Search results matching tag 'iPlayer'

Susan Boyle is bigger than Bush, Obama and Palin!

2347496 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:13:00 GMT

It’s true. According to Visible Measures, the unexpected star of Britain’s Got Talent has received 47.7 million online views and 125,000+ comments. This trounces views of the Bush vs Shoes incident (33.2m views), Tina Fey’s impression of Sarah Palin (34.2m) and Obama’s victory night speech (18.5m). What’s it all mean for the future of light entertainment? For a start, it’s further evidence of our insatiable appetite for the plucky underdog – John Sergeant, Paul Potts et al. It probably also points to our desire for a new shared visual experience. After all, very few of us watch the same TV programme at the same time these days - it’s all Sky+ and iPlayer. Nowadays isn’t it all about gathering round a colleague’s computer and reliving the same clip together? It’s the modern day equivalent of sitting in front of the wireless – collectively enjoying a piece of entertainment and then critiquing as a group. Of course, it might just mean that we’re a bunch of shameless voyeurs with too much time on our hands!

IAB Engage, who is tipping the scales of control?

2371004 — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:43:00 GMT

Sarah Messer, the head of commercial research and insight at ITV, is speaking about the tipping of the scales in control, back into the hands of the researchers.
The question of control offers an interesting perspective for researchers, who Messer admitted, don’t yet have all the answers.

Online audiences continue to grow, at a rate of 8% per year, and time online has quadrupled in the past couple of years. It was found that average people spend 6 minutes more online than they do reading books, newspapers or magazines.

Television online media players have seen considerable growth, BBC iPlayer grew 88% from January 08 to April 08 and ITV.com viewership has grown 200% year-on-year in September 08.

Messer said that the research industry is coming around to idea that when working individually the learning is small, instead collaborative is key. Some examples of collaboration are companies like JiCims and BMWG.

Tracking technology has also been developing at good pace allowing better research and changing the way researchers work, giving more control back,
Messer gave the IAB And Thinkbox TV+online study that was recently released. The study itself came from desire to see how the two, online and tv, work together.
The study used mixed methodology with 3,000 respondents. It found that TV content is increasingly being viewed online, 66% of respondents watch tv online, 50% on ITV.com and BBC iPlayer type websites, more than half use YouTube.

58% say they watch online when missed a programme the night before, and more said they went online to watch a whole series
25% watch previews online, and to viewers there is little difference to TV and online, the difference is that they access it when they want and how they want it.
Messer asks what does mean for advertisers?

Her research found that TV ads are being sought and shared online, and 3/5 people look for TV ads online and 1/5 have forwarded a link on to friends.
Pre and post rolls have been traditionally been the bane of online video, however, the IAB suggests change in this attitude, people now expect them in exchange for good quality of product.

Men are also more likely than women to seek out brands or advertisements online that they saw on TV.
The computer use to have purely functional use, mainly for research and communication, but now being entertained and relaxing are growing motivators for going online.
ITV found that TV and online advertising deliver across both hard and soft metrics.

There are five types of people who watch TV online, some want to watch lie broadcast because couldn’t make it to TV, others want to catch up at different time, other want to see clips that aren’t available through TV, others want to participate like The X Factor style voting programmes and others want to watch archived footage that is not available on TV anymore.

95% of respondents mentioned that they remembered the pre-roll advertisements when watching TV online and generated most impact for advertisers.
Shorter advertisements online were found to be better than longer, but more testing is needed.

Messer said that, from a researching standpoint, control is being taking away from them, but technology is making it easier to gain it back, which will likely continue over the next few years, down road towards accepted monetary systems and understanding.

So, does mobile really matter?

693284 — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:01:00 GMT

Since this is the first post on Mobile Matters, maybe it’s best to get the question of whether mobile really does matter out of the way. Yes, yes it does.

Why? Well, since we’ve all got at least one mobile phone and that, because of the iPhone, they will all very quickly become at least four times as effective at allowing us to access media – then, it’s safe to say that, for the media industry, the mobile phone is going to be really quite important. If ever you are faced with a non-believer, get them to use the BBC iPlayer on an iPhone. And they shall see the light.

We’ve spent some of the past twelve months submerged in the mobile ocean. The goal was to dive in, touch the bottom, spend a few hours in a decompression chamber, and work out what to make of the strange things we found. Our conclusions, apart from ‘yes, mobile really matters’, can perhaps best be summed up as: mobile is the same as digital, but different.

Same but different

It’s the same because, as, the iPhone shows us, when we view the web, for example, on our mobile devices, we will increasingly not be viewing a mobile version of the web, but just the web on our mobile. It’s a significant step and one that helps us to understand how its value as an advertising channel, for example, is likely to evolve.

For, thanks to all our experience of planet digital, one of the things we know about internet-based channels is that a sure-fire way to secure budgets for them, is to help advertisers value user interaction. For example, on the PC-based web, advertisers have been able to value interaction through sales: ‘I advertise, people click, that gives me a sale (or a lead to a sale)’. This is why Google claims more than 50 per cent of all UK online spend – because advertisers can value the user interaction it delivers better than anywhere else on the web.

So how can mobile interaction be valued? Lots of ways potentially but first to occur is cost-per-call. Certain businesses will pay a big wad of cash for a phone call. Who are they? How much is the call worth? How can the media industry help deliver that call? Answer those questions and routes to budgets will emerge.

Mobile needs

But we must also take care to think about how the mobile is different. Essentially, it comes down to the fact that a mobile device is smaller. This is what makes it both portable and less usable, and this is what defines why we will want different things from our mobile device than the telly, a poster, the radio or our computer.

When we are ‘mobile’, we are more likely to want services that are relevant to our location. When we are ‘mobile’, we are even less likely to interact with banner-style creative because we’re likely to be on the move, short of time and the whole process is much more fiddly. In essence, when we are ‘mobile’, we are more likely to be wanting to fulfil one of two immediate needs – save me time or fill my time.

But, the fact we might want different things from our media providers on a mobile phone – yet are able to connect to the same web and internet as from our desktops - presents some problems. Increasingly we use our mobile devices to access media when we’re not actually ‘on the move’ – we might just as likely be at home, in the office or on holiday. Our needs then might be precisely the same as when we’re at our computers or watching TV. The problem this presents is this: if you are aiming to deliver a piece of content, a service or a piece of advertising to a user you know is on a mobile device, how do you know what they want?

Silly operators

That’s just one of the challenges – with your help - we might investigate as this blog evolves. Or we might just bang on about how mobile operators are really silly. Either way, I hope you feel able and willing to offer your view.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/Philipbuxton
Blog: http://mediaquake.wordpress.com
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BBC iPlayer Apology

1841938 — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:31:12 GMT

The BBC today made its seventeenth apology to the public today, this time over the beta launch of iPlayer.

A spokesman said “we are sorry that we misled licence fee payers into thinking it was a useful service that actually worked”.

The player, which has been in development for twenty-seven years, beta launched on Friday, to a collective sigh from UK users (and Americans using proxy servers).

The service uses a revolutionary “throw a six to start” installation mechanism that is only ever one more username and password away from being able to actually download the BBC Three DanceX extra show.

“We believed that adding in extra barriers like limiting which browser you can use, throwing in random ActiveX controls and making you close down and re-open the application and your browser, multiple times, would actually increase the excitement about using the iPlayer” added one of the 796 people working on the project.