Last week we released our yearly comprehensive look at media trends, The New Media Landscape: 2007. Over the next few weeks, we will publish a summary of the various sections of the report. If you are interested in a full copy of the report, you can request one by e-mailing hq@pollackmedia.com.
Introduction
In last year’s annual New Media Landscape report we discussed that the pace and nature of technological change demanded that formerly discrete industries like print, radio, television, and movies embrace a much more content-specific and distribution-neutral model. We also outlined specific trends that would impact practically all of media.Last week we released our yearly comprehensive look at media trends, The New Media Landscape: 2007. Over the next few weeks, we will publish a summary of the various sections of the report. If you are interested in a full copy of the report, you can request one by e-mailing hq@pollackmedia.com.
Introduction
In last year’s annual New Media Landscape report we discussed that the pace and nature of technological change demanded that formerly discrete industries like print, radio, television, and movies embrace a much more content-specific and distribution-neutral model. We also outlined specific trends that would impact practically all of media.
As we look back, what is perhaps most extraordinary about 2006 is how fast those revolutionary trends we outlined came to pass. Things like consumer-generated media and social networking dominated media efforts, even as they were relatively unknown 12 months before. In 2006 television shows were legally available on the Internet and radio shows were legally available for listening on your iPod. At the end of 2006, Hollywood made a legitimate step toward day-and-date releases of movies, after they angrily scoffed at such a strategy one year earlier.
As we look forward to 2007, there will continue to be revolutionary changes like these, but expect that the dominant trends to be based on evolutionary change. Today, traditional and new media have a better view of the new media landscape. In 2007 they will have to adapt to it.
The Empowered Consumer
Nothing had more of an impact on media in 2006 than the empowered consumer.
For 2007, the challenge for media companies will be finding out how to transition from fighting consumer control to accepting it and monetizing it.
The underlying struggle for all of media in 2007 and beyond is that consumers want content when they want it, how they want it, and where they want it.
Examples:
YouTube
The Democracy Player
The Venice Project
All companies need to be pro-active about providing consumers with everything they want. A company may find itself handling one issue, while another one pops up that is even more disruptive.
The story of an industry struggling with one aspect of consumer control while another one explodes right under its nose will be a recurring theme in 2007.
It is tempting for media companies to believe that adaptation is not the only solution, there is another one: Fighting the consumer. Unfortunately, such a strategy has yet to prove to be effective.
There is only one choice for media companies in 2007: Adapt their business model to an empowered consumer, a consumer who not only wants to listen, view, or read his or her content when, how, and where he or she wants it—but expects it. There are no exceptions.
Social Networks
Social networking has quietly become much more complex and, in many ways, more similar to human interpersonal networks.
Social networking is becoming more complicated and more de-centralized, creating both a challenge and opportunity for media companies, both large and small.
The result is that, in the end, social networking will make centralized monetization difficult.
One area getting very little attention are the social networks building around cell phones. The result is a unique and separate social network that all media should take part in as they develop new media strategies for 2007.
Examples of more complex networks include individual and site communities, local community networks, and even more complex networks.
Media can certainly play a role in smaller and more specialized social networking sites, but the ability to aggregate them into a monetizeable reach will be difficult. In this environment, it is almost more important to be attached to embeddable content widgets that are shared between thousands of sites than it is to be part of a centralized social networking site.
One of the most important concepts for media to understand is widgets. Widgets are pieces of interesting or cool content which are easily embedded into web sites by users.
The ability for a user to take media content and syndicate it to a wide variety of places is convenient and important. With the spread of this content, content providers can then monetize this new “long tail” reach within the widget itself.
