Big Data is hot - and seemingly everyone from the worlds of politics to sports to retailing is chasing ways to understand what blizzards of digital shards of electronic consumer behavior mean for the future of their fields. It’s revenge of the nerds - to the third power.

The digital transformation of media is no different, and it is coming to the medium-formerly-known-as-television faster than you can re-arrange the channels on your nifty new smart TV.

Divining actionable insights from TV set-tops and an exploding array of video consumption devices and conduits will soon be mission critical activities for anyone in the video business food-chain - and smart actors won’t sit around waiting for whatever becomes of Nielsen and Arbitron to define it for them.

Among the smartest are the folks behind our advisory client Integral Reach, who we congratulate on their exit to interactive media technology stalwart Rovi this week.  

Big Data viewing data and analytics - it’s not easy, and it’s potentially fraught with peril.  But this acquisition (and other deals to come) is clear evidence that it’s coming soon to a TV/device near you.

The consumer mobile device revolution is fully upon us, and while flummoxed corporate CIO’s everywhere scramble to re-org their legacy command-and-control enterprise computing strategies for their employees accordingly (whada’ya mean I can’t use my iPhone for work?!) — business travelers are also forcing the issue when they’re out on the road working for the Man.

Business travel sucks, but the promise of at least being able to watch a little bit of TV or a movie can certainly help deaden some of the pain.

As a recent article in the New York Times validates what road warriors already know: the days of relying on in-room TV walled-gardens or sub-optimal airport bar monitor environments for out-of-home video entertainment are over.

While legacy hardware-dependent providers like the no-longer-bankrupt LodgeNet try to quickly adapt to app-fueled device-accessible content ubiquity, opportunity abounds for next-gen multi-screen connectivity providers — especially in the travel, transportation and hospitality fields — to provide enhanced quality, service and security to consumers who simply want the ability to kill time by binge-viewing House of Cards on Netflix, burning through a stack of TiVo Stream recordings, or watching the big local home team playoff game (via Sling) literally from home.

Hotels, airlines, and airports all collectively have a small window of opportunity to enhance and improve consumers’ ability to access the entertainment content they want while traveling. 

Basic first-to-market, pay-as-you-go broadband providers like GoGo and Boingo seem to be more like NoGo for the discerning/demanding traveler - unless you find answering email more interesting than streaming a TV show or movie.

But next-gen satellite-rooted technologies like Row44, and ViaSat’s Exede seem to be more sturdy, and the future is bright for them and others who see bandwidth-gobbling video as the eventual table-stakes for consumer travel satisfaction in the years ahead. 

For those business travelers who remember simpler times, the build-out can’t happen soon enough.

second photo: Matt Roth for The New York Times

As we have argued for some time, the concept of mobile payments will happen in our lifetime - once the retailer “so what” problem is addressed, and once the first generation of over-hyped game-changers shakes out. 

And don’t even ask when the actual consumer finds a real compelling reason to adopt the behavior on a regular, consistent basis.

While the battle to solve a problem that may not even exist continues unabated, the FTC continues to wisely anticipate the issues that will likely affect consumers when that magic day (or year) happens. 

In its just-issued report Paper, Plastic…Or Mobile?, the Commission calls out three important issues that bear watching and preparation to the litany of aspirants in this potentially gigantic space:

1) how consumers can resolve disputes in cases of fraudulent payments or unauthorized charges - including the growing issue of “mobile cramming,” which the Commission will address in an upcoming industry roundtable on May 8; 

2) the need for strong data security measures to ensure security throughout the mobile payment process; and

3) consumer privacy (of course).

There’s a pony in here somewhere - the FTC is just concerned that consumers don’t get lost on their way to the barn.  

The various industry players have been gifted a consumer protection roadmap by the FTC.  They ignore it at their own peril.

One of the unmentionables among professionals in the television industry right now is the unavoidable groundswell of actual legitimate alternatives to classic MVPD pay TV bundles - which continue to get more expensive by the month.

Recent advancements like Terk’s elegant Roku-ready HD over-the-air receiver (below), and Aereo’s ballsy expansion into 22 new markets outside of its current New York City-only base are only the latest beats on the drum.

Shaving, cutting and “never-ing” the cable cord is really happening - despite what legacy incumbents might otherwise have you believe.

It certainly doesn’t mean the classic pay TV subscription bundle model of television is going away anytime soon - it’s a pretty compelling and cost-efficient smörgåsbord of live/linear, on-demand and time-shifted viewing options that is a convenient one-stop, quality-of-service-guaranteed video entertainment bundle - that many American “grown folks” have become quite well-adjusted to.

But all bets are off with the under-40 set - the growing group of folks who just want their video content when and where they want it - preferably without the messy commitment part.  For them, accessing TV through their Xbox, streaming videos on their tablets, place-shifting live sports, and watching movies just about anywhere is not only the norm - it’s expected. 

To them, content is still king - but they ain’t crossing no damn castle moat to get it.  And seers like Aereo’s Chet Kanojia (below) and Roku’s Anthony Wood (remember ReplayTV?) understand that in spades.

Legacy TV provider dudes who fail to abide this new reality, may find their all-or-nothing video bundles simply too much for the growing masses of frugal youngins’ who find more simple/basic combinations of over-the-air broadcast, online video and easy mobile access just “good enough” for their modern-day entertainment needs.

Whenever a startup founder or venture investor bounds into our offices waxing prophetic about the future of “mobile advertising” and/or the scalable potential for targeted display ads across the burgeoning population of smartphones and tablets, we already know it’s going to be a short conversation.

The broader and far more complex possibilities of sophisticated, entertaining and (God forbid) useful mobile *applications*?  Pull up a chair - we’re listening.

And endorsing.

We’re positively giddy in congratulating our advisory client Toura - one of the industry’s leading mobile application development platform firms - on their acquisition by Grapple, Europe’s leading mobile innovation agency. 

A compelling combination of two sets of very smart people who are now even better positioned to help marketers and media firms on both sides of the Pond take their increasingly important mobile application activities (not ads!) to the next level.

(photo: Grapple)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words (whoever “they” might be), and the ad for the Apple iPad Mini on the back cover of last week’s (December 3, 2012) Bloomberg Businessweek is an exercise in how minimalism works beautifully in the most ironic of ways.  Even the most die-hard Luddite can appreciate what Apple’s latest creation is capable of in this simple creative execution - gloriously rendered in that supposedly dying media form of magazine print.

Can’t wait to see what television ads eventually look like for Apple TV.

Let’s face it: the explosion of digital video choices and consumption environments available to the average US consumer (whoever that is) is simply overwhelming the formerly-known-as-TV industry’s ability - long controlled by the opaquely anachronistic Nielsen measurement system - to accurately keep score.

Like millions of proverbial trees falling in a vast forest that nobody’s around to hear, American consumers are accessing video content in a myriad of ways that lie firmly outside the artificial measurement boundaries constructed by the buyers and sellers of television decades ago.  And how that reality is accurately accounted for - both now and in the fast-splintering future - will determine the fates and fortunes of everyone with an economic stake in the business. 

A fact that is finally starting to dawn on some of the folks who have most to lose.

If you want to hear the latest on this industry pot-boiler of an issue, join the Vertere Group’s Tim Hanlon for a major discussion about the present and future of television measurement - “Measuring the Multiplatform Viewer: Challenges and Solutions” - at the ITVT-produced TV of Tomorrow Show - Intensive 2012 on December 10, 2012 at midtown Manhattan’s Sentry Centers 730 Third Avenue. 

This two-part session will explore the need for new measurement technologies and strategies that can keep pace with changes in consumer viewing habits and media marketplaces.

Panelists in the first half (“Challenges”) of the session will explore the challenges faced by media buyers, publishers of advertising-supported online and mobile video, and other stakeholders in the advanced-TV and advertising ecosystems, in their efforts to measure the effectiveness of advertising on non-traditional video platforms. They will also attempt to identify the ways in which a lack of effective measurement tools has hindered the development of these new platforms.  The all-star cast includes leading industry influencers such as: GroupM Next’s Director of Emerging Communications Mike Bologna; PrecisionDemand CEO (and former Grey media buying chief and Nielsen marketing head) Jon Mandel; TVB Chief Research Officer (and former Turner Broadcasting and Interpublic research chief) Stacy Lynn Schulman; and A+E Networks EVP of Digital Media and Business Development Dan Suratt.

Panelists in the second half (“Solutions”) of the session will be drawn from companies that are attempting to solve the measurement challenges identified by the first panel. The panelists will respond to the questions raised by the first panel, describing their companies’ measurement strategies—but also attempting to answer the broader question of how the measurement marketplace is evolving in light of the issues raised by the first panel.  Those on that hot seat: Bill Feininger, SVP/ Media Measurement, FourthWall Media; Joan FitzGerald, VP/TV and Cross-Media Solutions, comScore; Cathy Hetzel, President, Rentrak; Harvey Kent, Chief Media Strategist, Mediaocean; and George Shababb, President, Kantar Media Audiences North America.

This will be an exhibition, not a competition - so please, no wagering.

If TV broadcasters feel like they are under assault, they’re right.  Disruption is (literally) in the air - and the dual-path revenue gravy train of government-protected free airwave ad revenue and cable programming-like retransmission carriage fees is headed for derailment - courtesy of technology advancements that require a fundamental re-think of how Americans can access TV/video programming, and how the business model will and should work.

On one side, broadcasters are apoplectic over Dish Network’s (now award-winning) “Primetime Anytime” Auto Hop automatic ad-skipping feature in its Hopper Whole-Home DVR, which allows consumers to bypass commercials - at their own choosing - in any of the four major network prime-time program offerings.   A functionality that broadcasters say threatens their ability to sell advertising - the stated linchpin and life-blood of their decades-old, free over-the-air business model. 

On the other side, broadcasters are howling with displeasure that game-changing technology advancements like Chet Kanojia’s scrappy Barry Diller-backed Aereo TV - and now, Dish Network’s just-announced Hopper add-on chestnut, the USB Digital OTA Tuner - are enabling consumers to hive out ostensibly free broadcast signals from their increasingly costly multi-channel cable/DBS/telco television bills that have been fattened in recent years by carriage fees from broadcasters with dual revenue stream cable-envy.

So which is it? 

While the broadcasters dig in their heels and courts start to sort it out, network operators aren’t sitting back and waiting to see what transpires.  Dish Network, in particular, leads the revolt - the USB OTA tuner being the latest salvo - showing MVPDs of all stripes how to easily pull out over-the-air signals from the (supposedly) free airwaves, and de-couple them (and their carriage fees) from pay TV channel bundles. 

Have a look at these screen shots of how elegantly it works, and see how broadcasters need to seriously (and quickly) revisit their assumptions about unfettered dual-stream revenue in the years ahead.

photos: Mid-Continent Communications; Dish Network; Aereo; Scott Greczkowski, SatelliteGuys

Join The Vertere Group’s Tim Hanlon as he moderates: “Online vs. Offline/Buyer vs. Seller: Is Video Advertising Cross Platform, or at Cross Purposes?” at OMMA Video on May 17, 2012 at the Westin Times Square in New York City - part of the now-oddly named Internet Week industry confab/party train.

From the agenda description:

“The emerging online ad video market is full of opportunity, but also full of constituencies that sometimes seem more at cross purposes with one another than thy are at developing cross platform solutions. That’s because the new, multi-screen world encompasses not just the age-old tensions between buyers sand sellers, but also those between offline video and online video; how, and whether, they should be priced and measured using different metrics, and what the proper balance of budgets is between the two. In a lot of cases, what you have then isn’t integration, but something closer to dis-integration. On this OMMA Video panel, buyers and sellers — both online and off — discuss the search for solutions that work for all the constituencies involved, most of all, advertisers.”

So, there you have it — all the world’s problems solved in less than an hour’s time.  Who would want to miss that?

To ensure you don’t, click over here.

(photo: Multiscreen Digest)

A watershed moment for the re-birth of “interactive” television you may have missed today as British commercial broadcaster ITV announces its ITV Commercial arm will begin to sell Shazam audio listening capabilities as an integrated component to traditional TV ad campaigns.

For those who have faithfully navigated the long and winding road-trip of American “interactive television” over the decades — from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio to Orlando to NFL stadiums to your home satellite receiver to cable TV — the journey may finally be coming to an intriguing conclusion, as the tablet enters the household mainstream.

Aided by Shazam and other automatic content recognition (ACR) listening/watermarking/synchronizing technologies, TV programmers and advertisers may finally have an elegant and value-additive mechanism to enable the long-held dream of ITV to become … ITV. 

(photo: Super DC Comics 1976 Calendar [August]: Shazam! by Neal Adams, via GeekDraw; Wired)

As I’ve said for years (fast forward to 7:18 into video), television has a big user interface problem, and until it gets modernized to the reality of how today’s viewers are truly consuming video (the contemporary term for “watching TV”), legacy programming providers - especially MVPDs - risk significant and potentially irreversable disruption.  And as cable/DBS/telco prices keep going up, the consumer drumbeat for transparency only gets louder.

For TV lovers this is both the best of times and worst of times.  Best because there truly is more quality programming fare available to consumers than ever before.  Worst because with the average US household receiving 120+ linear channels, dozens of hours of consumer time-shifted DVR programs, hundreds of hours of (telco, cable) VOD offerings, and the seemingly infinite tsunami of “Internet video” that is starting cross over the top into the formerly controlled walled garden of television network operators - viewers are overwhelmed.  A Paradox of Choice, if you will.

Innovation is happening in this area - as anyone with XBox Live with Kinect can tell you.  But today’s announcement of TiVo’s elegant integration of its latest Premiere boxes with Comcast’s prodigious Xfinity VOD library (articles here and here) is a huge incremental step that does a bunch of things:

1) Suggests that legacy MVPDs like Comcast (especially) will not submissively bend over and become dumb data pipes;

2) People’s desire to access various permutations of video - linear, time-shifted, on-demand, over-the-top, and, increasingly, place-shifted - is very real and very mainstream.  And their desire to access it in easy-to-find, multi-dimensional formats should now be assumed;

3) The successful re-invention of TiVo is nearly complete - and it is an undervalued holistic video discovery solution that network operators (or Apple, or Rovi, or CE manufacturers, or…) might do well to consider learning from, partnering with, and/or acquiring.  (Hint: TiVo has a bunch of really substantial patents, and isn’t afraid to flex them.)

While only first available to TiVo/Comcast subscribers in the San Francisco region (those outside of the San Francisco metro area can sign up here to learn when the functionality will be available elsewhere), the march towards more intelligent television/video guidance, navigation and discovery is well under way - and a whole slew of social, relational, visual, and metadata-searchable improvements to the viewing selection process are right behind.

But kudos to Comcast and TiVo for the incremental achievement of linking together four heretofore separate viewing experiences - live linear, DVR, OTT, Internet video, and VOD - and actually giving consumers something they want right now.

It’s audio, dammit - and the sooner people inside the “radio” business recognize what a fast-growing minority of mainstream American listeners already know - the sooner the industry can get out of its own silo’ed way and be relevant to listeners (and advertisers) again.

Mark Ramsey Media has an excellent synopsis here, and a few items are worth embellishing:

1) Unlike the broadcast industry giants, listeners do not distinguish the difference between “broadcast” and the audio content they access online, and increasingly, via mobile broadband-enabled access.  An enabling example: TuneIn - where listeners can listen to Internet-only streams, terrestrial simulcasts (in-market or out of market), podcasts, and even the excitement of air traffic control and local emergency responder communications. 

2) Traditional radio stations have a double-edged opportunity to re-invent themselves as both boundary-less international broadcasters (Chicagoans who yearn for their beloved rocker WXRT-FM, for example) AND as renewed owners of the local broadcasting experience, which industry consolidators seem to have forgotten.

3) Similarly, online-only stations have the power to become boundary-less content brands in their own right, catering to defined and target-able niches that break down traditional content definitions and challenge conventional geographic boundaries. And only exacerbated/enhanced with wherever mobile broadband access can take it.

4) The race to who becomes the first true converged audio entertainment company is on.  Traditional legacy broadcasters like CBS and Clear Channel have incrementally begun to evolve; SiriusXM has consolidated the pay “satellite” space and awkwardly stumbled into online; and digital music services like Pandora, Spotify and the delicious Rdio.com, have disruption written all over them - all with bona fide shots at putting the big pieces together in harmonized, consumer-friendly ways.  (Hint: those who solve the guidance/navigation/discovery problem will win).

In retrospect, it is important to remember that the radio industry has morphed itself into renewed relevance numerous times in its short history, and absolutely has the opportunity to do it again as mobile broadband becomes the norm.  (The best telling of this history can be found in Washington Post radio guru Marc Fisher’s excellent Something in the Air: Radio, Rock and The Revolution That Shaped a Generation (Random House, 2007).

Just as long as the industry realizes that the future of the medium can’t be confined to the term “radio” anymore.

(photos, respectively: markramseymedia.com; ford.com; and powells.com)