The Cable Blog

Getting Better All The Time

JoshG1 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:18:00 GMT

I find with every passing year, I like the industry more.

That may “fly in the face” of what should be the norm to a sometimes overworked and frequently stressed communications professional, but I stand by those words. As of late, I have been almost giddy with excitement (ok so I obviously don’t have enough going on in my life…) at the advancement of standards I see with the MSO and cable vendors. It seems in years past they would worry about new services at the abandonment of operational efficiency or the reverse, cutting and streamlining operational costs and processes at the expense of offering new “stuff” to consumers. In the things I have been observing at conferences, meetings, and one-on-ones with MSOs, I am seeing a real concern for the care that new services to launch as well as some cool visionary “stuff” coming out of the front office. I think that really hit home with me as I attended sessions and had meetings at the Management World Show in Nice last week.

It ended up, in a strange twist of unfortunate fate, that the time frame for the MW show was in direct conflict with the Cable Show that took place in New Orleans. I thought it would spell doom for any MSO and associated vendor attendance I could possible dream about for the show in Nice; it ended up being not at all the case. Although there are some key associates that will be missed due to the conflict, I was pleased to see the willingness on the part of many of the MSOs to send resources to both events. I would think that it would fall down the lines of technical versus strategic, but that would not seem to be the case.. I saw attendees from both sides of the organization, which supports my notion that it looks a little like the two neighbors have finally shaken hands over the fence.

I met with 10 distinct MSOs interested in pursuing standards and best practices in the area of business process, data modeling, service delivery, operational architecture, and the drawing of business models and mapping to further define and expand services. I heard eight different case studies with leading MSOs spoke by executive members about how standards and process mapping using tools like TM Forum standards change their operations and network departments and allowed for cost savings and acceleration of new services.

In the light of gloom and doom for several global financial markets, uncertainty in consumer confidence, and huge investment and skeptical analysts about potentially “risky” R & D, and massive investment in network upgrades, it is nice to see things like billing, revenue assurance, usage efficiency, fallout management, and provisioning metrics making it into the executive offices and getting the “front office” attention it deserves.

I love this industry more all the time…..

I Can’t Work My Remote So I Rarely Watch Television...

JoshG1 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:18:00 GMT

Yes, that is a bona fide confession of a fairly bright communications expert that has been around this industry a long time. I won’t tell you who she is….just that she is near and dear to my heart….a-hem…(next time you hear that I never watch television because I am too busy, just translate “I have watched the same episode of CSI ten times because I can’t seem to move the arrow to what I want to see…so I give up”)

The thought occurred to me the other day as I stumbled with the remote, trying to change channels, ending up on the menu button and restarting a show I have already watch three times all the while never actually landing on any programming I intended to; that I must look like a crazed male with ADD to anyone actually recording my usage or “consumer behavior”. I can’t imagine how any conclusive data about ratings could be mined from my viewing habits, although one six month old episode CSI would rank pretty high up there. It was interesting for me to think about all the innovation going on in the cable industry, will 50% of the population have to rely on their high school junior to decipher codes, buttons, icons, and pure luck to simply watch the evening news? There is a phrase I heard recently at a TM Forum staff meeting that basically things should be “grandma proof”. This should not only include labor intensive program guides and remotes, but also the data that comes out of the home network. When I speak of the necessity of tracking and monitoring data, executives get headaches, architects faint, and developers run away. It seems that when thinking about the complexity of trending data, we think of passing billions of records that need to be sorted, used, aggregated, and placed in the appropriate system. Though this path is not totally unfeasible, it exists only in a company that has no use for standards.

I have been in the standards industry for a long time and if I had a dime for every time a large company tells me that they “use propriety interfaces” I think, “bet your develop costs are through the roof”. See not only is software expensive to code for every single change that needs to be made, but even an inflexible data model (aka the data you select to receive and store and the way in which it is aggregated and disseminated) is basically the effort of undoing and redoing each time a new element needs to be tracked or a new system or software requires a different aggregation of the data. The act of data modeling in the grand scheme of personalization (whether that is advertising or other content) requires a path, condition, and direction for each piece of information that is needed. Interfaces like Cablelabs “tru2way” give the ability to specify those elements and determine the appropriate path for your consumers data. Understandably the same elements that are needed for troubleshooting and capacity management is not the same as my need to determine a premium advertising standard. Use cases and detailed scenarios are needed to accurately draw conclusions about anything this data that bring you. Which brings me to my next (and final) point.

Being a “industry participant” is important. The ability for multiple MSOs to do collaborative work is a foundational need for the standardization or “uniformity” of key data needed to create a new market or market program. With this is mind TM Forum is calling together all MSOs globally to come together and work from the need to have a sufficient and robust data model. We are reaching out next week at the Cable Congress show in Madrid to launch a new advertising counsel that will be instrumental in establishing common norms around the gathering, aggregation, and dissemination of key data elements that will allow the cross referencing of multiple data points within a “micro demographic” that will deliver very valuable advertising and content to that specific home. We are joined by experts in the industry from UPC, EuroCablelabs, Sigma, and Seachange that will explain and educate on the advertising potential in Europe. TM Forum will then unveil a plan to get our collective hands around this data mystery of “personalization”. Session is at noon on Friday at the Cable Congress 2008 show. We hope to see you all there.

And remember…..Bring your remote…I could use the practice.

The Cadbury Gorilla

JoshG1 — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:21:00 GMT

I am fresh back in my office this week from a fascinating show last week in London. It was a smaller show that was collocated with the 2008 IPTV World Show but its smaller venue did not deter from some great speakers and exciting directions for TV advertising. One message was clear on every panel and from each speaker: the industry must do something different with or instead of the usual ‘30 second spot’. They must instead target buying audiences with commercials that are interesting, unusual, laughed at in a way that is non intrusive and welcomed by it’s receiving audience, even owning the potential for "viral networking" via the internet - as DVR and other recording capabilities have made 'zipping' – the practice of fast forwarding through commercials or uninteresting content - far too easy. If the industry continues to flatly broadcast unimaginative and uninventive ads to viewers, ad revenue will go down as a result, having the unfortunate burden placed on consumer services… and that cannot be a good thing for a competitive digital media offering. The common theme: the need to target, to make interaction a component, to know your customer, to make each ad an unforgettable experience.

One example of this is the recent success and placement of the ingenious Cadbury Gorilla commercial (If one has not seen it, it is readily available on YouTube and well worth the watch). Being one of the few in attendance that had not seen the commercial up to that point, I was just amazed at the popularity of this 90 second commercial. There have already been thousands of YouTube downloads, over 70 profiles set up on Facebook exclusively around this commercial and substantial contests as well. No matter how much it cost to make, a sponsor couldn’t buy the kind of publicity as the viral networking phenomenon. Running primarily in the UK and during high profile shows with high profiled viewership, this commercial then was seen in video on demand movies and then the "making of" was played after these movies. In almost every movie that was recorded or watched, the "making of the Cadbury Gorilla" was selected to be recorded and watched as well. In some cases, the commercial was actually played more times than was the movie.

The Cadbury Gorilla is a spectacular example of advertising that doubles as user driven content. This kind of ingenuity is the kind of thing the industry needs to do more of. I heard Sky Media state that they were working with several other companies like Ford and Adidas to come up with shorter ads that could non-intrusively run at the start and end of movies and other high-demand content. Thus far, Sky was having good success with things already delivered, and were expecting to expand this scope to other advertisers. Add in the potential for targeting populations and local areas plus interactive elements, this could be a huge win for not just MSOs, but for the consumer as well.

Now if only they could do something with those pesky political ads...

Cable Markets and Changing Behaviors

JoshG1 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:25:00 GMT

In national surveys we keep hearing that, although consumers are warming a little more to advertising for free content, they love DVR because of the opportunity to skip commercials and get straight to programming. It takes less time to watch a show and no one has to learn about Dr Soles foot cushions when there is a cliff hanger in the show they are watching. I know this to be true in my own household, but then again, I noticed a caveat recently to that when I was watching Bravo’s Top Chef and was randomly hitting the fast forward to get to the next part of the show….I saw a funny commercial. I actually stopped hitting the fast forward button and started hitting rewind to see the commercial, thereby delaying my need to watch the next part of the elimination challenge (Top Chef is a reality series) which is by far the most climatic part of the show. You know if I was someone taking a survey to see if I wanted more advertising or would I be willing to watch advertising for free programming, I might have said no. My time is valuable to me and saving a few dollars to watch commercials really turns me off and I am an advocate of content and advertising personalization and speak on it often. Although, after observing my behavior in that instance, I have to say I have been thinking a lot about how our industry showed view the multi billion dollar a year potential of dynamic advertising.

Looking over the industry, many of the MSO s are engaged in trials of one form or another introduce new concepts in advertising. The industry’s commitment in this is clear. Raising the CPM (Cost per Thousand) rates are important to modeling the ongoing viability of offering new content. Doing this is going to require precise targeting, delivery of cutting edge advertising that gets reaction, and a service model that does not get in the way of consumer satisfaction. Currently there are trials with ad updates when replayed VoD content is played again, giving new revenue opportunity to a replayed movie or purchased sports event that is recorded via DVR. Although that is a winning proposition for the operators, and even IPTV providers, it does not go far enough. It appears that specific location (aka city, zip, and neighborhood) and user demographic targeting is still about 12 – 24 months away from hitting what could be considered large scale integration. Even so, with critical mass so “at arm’s length” MSO’s need to be concerned with the technical and business models of what those offerings will look like. There has been some question in the industry that consumers may dislike the opportunity to get more advertising, even if it is in what could be deducted to what they are in the market for. The thought process is, consumers hate commercials, but want content and don’t want to pay too much for it. That is hard to build a model on. Based on my earlier observation on my own viewing habits, I think there is a way for all to win in this area.

I think some of the emphasis in the industry must be on building a business model that is manageable, targeted, and creates user satisfaction. With all the pressure on the MSos and service providers to ramp up advertising as a leading revenue generator in the services of the future, targeting has got to be part of that. Specifications like the CableLabs OCAP 1.1 (now Tru2way) that are gaining traction this year, MSO’s need to look at the management and modeling of targeting as well as the type of advertising that is going to be successful to their customers. To this end, we [TM Forum] are teaming up with the Cable Congress Show in April to put on a track doing just that. The concentration will be on calling together the MSOs, vendors, industry associations, and advertisers to work on data modeling and flow and management of user data downstream to enable the quick and efficient implementation of targeted advertising offers. The meeting will be held the last day of the Cable Congress Show on April 25th. I am excited at the prospect of having a true industry initiative in place early in this service. I hope to see all MSOs and those who serve that industry there. Be sure to stop up at the panel table and say hi!

Signing off for now!