流媒体 West 2006 Wrap-Up: User-Generated Content is Serious Business

With more than two dozen conference sessions and nearly 50 exhibitors, we don't have the space to cover all the goings-on at last week's 流媒体 West Conference and Exhibition in San Jose. Here's an overview from one reporter's perspective; for further coverage and many of the conference speakers' presentations, 请查看 会议网站.

产品太多了, 服务, and initiatives announced at 流媒体 West to be included in a single article. To see all of the press releases from the show, click 在这里.

流媒体 West in San Jose was a bustling conference this year, with a wide range of exhibitors and attendees, 新产品公告, 新联盟, and even a bit of understated drama. User-generated content was clearly the hot topic this year, with lively discussions about how best to monetize the trend.

That topic provided the focal point of Tuesday's 主题 来自美国在线视频副总裁蒂姆·塔特尔. and discussion continued at panels on "The Business of Podcasting & Video 博客ging" and "Consumer-Generated Video Communities." The overriding theme was finding a way to tap into the buzz, and how to make money doing it.

The Business of Podcasting and Video 博客ging
Moderator Molly Wood, executive editor of CNET.com, opened the podcasting panel with a strong message: Podcasting and video blogging can indeed be monetized. 例如, Rocketboom的CPM是20-80美元, while FMmedia had a $1 million month last month, with 60% of that going to their content partners.

The conversation soon turned to advertising models. "I don't believe the subscriber model works in this space. 坦率地说, 随着广告模式的发展, I think advertisers are willing to pay more than we are,鲍勃·福格蒂说, VP of sales and business development for PodZinger.com. 小组成员一致同意.

Robert Scoble, formerly with Microsoft and now VP of media development for Podtech.net, re-introduced a classic marketing principle to the monetization discussion. "We need a new metric called 'engagement.' The audience that is engaged is very willing to click on things, very willing to buy things."

CPM could soon change to CPA, or cost per action. 弗兰克知道了. 罗伯特·斯考伯找到了. Scoble can measure engagement by the number of calls to his cell phone (his number is posted on his 网站). Ze Frank had a $10,000 week last week, selling sponsored "duckie" icons on his 网站 给听众每人12美元.

主持人Wood补充道, "My personal feeling is that [CPM] will ultimately probably not be the model, because of the metrics problem that we have. Ultimately it's going to be a hard sell if we can't prove that the cost per thousand is actually a thousand listens. With current technology, you can't prove that someone listened to your podcast. You can only prove that they downloaded it."

甜菜.电视节目的安迪·普莱塞对此表示赞同. "We've had a bit of a honeymoon [with advertisers]," he said. The panel, which also included the Web 2.请听乔希·欧文斯的报道, concluded that a blend of transactional, 或engagement-centric, measurement and overall branding association were the waves of the future.

PodZinger's Fogarty addressed the question of audience reaction to video ads. His company recently conducted a sensitivity analysis study, and Fogarty shared some of the findings. "Specifically, young men don't mind advertising if its entertaining. In fact, they'd like the ability to download the advertisement and share it," he said. This brought up the question of relevancy of existing advertising approaches. “真的, 作为一个社区, if this is the direction we are going to go, we need the ad creatives to develop that type of content specifically for the niche audiences we're delivering to,福格蒂说.

Another finding of the study was that viewers ultimately couldn't tell the difference between 7-, 9-, or 12-second pre-roll advertising, though 15 seconds was the threshold. “只要超过15秒, and [the ad] may as well have been three minutes long,福格蒂说. Viewers also want to know how long the ad is going to be, with some sort of indicator such as a timer or progress bar.