Source: Glenda Korporaal, The Australian

THE 2008 Olympics in Beijing will be the first true internet Games, with the International Olympic Committee keen to exploit the advantages and reach of the new media, according to Australia’s senior IOC member Kevan Gosper.

In an interview with Media this week, Mr Gosper, who is head of the IOC Press Commission, said it was the big media groups covering the Olympics – including news agencies, newspapers and television broadcasters – that were keen to push the envelope on the use of the internet to cover the Games.

And the IOC was also keen to use the internet to promote the Games to a younger audience.

Mr Gosper said the IOC Press Commission had initially been concerned about protecting the rights of the officially accredited Olympic media when looking at issues such as whether athletes should be allow to write blogs during the Games.

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NineMSN’s reign as Australia’s most popular online news website has come to an end, with traditional newspaper mastheads experiencing surging Internet traffic at the expense of broad-based portals.

The National Nine News website was overtaken in terms of unique browsers, acknowledged as the most accepted form of measuring Internet traffic, by the Sydney Morning Herald website in July, the first time the National Nine News website had been beaten.

Since January this year, Nine News traffic has grown only 12per cent, compared with the Herald’s 76 per cent.

In terms of domestic page impressions, which are used to determine with internet ads are sold, National Nine News is beaten by the Herald, News.com.au and The Age, according to Nielsen’s monthly Market Intelligence Report.

The Australian says that NineMSN’s sagging is a concern for PBL Media’s majority owner CVC Asia Pacific, coming on the back of poor ratings and earnings results for PBL Media’s Nine Network and slower growth at ACP Magazines.

This has raised questions over how well the group can service its high level of borrowing if PBL Media’s main businesses continue to underperform.

It is understood that NineMSN was valued at more than $1billion in the CVC deal last year.

Nine News unique browsers fell 5 per cent in July compared with June, while the Herald rose 11 per cent.

Other news websites to experience strong growth last month included News Limited’s The Daily Telegraph (up 20 per cent on June), news.com.au (up 14 per cent) and Herald Sun (up 10 per cent).

Rounding out the top 10 in total unique browsers after the Herald and Nine News were The Age, news.com.au, Herald Sun, Fox Sports (News), The Australian (News), The Daily Telegraph, Realfooty (Fairfax) and Weatherzone (The Weather Company).

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Simon Canning | July 16, 2007, The Australian

ADVERTISERS hoping to come out at the top of search engine results may be forced to include video clips in their websites or risk being ignored.

With search engines such as Google and Yahoo being optimised to capture video content as well as keywords, Robbie Hills, managing director of WPP Group company 24/7 Realmedia, said advertisers using online search as a conduit to customers would have to consider making video a key part of their websites.

The warning comes as Google increases the influence of its Universal Search model, unveiled three months ago.

"Websites will now be competing against results from Google Images, Google Videos, Google Maps, Google Books and Google News, depending on the search term," Mr Hills said.

"Having a video thumbnail appear within a search result will undoubtedly increase the click-through rate for the listing, as pictures tend to draw the user’s attention.

"This could mean the top-ranked search result without a thumbnail could lose traffic to a second-placed search result with a thumbnail."

Mr Hills said that over time video would take more focus from search engines as more people accessed videos on broadband connections.

Video search results could be crucial if people were looking for particular products or brand names, he said.

"On YouTube.com there are already several clever users who post videos reviewing products and drive traffic to their websites by providing links through video clips," Mr Hills said.

Mr Hills said that the introduction of search covering video images as well as text had been slow. But to keep up with how consumers were expected to use offerings such as Universal Search, website owners needed to be begin preparing for it.

"The Google Universal results will be subtle to begin with, but as time goes on these results should begin to populate search results on a more regular basis," he said.

"It is still really early days, but at the same time we are going to see it more and more as it gains acceptance from users, so what we are recommending is that if you want to be competitive in your category you need to absolutely consider what you need to do on this front.

"It’s all about making sure your return on investment is going in the right direction."

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Source: Simon Canning, The Australian

INTERNET technology that almost brought the music industry to its knees is being turned on the television world, with some predictions that by the end of the year traditional TV could be rendered obsolete.

A handful of companies are preparing for a full-scale, global assault on the way TV is viewed through the internet, mixing the speed of broadband with the peer-to-peer file-sharing processes that helped launch the music piracy industry, and all of it bankrolled by international advertisers.

Joost is the name that has captured the most attention since it announced four months ago that it would begin beta trials of its 150-channel strong global TV network.

The Netherlands company was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of file-sharing system Kazaa who went on to create voice over internet protocol company Skype.

In late 2005 the pair and fellow investors sold Skype to eBay for $US2.6 billion ($2.9 billion) and began looking for the next gap in the internet market.

Zennstrom and Friis have set their eyes on breaking down international TV barriers by forming the Joost service, and some big-name entertainment companies have been convinced to come on board.

Viacom, Endemol, CBS, Warner Music, Ministry of Sound TV and Aardman Animation are just some of the large companies that have signed content agreements with Joost.

The US National Hockey League and the Indy Racing series – which runs the Indianapolis 500 – have also aligned themselves, signing global agreements for the sports to be carried by Joost.

Joost promotes itself as the ultimate video on demand aligned with all the interactivity of the internet.

The video feeds arrive with the same broadcast quality as traditional TV, quality that significantly outstrips that of YouTube, which was acquired by Google last year for $US1.65 billion ($1.88billion).

The broadcaster achieves this quality by using thousands of home computers across the world to deliver small chunks (called packets) of each broadcast, reducing pressure on a central server, otherwise known as peer to peer (P2P).

It’s the same system used by music pirates to share music files. However, with content agreements locked in with suppliers and the ability to allow or lock out regions on demand, the P2P TV system being developed is completely legal.

As a result, even in the trial stages, it has also proven attractive to advertisers.

Global brands that have tested campaigns on Joost include Coca-Cola and Nike.

Ian Gardiner, managing director of Australian-based Viocorp, helps companies run videos over secure closed networks but says the online TV revolution is unstoppable, particularly among young media consumers.

"The young people don’t know the difference between TV and computers, they don’t know the difference between interacting and not," Gardiner says. "The computer is like a fridge. If the broadcasters don’t react to it, they are going to be in trouble."

But while Joost is stealing all the headlines, two other bids are also under way to try to carve out the leadership position in global internet TV.

US-based Veoh is marketing itself as an online digital video recorder but differs from Joost in that, like YouTube, the public can upload their own content. Where Joost broadcasts content only from its own sources, Veoh allows people to record content from any source on the internet.

Also entering the fray is Ireland’s Babelgum. Babelgum Network launched its beta in March.

The initial worldwide broadband TV audience was 300 million and growing at 30 per cent a year, says spokesman Ian Hood.

"We have been very regionally focused in the early stages but are just about to take our message out to the world," Hood tells The Australian.

"Currently it is in the beta test stage, and rights owners are being invited to submit content for uploading and transmission to the beta testers worldwide."

Chief executive Erik Lumer says he believes Babelgum will prove a potent mix of what people expect from TV and the internet.
"It combines the best of the lean-back experience of TV with the interactivity of the sit-forward PC experience," Lumer says.

"At times you can just sit back and enjoy the full screen, high-quality streaming of your favourite content, (while) at other times you can use the interactivity and social networking facilities to personalise your experience and interact with other users.

"It is an environment in which everyone benefits: rights owners, viewers and advertisers."

Simon van Wyk, founder of Australian digital agency Hothouse, says P2P will be a game-breaker for TV.

"It is going to be a fundamental shift," van Wyk says. "It’s the long tail where we see the constraints of limited resource go away."

But while Joost, Veoh and Babelgum may be bad news for existing broadcasters, their arrival will be a boon to those creating content.

"Instead of having five options to sell your content, you have got limitless outlets for content," van Wyk says. "It is going to be a great thing for consumers as well. And I think they are going to arrive pretty quickly.

"If you look at the way consumers have adopted stealing content through BitTorrent and making that work for themselves, it a very easy jump for them to make.

"The barriers to that uptake are going to go away really quickly."

Having founded Dining Down Under as a traditional TV show aimed at free-to-air and pay-TV, Mr Cherikoff said one of the real innovations with Joost was that the online delivery of the program made it a more interactive and on-demand experience.

This allowed content providers to have links to sales offers, sub-categories and other options. "You can even click on a link that pauses the show and gives you the recipe (so) you can print, then resume the show," he said.

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Spending by consumer packaged goods marketers on internet advertising is steadily growing, reports eMarketer.

The growing spending for online ads runs counter to the decreased funds they’re putting toward other media. The growth is part of an acknowledgment by food and drink marketers that people are going online for food tips and recipes. Most of that is going toward display and other branded ads and not search ads.

CPG online spending has risen from $470 million in 2006 to $600 million in 2007. That’s expected to rise to $1.132 billion in 2011. Food and beverage spending is roughly steady at about 45 percent of all CPG products. In 2006 online spending was just two percent of CPG budgets compared to the 62 percent that goes toward TV.

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