit and a great way to create interaction with our target audience," said Trish Gubiotti, Media Supervisor of Beyond Interactive, the media buying agency for Warner Bros.
"Gamers are a highly qualified audience because they are fully immersed in the experience and therefore they have high engagement levels," said Jay Altschuler, VP, Group Media Director at PHD, Discovery Network’s Media Agency. He went on to say, "We are always looking for new ways to target specific gaming audiences with rich engaging messages while empowering the gamer in the process."
To date, the results of the sponsored-session campaigns have been stellar. Consumers who have chosen to play a sponsored version, have, on average, engaged the Ultramercial rich media advertisements for 52 seconds per play, with an astounding 18% then clicking through to the advertiser’s website, compared to an Internet-wide click-through average of below 1%. "This is a better way for advertisers to build dialogue with gamers," said WildTangent CEO, Alex St. John.
Please click here for information about Ultramercial’s applicability to peer-to-peer (P2P) and social networks.
Pando Breaks E-Mail Attachment Limits
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Gregg Keizer
DCIA Member Pando Networks has unveiled a beta application that lets users of popular web e-mail sites transmit extra large attachments.
The P2P service specializes in sidestepping attachment-size restrictions of many Internet service providers, e-mail services, and e-mail software.
Rather than send an actual attachment, Pando sends the recipient a short file that when opened starts a download directly from the sender’s PC and/or Pando’s servers. Pando can handle attachments as large as 1GB.
Beta 1.2 provides plug-ins for Internet Explorer 6 and IE 7 that work with Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Gmail. An earlier edition of the service’s software offered plug-ins for Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail client and Yahoo’s instant messaging software.
Pando can be downloaded from the company’s website; Beta 1.2 works on Windows-powered PCs, and a Mac version of the standalone Pando application is available.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The distributed computing industry has already enjoyed noteworthy success in addressing threats to its ongoing steady growth, which will continue to be predicated largely on improving the value, quality, and safety of user experience.
Integrated anti-virus software applications have made leading P2P programs safer than top e-mail services. P2P parental controls were cited by the last GAO report as more effective than those employed by commercial search engines in combating criminally obscene content. And most recently, with major copyright litigation settlements complete, content filtering solutions are proliferating in the P2P channel.
Now Paul Roberts has sounded an alarm in his "Spam Migrating to P2P Networks" report in InfoWorld, which all who are concerned with commercial development of P2P and social networks should heed carefully – and address sooner rather than later.
"One of the corollaries of our modern age is that hucksters and cheats will glom on to whatever mode of communication is the least expensive and most widely used.
We’ve all resigned ourselves to stacks of junk mail. But we forget that back in the days before e-mail was ubiquitous, fax machines were used to send out bogus pitches and other kinds of unwanted solicitations.
But fax spam required a fax machine (or machines), and lots of phone calls. So once e-mail came along, scammers quickly migrated to that medium, where there was a high degree of trust among users, and where the cost to send solicitations (spam) was essentially $0.
With the e-mail channel now pretty well saturated with spam, however, (67.7 percent of all e-mail, on average, according to MessageLabs) there’s a vast hunger out there in the huckster community for a new way to reach users. Increasingly, it’s looking like P2P networks may be that channel.
A recent blog post over at SecuriTeam notes the increasing prevalence of spammy-sounding PDF downloads on P2P networks: "How to Create an Automated eBay Money Machine.pdf," "Easy Chair Millionaire Review.pdf," and "Top Home-Based Jobs" (a directory).
Just as e-mail spam started as a trickle and grew into a flood, so P2P spam has the potential to overwhelm P2P networks that have flourished as a convenient and, for the most part, reliable medium for sharing and exchanging information, music, and more. The ultimate test, of course, is whether P2P users will take the bait and, thus, justify the investment."
The DCIA condemns spam as a devaluer of whatever media it afflicts and as a despicable waste of bits. While it is understandable that, with a user base of 12 million average simultaneous file sharers and bandwidth consumption representing from two-thirds to three-quarters of all Internet traffic, P2P has become the latest target for "spamvertisers," it is not acceptable.
We call on P2P applications developer/distributors, Internet service providers (ISPs), and anti-spam software vendors to take action preemptively before spam becomes a serious problem for this emerging commercial distribution channel.
All affected parties can benefit by working collaboratively to prevent spam from contaminating P2P and social networks. The economic benefits of efficient bandwidth utilization through enhanced P2P are finally being recognized by the entertainment industries. Very promising business models are at last beginning to be explored. New techniques for live P2P streaming, caching, and content acceleration are quickly advancing. And licensed content downloads are increasing daily.
This is a time for such positive transformational actions as converting spoofs and decoys to promotions and special offers, not for allowing spam to take a foothold.
We recommend a multi-pronged approach aimed at preventing spam from being uploaded via P2P protocols, applications, and networks; from being transmitted via P2P; and from being downloaded and redistributed from users’ shared folders.
Hopefully, many of the core technologies being developed to help copyright holders protect and monetize their works in swarming P2P distribution can be redeployed, with necessary changes, for anti-spam implementation. Share wisely, and take care.
IPTV Gains Ground in Europe
Excerpted from Associated Press Report by Toby Sterling
European phone companies, like their American and Asian counterparts, are dreaming of a future in television using a technology known as Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV.
Most of these companies are boosting the capacity of their copper phone wires with next-generation versions of DSL broadband technology, though some homes are getting IPTV service over new fiber-optic cables.
The foray into video is a counter strike against the cable TV companies that have broken into the phone business using another IP technology known as Voice over IP, or VoIP, stealing customers and driving down prices.
Yet despite the obvious business logic of returning fire with television, phone companies face a greater challenge, as IPTV and video-over-DSL are relatively unproven technologies as compared with VoIP.
Even so, while IPTV is just getting off the ground in the United States through AT&T and some rural phone companies, European and Asian carriers have already built a substantial base of television customers.
By the end of 2006, the number of IPTV subscribers in Europe is expected to reach 3.3 million, up from less than a million a year earlier, the Gartner Group estimates. The research company forecasts that number will double in 2007 and mushroom to 17 million by the end of 2010.
Hong Kong’s PCCW is the world’s largest IPTV company, with more than 650,000 customers. France has the most IPTV subscribers of any country, with more than 1.6 million as of earlier this year, spread between France Telecom and start-ups like Iliad and Neuf Cegetel. Spain’s Telefonica claims more than 300,000 users.
More recently, Swisscom launched subscription TV in Switzerland, while Germany’s Deutsche Telekom introduced the service in Germany, France, Hungary, and Croatia. Both Swisscom and DT, as well as AT&T, are using an IPTV platform from Microsoft, confident they have resolved software and hardware glitches that slowed their deployments. Britain’s BT Group is expected to launch Microsoft-based IPTV services soon.
"A number of pieces are falling into place at the same time," Gartner analyst Adam Daum said, calling his firm’s projections for the IPTV market "conservative."
As compared with the United States, where phone and cable companies are looking to reap $100 or more per month for a "triple-play" of phone, television, and Internet service, most European telecoms are planning to charge the equivalent of just $38 to $63 for the bundle.
Daum said the European companies see IPTV as a tool to lure cable customers and then generate new revenue later by selling premium services such as movies on demand and specialty sports packages.
"Many subscribers hate their cable companies, and at least 10 to 15 percent would be willing to leave immediately if they were offered a choice," he said.
IPTV breaks down a video stream into data packets, similar to those used for most other online traffic, from e-mail to web pages and music downloads. The video packets are sent to a set-top box that acts as a decoder, the end-result looking and feeling a lot like cable TV.
The Era of Discovery
Excerpted from MediaPost Report
So-called "recommender" engines are the next step in search and human laziness, and such sites are "sprouting up on the web like mushrooms after a hard rain," decries Fortune Magazine.
These sites recommend stuff for you, from movies to recipes, based on personality tests and accumulated web history. In a way, they present a challenge to Google (or new acquisition territory). Marketers are licking their chops. At Whattorent.com, you take a personality test that recommends movies based on your answers. Are you a "Raging Bull" or a "Lawrence of Arabia" kind of guy? Not sure? Now you can find out.
Newcomers to the recommendation biz, like MyStrands and StumbleUpon, and old-timers like Amazon.com and Netflix, all indicate that we may be leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. Discovery finds are based on information about you, rather than you proactively searching for something. The question is: is there a (legal) way to collect all the data about places we go and the things we buy? Marketers hope so. "Recommender" sites are currently in their most rudimentary form; imagine where they’ll be in 10 years.
VeriSign to Open Middle East Office
Excerpted from CPI Live Report
DCIA Member VeriSign, a leading vendor of intelligent infrastructure solutions, is set to open a new office in Dubai by January 2007. The company intends to tap into the fast growing Middle East market with a local office, while improving local customer service and providing more accessible support for its services.
VeriSign is focused on providing a broad range of Intelligent Infrastructure Services that enable organizations to connect and transact securely across networks. VeriSign operates the systems that manage .com and .net, handling as many as 18-billion web and e-mail look-ups every day.
It runs one of the largest telecommunications signaling networks in the world, enabling services such as cellular roaming, text messaging, caller ID, multimedia messaging, and mobile media management. In addition, the company provides managed security services, security consulting, strong authentication solutions, fraud detection services, and also secures over 90 percent of the world’s largest banks and over 500,000 websites worldwide.
VeriSign claims that it is rapidly developing a strong customer base in the banking and telecom sectors as demand has increased for its products, which support the rapid growth of digital Internet and network services throughout the Gulf States. Clients include mobile phone giant MTC and the region’s largest banks.
The Dubai office will support all services in the region and provide a base for VeriSign to secure existing growth and develop a platform for further expansion as regional networks and Internet penetration increase and demand for its services increases. With 1,397,200 (2005) Internet users (compared to 230,097,055 in the EU) and 4.535 million (2005) cellular mobile phones users (compared to 314,644,700 in the EU) in the United Arab Emirates, the market still has a huge potential for investment and growth in infrastructure services.
VeriSign has its headquarters in California and has over 75 offices worldwide. It clocked a turnover of $1.66 billion in 2005.
Arvato Mobile Named to InfoWorld Top Ten
DCIA Member arvato mobile GmbH has been named to the "Top 10" in the 2006 edition of the InfoWorld 100. Arvato mobile, a division of Bertelsmann, was recognized for its use of Virtuozzo virtualization software in its datacenter.
The InfoWorld 100, a listing of the most innovative corporate information technology (IT) solutions for 2006, honors IT projects that demonstrate the most creative use of cutting-edge technologies to further their business goals.
Arvato mobile uses SWsoft Virtuozzo, the leading operating system-level virtualization solution, to consolidate physical servers onto virtual servers that offer greater flexibility in managing workloads and the entire datacenter, while reducing the number of physical servers required.
Lukas Lösche, director of IT operations, arvato mobile said, "All of these applications need to have 100 percent uptime, and they are very demanding in terms of system resources, system scalability, and especially system security."
Lösche added, "If we detect a hardware error, we are able to move a database server from one hardware node to another with practically zero downtime."
In the case of arvato mobile, three administrators manage 600 virtual environments, resulting in a remarkably high efficiency ratio for the IT staff.
To be considered for the InfoWorld 100, projects must stretch beyond the typical, off-the-shelf solution, using multiple technologies in innovative ways to serve well-defined business goals.
Winners appear in the current edition of InfoWorld as well as online.
Skype Reaches 25 Million Chinese Users
Excerpted from China Tech News Report
DCIA Member Skype’s number of total registered users in China has hit 25 million, making the nation one of its top markets around the world.
Skype’s VoIP software first entered the Chinese market in November 2004. It has been very popular and has seen rapid growth with its advanced voice technology, excellent voice quality, and cheap phone calls.
However, not content with its current success, Skype plans to launch an innovative product next year. A representative from Skype China, which is partnered with Tom.com, disclosed that in the new product, the functions of Tom-Skype will be improved and will focus on more featured services, particularly on voice quality and text transmission.
Tom-Skype has become the fastest growing IM tool with a quarterly growth rate of over 100%. The company predicts that the registered users of Skype will exceed that of MSN by next year.
Telcordia Wins Supplier Excellence Award
DCIA Member Telcordia has been recognized as one of the top suppliers of mission-critical software and services by Northrop Grumman Corporation, the global defense company headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.
Telcordia has been awarded the annual Northrop Grumman Supplier Excellence Award for its consistent ability to supply solutions that meet the highest demands for delivery, quality, cost, schedule management, and customer service.
"The Northrop Grumman annual Supplier Excellence Award is reflective of Telcordia’s constant pursuit of excellence and exemplary standards and is a testament to the people, innovative solutions, and delivery capability of Telcordia," said Adam Drobot, President & CTO, Advanced Technology Solutions, Telcordia.
"We brought a combination of proven software development capabilities and cutting-edge research on key new technologies to our work with Northrop, and we are right there onsite at the customer’s location working hand-in-hand with them to ensure success."
Telcordia was nominated for the award for its work on software systems engineering and development in connection with a defense sub-contract to Northrop.
How to Pump up Array Performance
Ray Lucchesi of DCIA Member Silverton Consulting will explain how to pump up storage array performance at Storage Decisions in Las Vegas, NV on December 6th - buying fast storage at the best price, configuring for best performance, monitoring I/O workloads, and improving performance.
Most IT shops struggle implementing and backing up ever-increasing amounts of data storage. Although the need for more storage seems insatiable, it is often unnecessary. Often poor storage performance is the key indicator IT shops use to determine when to purchase more storage. Storage performance tuning can and should be an ongoing activity and, if done properly, can lead to more controlled storage growth.
The secrets to better performing data storage involve knowing I/O workload and configuring storage to handle it well. Ray will reveal how to buy fast storage at the best price, configure storage for the best performance, monitor I/O workload, and improve storage performance over time. He will provide hints on how to manage data to improve database and e-mail performance, and will also discuss best practices for configuring SAN and host connections. Ray will also answer questions on other storage performance problems encountered in the data center.
Seeking Executive to Tame Digital Future
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Richard Siklos
WANTED Digital media genius to guide a nimble – or at least we like to think we are – media giant through transformation from analog to digital in all its gory glory.
JOB DESCRIPTION To take all the stuff we produce for other formats, like TV or print or film, and figure out how to shovel it onto the Internet in a way that makes money.
QUALIFICATIONS The ideal candidate might also have ideas for ways to make a few dollars online that don’t directly stem from our so-called traditional media businesses. (You know – like that whole user-generated thing that the kids are doing. P.S., loved the video clips about how Mentos and Diet Coke mixed together create a chemical reaction – maybe we can turn it into a prime-time special or a theme park ride financed by these brands?)
COMPENSATION Pretty sweet for as long as you last.
RETIREMENT BENEFITS Well, don’t plan on it.
The want ad above is a goof, of course, but it roughly sums up the state of play among big media companies’ digital operations.
In the last few weeks, there has been a stampede of change involving the top Internet executives at big media companies. Most significant, Jonathan F. Miller, the chairman and chief executive of AOL, was replaced at that Time Warner division by Randy Falco, a 31-year veteran of NBC Universal; Ross Levinsohn, the wunderkind who helped Rupert Murdoch snag MySpace last year, left the News Corporation two weeks ago and is being replaced by a cousin, Peter Levinsohn, a Fox TV veteran; and Larry Kramer, who built and sold the site MarketWatch, left his job as digital overseer at CBS after the arrival of Quincy Smith, a former investment banker, as his boss.
MTV Networks, meanwhile, recently appointed Mika Salmi, the founder of Atom Entertainment, a web media company that it acquired, as its latest digital honcho, and NBC Universal has been making all sorts of online moves under the auspices of Beth Comstock, who came from owner General Electric last year to head all things digital there.
Has an archetypal digital genius yet emerged amid all this movement? Not exactly. The screenwriter William Goldman famously said of Hollywood’s hit machinery that "nobody knows anything." When it comes to the digital machinations of media companies, the new tag line may be that "nobody knows everything."
In some instances, notably AOL and the News Corporation, the companies in question have decided that their businesses have reached a new phase that would benefit from a different set of skills — in AOL’s case, operations and a heavy focus on ad sales. Elsewhere, including CBS, the digital executives themselves have discovered that the action within a giant media company may not be as much fun as it first seemed.
Michael J. Speck, who runs the media practice at the executive recruiter Heidrick & Struggles, says that roughly three baskets of digital media overseers are in the market. The first is the well-versed old-media executive who both knows how to navigate corporate corridors and run a business but may not be the most webby person on the squad. Mr. Falco, come on down! (Of course AOL is a bit of an outlier in this discussion because it is such a big business unto itself, let alone as part of Time Warner.)
The second basket contains the web stars – people like Mr. Salmi and, in a way, Mr. Smith, who has a venture capital background. These stars know how to identify and build web businesses early.
Then there is the less common "general corporate athlete" (someone like Ms. Comstock), who has a track record of getting things done in a complex company but is neither a seasoned operating executive nor a web head.
In search of enlightenment, I spoke with three of these former web gurus – Ross Levinsohn, Mr. Kramer, and Jason Hirschhorn, who left Viacom earlier this year after serving as MTV Networks’ first chief digital officer.
Mr. Levinsohn said he was grateful to Mr. Murdoch and his deputy, Peter A. Chernin, for the opportunity, but added that they differed amicably on the next moves to make in the online world and that, ultimately, he was keen to part ways and do something more entrepreneurial.
In Peter Levinsohn, the company is getting an executive with arguably less operational experience than his cousin but someone who has a record of cutting deals to distribute Fox video products on digital services like Amazon, iTunes, and AOL. Moreover, people close to the company said Mr. Murdoch would probably invest in whatever Ross Levinsohn did next, though Mr. Levinsohn declined to discuss his plans. "This is not a bad thing for me, or for them," he said.
In Mr. Kramer’s case, he made a tidy fortune selling MarketWatch and said he had never meant to take a full-time job but had enjoyed "proselytizing" about digital media across CBS and improving its websites. The hiring of Mr. Smith, a former Allen & Company investment banker with deep connections in Silicon Valley, came as alarm bells went off throughout media companies when Google swallowed YouTube.
CBS’s emphasis shifted from building assets internally to identifying and becoming involved with the hottest next thing. "If I was 35, I would have stayed," said Mr. Kramer, who is 56.
Mr. Hirschhorn, who is a couple of decades younger than Mr. Kramer, said he joined Viacom in 2000 after selling a web design start-up to the company and had never known what it was like to work in a big corporation.
After a few years of working on various online businesses at MTV Networks, it was time for a change. For his part, he yearned to get involved in another start-up or young company. (He says he’s about to take just such a job.) Meanwhile, as is typical of what can happen in these roles, Viacom’s thinking about the position was also changing.
Geoffrey K. Sands, who heads the North American media consulting practice at McKinsey & Company, told me that the tension between old and new in the latest round of digital executive changes might be missing the bigger point.
"There’s a general tendency to focus too much on individuals and make too much of who’s in and who’s out," Mr. Sands said. "You’re going to need people who are visionary and innovative about the opportunities created by digital media, but I would look less at the individuals and more at the teams they’re putting together."
Indeed, if the challenges of competing with Internet giants and whiz kids in garages weren’t daunting enough, one of the biggest factors for success in these jobs is organizational: does the anointed guru have the juice to cross over existing divisions and to introduce newfangled businesses that may actually hurt before they help? At NBC, for example, the current lineup of digital and Internet projects – only some of which report wholly to Ms. Comstock – resembles a Tokyo subway map.
In a way, the tenure of a chief digital genius weirdly mirrors the fickle nature of the web itself: hits can appear very quickly, but only a few stick around for the long haul.
Music’s Big Four Lose Copyright Case in China
Excerpted from MediaPost Report
Legal reps of the major record companies have been busy recently, Universal Music Group (UMG) most notably. However, in the first united front mounted by the big four – EMI, SonyBMG, Warner Music, and UMG – which collectively sued Chinese search giant Baidu.com for facilitating the unauthorized download of 137 pieces of music owned by the companies – they lost.
Baidu has a popular MP3 service on its website, and the companies demanded that the web giant compensate them for 1.73 million yuan, or $216,250 – not really that much money. It’s more likely that the big four were testing the waters of copyright law in China, where piracy is rampant and the government turns a blind eye.
China says it’s complying with foreign pressure to crack down on unlicensed downloads, but if it were spending half as much time worrying about US copyright as it did on censorship, then there wouldn’t be a problem.
The ruling from the suit officially stated that Baidu had not infringed on their copyrights because the music files were being downloaded from the web servers of external parties. The big four may appeal the decision; meanwhile, they’re going after Yahoo China, which is 40% owned by US based Yahoo, next. Please click here for the full AP report.
Coming Events of Interest
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Digital Hollywood Europe in London – November 29th - December 1st at ExCeL London, The Docklands, England. The DCIA will moderate two P2P panels featuring DCIA Member company executives Anthony Rose, CTO, Altnet; Andrew Parker, CTO and Co-Founder CacheLogic; Guido Ciburski, CEO, CyberSky-TV; Chip Venters, CEO, Digital Containers; Jonathan Friend, CTO, Friend Media Technology Systems (FMTS); Bruce Benson, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting; Les Ottolenghi, Co-Founder & CEO, INTENT MediaWorks; Xavier Casanova, CEO, Perenety; and Ingjerd Jevnaker, Marketing Manager, RawFlow.
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VIP Networking Reception – November 30th at Grapeshots near ExCeL London, The Docklands, England.Sponsored by DCIA Member RawFlow. Please contact Ingjerd Jevnaker at +44 (0)20 7480 4220 for more information.
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Innovating in a Web 2.0 World – December 7th. There is a tremendous amount of focus on Web 2.0 and yet there are as many questions as answers. What is it? Who's using it? How can you get started? Join WebSideStory for a free webinar on how your online business can innovate in the midst of this Web 2.0 world.
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2007 International CES – January 8th–11th in Las Vegas, NV. With four decades of history, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. The DCIA will moderate the "Next Generation P2P" panel on Wednesday January 10th, featuring DCIA Member executive Les Ottolenghi, Co-Founder & CEO, INTENT MediaWorks.
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P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY – February 6th–8th in New York, CA. The Winter DCIA Conference & Exposition will cover policy, marketing, and technology issues affecting commercial development of this emerging high-growth industry. Exhibits and demonstrations will feature industry-leading products and services. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. Plan now to attend.
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