DigMediaRev Random Thoughts from the Digital Revolution of Media & Entertainment

Careers in Media and Entertainment

Our Cisco Media Solutions Group team is growing. Recently, if you follow our Twitter feed - http://twitter.com/ciscoeos- you would have noticed a few links to open positions on our team that will help build us and sell CiscoEos. Job postings for roles like Senior Java Engineer, and NY based sales manager.  Such positions fall in a unique industry intersection of media, entertainment and technology. 

I’m always interested to find out how people wind up at this career intersection. Last year I talked to Damon Berger, who is now at Fox Filmed Entertainment as a Director of Digital Marketing, about how he broke into the business of content development for digital media platforms.This week, I’m in Los Angeles at the USC Marshall School of Business and the UCLA Anderson School of Business talking to MBA candidates about their aspirations to find positions that hit both media,entertainment and technology.

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Posted by Chuck Fishman at 06:43AM PST

Infosys Joins Cisco Eos Partner Program

Earlier this month, the Cisco Media Solutions Group announced the launch of the Cisco Eos Partner Program – a qualification and referral program to help connect Cisco Eos customers with experts in specific services such as web design and development.

Today we’re happy to expand the initial set of companies in the partner program with the addition of Infosys Technologies. Infosys joins a select group of vendors available to help customers accelerate or extend the value of their Eos-powered sites through their deep expertise in web development and deployment, and their in-depth, working knowledge of the Eos platform.

Additional information on the partner program can be found here. 

We took a moment to catch up with Loretta Brown, VP of CMSG Services and Support, to ask her some questions about the partner program and the value it adds to Cisco Eos as a software platform.

1)        What is the point of the Cisco Eos Partner Program?

LB:  The partner program pre-qualifies 3rd party vendors not only for their expertise, but also for their knowledge and commitment to the Cisco Eos platform.  That means that you, as an Eos-customer, have easy access to a variety of service vendors that could help you with ongoing or ad hoc projects on your Eos sites.  

This is all about making it easier for customers to tap into experts – in both a particular skill / service, and the inner workings of Eos—when they need them.

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Posted by Scott Brown at 01:57PM PST

Cisco Eos in Video at CES

Whenever I get back from the Consumer Electronics Show, the one thing I always get asked is, “what was the coolest new technology you saw”? 

I can’t honestly say in 2010! This year during the Consumer Electronics Show, to make sure everything went smooth,  I mainly stationed myself at the Venetian Hotel and Casino, for our meetings with Cisco Eos customers, partners, and potential new customers and partners. I never made it to the show floor over at the convention center! 

While the buzz on the show floor seemed mainly about 3D displays and content, back in closed door meetings at the Venetian, I learned a lot about interesting topics - like music licensing to major consumer brands, new digital video advertising technologies, and a lot of other things under NDA that I can’t talk about yet!

Our Cisco Media Solutions Group marketing director Scott Brown, already did a comprehensive post about our recent customer wins and our Cisco Eos partner program which I suggest you read if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, Dan Scheinman, SVP / GM of the Cisco Media Solutions Group, was able to share his thoughts about the latest customer wins and improvements to the Cisco Eos platform. 

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Posted by Chuck Fishman at 03:59PM PST

Cisco Eos:  New Customers, New Features, Launch of the Partner Program

Today the Cisco Media Solutions Group announced new customers, features and professional services options for the fast growing Cisco Eos social entertainment platform.

Details on the announcement can be found here, but I wanted to take a moment to welcome the Travel Channel, All Access Today and The Eleven Seven Music Group/Tenth Street Entertainment to the Eos platform.  We look forward to working with each of them to deploy exciting and profitable social entertainment experiences for brands like the Travel Channel Academy, Willie Nelson, the Gorillaz, Peter Gabriel, Blondie and Nikki Sixx.

Announcing these customers is a great way to wrap up what was a great year for CMSG and the Eos platform.  We announced general availability of the platform at CES 2009, and a strategic relationship with Warner Music Group in August.  The relationship with Warner has resulted in more than 20 Eos-powered sites being deployed between August and December – about 1 a week.  That’s a great proof point to Warner’s estimate that they can deploy sites 5x faster on Eos than other solutions they’ve used.  (For more updates on WMG’s experience so far, read this post.

In addition, 2009 saw significant enhancements to both the software and hosting infrastructure for Cisco Eos.  There were 12 software upgrades (as a hosted platform, new Eos features are released every 4-6 weeks) that resulted in more than 400 feature additions or enhancements including things like:

• Facebook Connect integration
• Advanced customization tools and
• Pre-integration with various advertising services 

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Posted by Scott Brown at 06:46AM PST

Monetizing Your Online, Social Entertainment Experience

One of the things media companies are struggling with is how to effectively monetize their investment in content and brands in this new digital era.  While still in its early stages, Warner Music Group Chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. recently noted in their Q4 earnings call that the Cisco Eos platform was helping WMG “more effectively monetize the vibrant relationship between artists and fans.” 

How exactly is Eos helping media companies like WMG monetize or generate revenue from their online content? 

Let’s be clear:  what Eos does is help create the opportunities to monetize by enabling a compelling, interactive entertainment experience that is much easier for media companies to keep fresh.  The outcome of this type of experience is that consumers:

• visit more frequently
• stay longer, and
• ultimately consume more of their favorite content

That great engagement give media companies the opportunity to generate revenue through multiple channels:  advertising, e-commerce/merch sales, and/or subscription.  The choice of which revenue streams to pursue, and how hard they push them is up to the media company to decide what is appropriate for that audience and brand.

In the case of WMG, they’ve been able to grow the audience of their 21 Eos-powered websites to more than 1.7 million unique visitors per month (in the time frame roughly between August and December 2009) and found that audiences on Eos-powered sites are staying roughly 8.4 minutes per visit – or more than 25% greater engagement than on other WMG sites. 

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Posted by Scott Brown at 09:40AM PST

An Update:  Warner Music Group, Cisco Eos and Lupe Fiasco

Yesterday, Warner Music Group launched its latest Cisco Eos^TM-powered site for hip hop star Lupe Fiasco.

Lupe’s site represents the 20th Eos site for WMG, and the 18th to be launched since August 2009 when Cisco and WMG announced a strategic relationship around the Eos platform.  (see full list of Eos-powered sites at the end of this blog entry)

At the time of the announcement Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development noted that WMG was able to launch new sites 5x faster using Eos than other solutions – with that productivity, WMG has been able to average launching about 1 site a week since the August announcement.

But media companies need more than just the ability to launch web sites faster.  Media companies need a platform that helps them engage fans, lower technology costs, AND ultimately monetize the experience fans have with branded content.

How is Eos doing on that broader set of issues? 

Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group had this to say during WMG’s Q4 2009 earnings call  on Nov. 24, 2009:

“As we mentioned earlier, we continue to transform our business within the music value chain while broadening our revenue mix in the growing areas of the music business. This remains a key element of our growth strategy and is core to the transformation of our company. Direct-to-consumer or DTC platforms are one of the key paths for partnering with our recording artists to monetize new revenue streams and artist websites remain an essential part of that strategy. Earlier this year, WMG and Cisco developed a partnership initially focused on enhancing our DTC efforts. By leveraging Cisco’s innovative DTC technology, we have begun to more effectively monetize the vibrant relationship between artists and their fans without having to build infrastructure at WMG.

Warner Music is the first entertainment company to use Cisco’s new Eos platform. We have exceeded our goal of launching a dozen Eos artist sites by the end of ‘09. We believe our partnership with Cisco will greatly enhance our ability to create, manage, and grow online communities while also increasing opportunities to drive revenue from DTC sales and online advertising around artist content.”

It’s not time to start celebrating and lose focus, but it does indicate what WMG has been able to achieve using the Eos platform.  We look forward to the next 20 sites, and the continuing partnership with Warner Music.

(See below for list of the first 20 WMG sites)

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Posted by Scott Brown at 02:52PM PST

The First Cisco Eos-powered Website… for Cisco

It’s pretty standard practice for tech companies to use their own technology.  Commonly called “eating your own dog food,” using your own technology shows confidence in the product, and also allows you to experience exactly what your customers are experiencing.   

Cisco is a big believer in using our own technology, but it’s been a little tough finding the perfect fit for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform since Eos was built specifically for media & entertainment companies… and last time I checked, Cisco wasn’t an entertainment company.  We do use Eos to power the Cisco Eos Developer Network (sorry, you have to be a customer or registered partner to access) and the Cisco Media Solutions Group’s internal site, but we didn’t have a public instance of an Eos-powered experience from Cisco.

Until now.

Earlier this week Cisco launched “The Video Lounge” – a site that features Cisco videos, and clips from mainstream media that feature Cisco products and solutions.  For example, check out this video from 30 Rock that uses Cisco’s Telepresence technology.  Hilarious.

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Posted by Scott Brown at 01:37PM PST

Digital Media Conference West: the Evolving Media Conversation

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be on a panel at the Digital Media Conference West conference about the interaction between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Maybe I’ve been out of the digital media conference circuit for too many months, but I was pleasantly surprised how much the market conversation around social entertainment and digital media has evolved from earlier this year.

Instead of vague “social” conversations about throwing sheep and Axe body wash, people were talking about real, tangible solutions (not just the problems) that media companies are experimenting with to leverage technology and the rise of the empowered consumer.

A couple of themes that I was happy to hear from the conference:

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Posted by Scott Brown at 09:52AM PST

Digital Music Forum West Coverage - Part 1

About a week back, I was spending time on the official web site of TV show. First, I had to register to be able to comment on the TV show blog. Then once I searched deep for any area of community around the content, I found a walled off forums area for TV show discussions. To be able to join the conversation in the forums area of the TV show site, I had to register again - I could not use my earlier blog registration. The thought of having so many separate technology providers on a single site echoes my colleague Scott Brown’s earlier blog post about the cost complexity of media owned web sites. It must be costly to cobble all these different technologies to offer various discrete features like blogs, comments, forums, user profiles, etc. At the time of using this TV show web site, I got frustrated and tweeted about my experience. My friend Steve Jang tweeted back, noted in response above, ‘Frankensteins’! Oh yes, I have heard that term before - in our Cisco Media Solutions Group product videos demonstrating Cisco Eos. In one of the video, Jack, a Chief Digital Officer at a media company, calls his sites ‘frankensteins’ and he makes the switch to Cisco Eos to bring these social features under a unified platform.

It was not the last time during the week I heard the word ‘frankenstein’ in reference to media owned web sites, or heard about the huge cost of social entertainment experiences. Cisco Media Solutions Group sponsored and attended the Digital Music Forum West conference in Los Angeles and there was plenty of further discussion.

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Posted by Chuck Fishman at 03:30PM PST

White Paper and Webinar: “Best Practices for Social Media for Media & Entertainment”

Last week Forrester principal analyst David Card presented research findings on how media companies are using social technologies in the context of their entertainment brands.

David conducted case study interviews with technical, business and content executives from 5 leading media companies to examine how they’re leveraging the social entertainment revolution, and to look for best practices on using this technology to engage online audience/fans.

David’s findings are interesting, if not surprising: like most larger businesses, media companies are mostly still in the experimentation phase; while many now leverage “social” for promotional efforts, few have incorporated it as an integral part of the entertainment experience.

Sorting through the data, and different situations David identified 5 best practices media companies need to consider for social technologies:

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Posted by Scott Brown at 07:32PM PST

5 easy ways to increase consumer engagement on your site

As social media continues to take over the universe it’s absolutely imperative for your web site to be at the center of your online entertainment strategy. I have been hearing an increasing number of questions like. What should an engaging media and entertainment site look like? And how should it be different than other, typical online social environments? In this post, I would like to share with you 5 things we’ve learned from building Eos and the many sites it powers that may help you with your own media and entertainment site.

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Posted by Mike Chen at 01:50PM PST

The Cost of ‘Social’ to Media Companies

There have been a couple public data points (1, 2) recently highlighting the costs some media companies are incurring building their own social media / digital content platforms. 

These disclosure have generated blogosphere reactions from disbelief to ridicule, but there hasn’t been a flood of media companies bragging about their own lower cost, better ROI approach.  The reason is: these cases are not isolated ones; they’re not the only media companies experiencing this dilemma. 

OK, yes, the absolute number of dollars spent varies widely by company, but based off our customer discussions we’re finding that the average company is spending 75-125% of their online, digital revenue on building and maintaining the technology platform to support the revenue.

That’s not a very scalable business model.

But wait, you say, there are 100s of white-label social networking vendors/platforms and destinations out there.  How can media companies possibly be spending this kind of money for something that should be easy to get?

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Posted by Scott Brown at 11:43AM PST

Discussions about the Social Entertainment Experience

Over the next few weeks, members of the Cisco Media Solutions Group team will be out at conferences and hosting seminars, furthering the dialogue about social entertainment strategy. We hope to share that conversation with you.

It’s going to be a busy few weeks.

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Posted by Chuck Fishman at 09:33AM PST

GUEST POST:  Maximizing Digital Media Revenues via Monetization Mix Targeting

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sudhir Kaushik is senior product manager in the Cisco Media Solutions Group‘s Digital Advertising practice.

According to Comscore’s report from January 2009:

• 6.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 356 minutes of video (approximately 6 hours), up 15 percent versus December.

According to PWC Global Entertainment and Media Report (2009), IFPI:

• Digital music now accounts for 25% ($ 3.7 billion) of total music sales.
• Consumers downloaded 1.4 billion units of music in 2008 alone.

Paradoxically, at a time when media consumption (photos, audio & video) is at an all-time high, media companies are struggling with declining revenues as they try to find the right monetization mix. Monetization mix is the set of revenue streams for a media company that work together to achieve company’s objectives. Traditionally, online media revenue has been derived from advertising, commerce and subscriptions.  

1. Online ad revenue is comprised of search, display and/or video ad revenue. Publishers sell     the inventory on the site (either directly or via ad networks) to     advertisers. Advertisers attempt to reach the right audience based on     historical traffic statistics. By doing so, advertisers and publishers     simply replicate the issues plaguing TV today where poor tracking and lack     of data limits the ability to connect with the right audience.
2. Online commerce pioneered by Amazon and eBay consists of consumers buying physical or     digital merchandise either on the company owned stores or other retailers.    With commerce, media companies look for efficient ways to manage catalogs,    create custom storefront experiences and implement recommendation systems.    Average funnel conversion on the store and the average revenue per order     per user are key optimization metrics.
3. Subscriptions are a pricing     strategy to achieve content and user segmentation. The definition of premium     and non-premium content is based on the aggregate of users rather than     specific segments of users.

In the following section, we discuss the key factors that render the traditional “monetization mix” strategies less effective in the digital age.

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Posted by Scott Brown at 09:19AM PST

Bandwidth Conference Highlights Diversity in Artist Online Strategies

At the Bandwidth Digital Music Conference, top band managers talk with moderator Scott Perry about artists who create direct relationships with fans using social and digital media.

The 2009 digital music conference, Bandwidth, just wrapped up at the end of the last week in August in San Francisco.

I was lucky to attend the second day of the two day conference. I also grabbed some video clips following in the post. One of the major conference themes of the day - you heard record labels, managers of top bands, and individual artists all day long proclaim: the artist / band site is the keystone of an online media strategy for music. But if the site is at the center of the strategy - what kind of message goes on the artist site and how do record labels, managers, bands and artists develop their sites?

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Posted by Chuck Fishman at 03:13PM PST