What’s the old ad slogan?  “Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together.”  Yep, Jon Stewart on Bill O’Reilly this week was like having someone put chocolate in my peanut butter.  This was a clear Reese’s moment and I loved it.

Setting aside my personal political views, I honestly like both personalities.  Jon brings a tremendous wit, intelligence and cynicism to nearly all things political and is just damn funny.  O’Reilly, while not as funny in the comedic sense, brings passion and conviction to the topics he covers and has served as a counter-point to the more left leaning news sources on television.

What struck me about the dialogue here is that both parties carried it off in a respectful manner, getting in digs where they could, but remaining true to their positions.  Too often political discourse turns into a shouting match, and I was glad these two gentlemen actually had fun with the exchange, and give viewers opposing points of view on a topic.

In my mind, this is what we try to do at 1CAST.  By bringing together the world leaders in news and information, we enable users to get multiple angles on any given topic so “they” can make up their own mind and not have it made up for them.  It’s incredibly important that we as a society understand the issues affecting our world by reviewing alternate viewpoints and engaging in respectful dialogue.  If Stewart and O’Reilly can make this happen, then perhaps there’s hope for the rest of us.

Anthony Bontrager

Ever stare in wonder when you see a strong platform or solid business that fails to read the signs on the wall?  Rather than recognize and adapt, they at best pay lip service to the issue and simply shoehorn in yesterday’s business models into today’s evolving marketplace.  These thoughts and others always cross my mind when I think of the newspaper industry.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, in 2009 Newspaper websites taken as a whole attracted more than 74 million monthly unique visitors quarterly – roughly a third of all Internet users.  Visitors to these sites generated more than 3.5 billion page views and spent 2.7 billion minutes browsing over approximately 596 million sessions quarterly.

And yet, with all of this traffic, the revenues these websites generate are unable to sustain them as a stand-alone business and they continue to be fed from their older sibling, what I call the “ink and paper” side of the house.  This is the complete inverse of what their owners envisioned when they finally embraced the Internet as a distribution medium in order to help offset the revenue erosion the print business continues to face.

Is it any wonder then that the newspaper industry continues to bemoan the online model?

The problem here is that the newspaper industry is simply using the web to replace the ink and paper its business model was built upon.  What they miss is that the Internet is a much more dynamic medium, which they are not tapping to its fullest potential and therefore not engaging in practices that can have an accretive effect on their bottom line.

According to a report by TargetCast last year, 60% of consumers say newspapers need to change the most to stay relevant, compared to 30% for magazines and 20% for radio.  TV and Internet both tie at 10% in the eyes of consumers.

Nevertheless, the influence the newspaper industry has on consumers is staggering given its legacy of breaking news and uncovering stories of historic proportion.

So what can the newspaper industry do to continue its amazing legacy and leverage the digital space to provide the same impact to users and advertisers as its ink and paper business once did?  Here are a few of my suggestions:

- Beware the lure of the pay wall. With all the talk of paid versus non-paid, it’s easy for people to think that charging a fee for online access is the solution to the revenue problems of the newspaper industry.  However, the fact is the genie is out of the bottle.  72% of consumers believe that sourcing a newspaper online should be free and they are not willing to pay for an online subscription.  That’s not to say that the pay model doesn’t have its place, but it’s important to understand the changing consumer patterns and adapt your business model accordingly;

- Think beyond the banner ad. Traditional online advertising has taken a tremendous beating the past few years with advertisers paying less and less for traditional banner, skyscraper and other similar advertisements.  This is due primarily to an over-supply in the market, but also the fact that these types of creative lack engagement and are easily looked over by online consumers.  Different creative such as rich media and video advertising have been shown to have greater engagement, higher efficacy and are able to generate significantly higher CPM’s for online web properties;

- Digital is more than online. Digital initiatives for the newspaper industry should extend beyond the web and onto smart phone devices (think iPhone, Android and Zune) and iTV platforms such as Yahoo’s ConnectedTV platform as a means to go where the audience is.  A cross platform strategy is essential in today’s environment, as consumers want access to their information whenever and wherever they happen to be;

- Embrace hyper-local. Hyper-local speaks to the growing consumer demand for a uniquely personalization experience.  People want to be connected to those around them, and the addition of hyper-local local reporting is an increasing trend that is gaining viewership and market share.  Newspapers ignore this sub-segment at their peril;

- Integrate contextually relevant video. Clearly an area that I’m passionate about.  The ability to dynamically link contextually relevant video content to print articles leads to higher engagement by delivering more perspective on a given topic, not to mention associating the newspaper with leading video news organizations such as those carried by 1CAST, including BBC Worldwide, CNBC, Fox, Reuters, Agence-France Press and others.  Newspapers must recognize that consumers want access to multiple angles on any given story in a highly engaging manner.  If a picture tells a thousand words, then video will tell a million more.

The newspaper industry is an important part of our democratic process and has a responsibility as part of the Fourth Estate to continue to “impart news of note and commentary of interest to the citizenry.”  However, if it doesn’t redefine itself and adapt its business models to meet new consumer demands, it risks disintermediation, or worst – extinction.

This is one of the key reasons we created the 1CAST Network – to help the newspaper industry bring a compelling platform, capable of engaging its readers with print and video news and benefit from the higher value advertising that becomes available as a result.  Our embeddable video platform that brings together the global leaders in video news publishing is a simple, low cost solution to help bring engagement and profitability to the online efforts of this vastly important industry.

Anthony Bontrager

Call it what you want – content delivery, video aggregation, audience segmentation, brand networks, blah, blah, blah.  Tons of people have given it a go, but ask any of them about what they do and if it’s working, and only a handful are able to give you a clearly defined answer.

I came across an interview of Andrew Robertson, CEO at global branding agency BBDO, where he consistently refers to what they do as “The Work” and I think it’s a fantastic concept.  By defining your efforts simply and clearly stating your focus, you will help your audience understand who you are, what you do and the value you bring.

At 1CAST our “Work” is all about making digital more personal.  We define this as a user-driven, professionally delivered video news service, built around discovery – where the content follows the user rather than waiting to be found.  We call it micro-casting.

We believe that moving from search to discoverability is a natural process and one that is more closely aligned with our needs in this increasingly time constrained world.  Yet this begs the obvious question, “is there value or worth in what we do?”  And I would argue an astounding YES!

Time is a precious commodity and it can be argued that it has a higher intrinsic value than money.  For 1CAST, one of the best measures of the “worth” of our “work” is looking at how users are willing to pay with their time to access their own personalized news through our platform.

Not surprisingly, our user engagement numbers at 1CAST are off the charts for our desktop experience, our recent iTV initiatives on Boxee and especially on our mobile applications for iPhone and Android.  We believe this points to something very special about what we’ve accomplished with our micro-casting concept.  Some have called it a paradigm shift; others have called it cracking the code.

We just call it doing our “Work”.

Anthony Bontrager

I know…..   Again with my “child of the ‘80’s” references.  This time I’m channeling Bob Geldof, Bono, David Bowie, The Style Council, Duran Duran and others from the UK rocker mash-up known as Band Aid.  I always have a bit of holiday music playing in the background around these times, and this song came on as I was thinking about what to write and I thought:  “Oh, what the hell.”

Anyhow, my last blog post for 2009 really has less to do with Christmas and more about my utter amazement that we have reached the end of another year.

For the team at 1CAST, 2009 has been an extraordinarily busy and exciting year for our company.  In addition to helping deliver the news of the world to our users in a highly personalized manner, we achieved some very significant milestones in the evolution of our young company.  Examples include:

-  Android Application Launch (February);

-  Announcement of Infiniti Motors as our first charter advertiser (March);

-  Reaching 3.2M monthly video streams (July);

-  Launching our Entertainment and Lifestyle programming in partnership with E! Entertainment, Style and NYMag.com (October);

-  Integrating 1CAST with Boxee (October); and

-  Commercially Launching 1CAST (October).

Additionally, here at 1CAST we’re always making little adjustments to make the site better for our users.  A lot of these tweaks come about based on our own use of the site, but we also implement a lot of the suggestions submitted to us by our users.  Recently, we released an update to our web service that provides full screen viewing, easy link sharing and a host of other updates to our backend system all designed to make 1CAST a better place to not only watch news videos, but also to find them, too.  Updates to our mobile and iTV platforms are underway so you can be assured of a high quality viewing experience whenever or wherever you are.

Looking ahead to 2010, we see our share of challenges but also a tremendous opportunity to continue to provide a truly differentiated video viewing experience.  As content aggregators and syndicators come and go, 1CAST intends to remain focused on its core mission, continue to listen to its users, provide more engaging and sought-after video programming, and extend its reach into new platforms and distribution channels.  Admittedly, it’s a “no-duh” operating strategy, but we’ve learned over the past couple of years that keeping things simple and focusing relentlessly on execution, leads to long-term success.

We’ve enjoyed being part of your daily lives and appreciate your continued support and feedback.  As a bit of a Christmas treat, below is a link giving you a sneak peak at 1CAST for Blackberry, our latest mobile application.

http://www.1cast.com/blackberrybeta/index.html

We hope you enjoy 1CAST for Blackberry and look forward to providing you with more of what YOU want from your favorite video news network in 2010.

Cheers

Anthony Bontrager

There’s never been any question in my mind that content is King.  However, a King’s influence and impact extends only as far as his domain allows.  Trumpeted loudly yet kept within a narrow space, content may have wide awareness and desirability but it has little impact if consumers cannot or will not access it.  Conversely, wide in reach but marginal in value and the content lacks impact and consumers will engage only for brief periods.  This translates quickly to “Regime Change” a la Saddam Hussein.  I’m sure he’d tell us all that that is not a fun ride.

So what do we do?

Today we are an industry of two camps – one says free, free, free – the other says pay, pay pay.  And I actually agree.  Let me tell you why.

First, we have been conditioned to seek out “free” content on the web.  It has been the great democratization agent in our society, giving people the opportunity to access nearly anything legal or not so legal very easily.  This behavior is not going away, nor should we want it to.  It gives publishers, programmers, broadcasters and nearly anyone with content the ability to easily distribute it to those willing to consume it.  There is a vast amount of content – I would actually argue most of it – that lends itself to a “free” model, and trying to force it behind a pay-wall simply makes no sense.

Second, there remains a sizeable amount of content that has an intrinsically higher value than most, whether due to quality, scarcity, uniqueness or we just think it’s damn cool (think Colbert Report as an example).  We as consumers (while not crazy about it) understand and accept the need to directly pay for access.  We recognize that by participating in this type of commerce we’re investing in the creative process that will hopefully yield more highly valuable content that we can purchase and consume.  Anything less would be analogous to asking a farmer to starve himself while we consume his crops only to find that with the crops consumed and the farmer gone, we’re left with nothing.

The funny thing in this whole debate, and what people consistently miss is that there is no such thing as “free” content.  WE ARE ACTUALLY PAYING FOR ALL OF IT – either with our time or with our wallets.  Every ad we watch on these “free” sites constitutes our payment in exchange for being able to consume what the site owner is providing, just as if we hit “OK” on the PayPal button.  The difference is one makes margin at scale while the other makes margin at rate.  In the end, it is ALL getting paid for somehow.

So why all the debate?

Is Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post) who believes that all content should be freely available, any more right than Mathias Döpfner CEO of German media company Axel Springer who espouses subscription based services?  [Note – I saw both of these very passionate executives discuss this very thing at last week’s Monaco Media Forum.  See it here: http://bit.ly/aDJM8].  I would argue that they are both right and wrong.  It really comes down to a balancing between the two business models.  You use the “free” ad supported business to drive scale, which then offers the ability to up-sell the more valuable premium content to your viewers.  Neither is mutually exclusive to the other, as each is a necessary component to any video distributor’s business model.  If you want an example of this, look at those companies who are simply offering one but not both and you can see the significant lost opportunity.

So let’s quit debating the issue as it’s clear to many if not all consumers – it’s just the pundits who like to make an issue out of it, or those who haven’t embraced the concept of balance.  I know it sounds rather Yin/Yang like, but to me it’s just plain common sense.

Hi Everyone,

After nearly a year, 1CAST has successfully emerged from beta, bringing with it a completely re-designed user interface, new content and distribution partnerships, a bit of relief from our extremely talented development team, and heightened sense of purpose towards driving the most engaging video news experience across the three screen environment to our viewers.

Since our launch yesterday we’ve seen all of our metrics – from visits to unique viewers to streams per visit increase; but most important of all is the time spent viewing content, which continues to grow.  Already 1CAST has one of the most engaged audiences across the web and mobile spaces.  This trend continues and demonstrates the value of our micro-casting environment as a means for viewers to control what, how, when and where they get their video news.

Rest assured we are by no means finished.  Our team is already working on the next platform update, integrating our next set of content partners and a host of other initiatives that are sure to bring more value to our viewers and business partners alike.

So stay tuned!

On behalf of the 1CAST team, I want to extend a big THANK YOU to our content partners, distribution partners, advertisers, investors and most importantly our viewers.  Each of you has contributed to 1CAST’s ongoing success for which we are very grateful.

Now time to get back to work.

Anthony

Enter for a chance to win one of two T-Mobile Android phones from 1CAST!

1CAST is giving away two T-Mobile Android phones in conjunction with the commercial release of the 1CAST service.

Here’s what you have to do:

Start following http://twitter.com/1CAST, if you’re not doing so already. Next, tweet the following message to be entered for a chance to win:

RT @1CAST This is my entry to win a free T-Mobile Android phone with the free @1CAST app! http://www.1cast.com/blog/?p=82 #1CAST

We’ll announce the winners (chosen randomly from those that entered) on the @1CAST Twitter page. If you’re chosen, make sure to send a direct message via Twitter within 48 hours. Remember, all entries must be received by October 22, 2009 at 12:00 PM ET.

Keep reading for additional information…
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“To everything (turn, turn, turn),
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)”
– The Byrds

Allow me to go old school for a minute with The Byrds reference. Back in the 60’s, “mobile” was a VW van that actually worked, and “video” meant lazy afternoons watching Gilligan’s Island, The Avengers and the original Star Trek on a state-of-the art 13″ Zenith (with no remote control, of course).

Flash-forward 40+ years to the summer of 2009 and in many ways things haven’t changed. We’re still in love-maybe more in love- with the images, storylines and personalities that we watch everyday.  What’s radically different today isn’t what we watch, but how we watch. The way consumers are getting their video is changing, and that change will impact not only viewers, but content programmers and advertisers as well.

If the Roger McGuinn from 1965 stepped into a time machine to 2009, he’d still see kids on summer vacation watching their favorite shows.  Except in 2009, they are watching video through different kinds of screens-in their living rooms, on their desks, and in their hands.  We still connect with on-screen personalities much like the 60’s when Walter Cronkite, Chet Hutley or David Brinkley shaped our view of the world.  Except now we have greater control over when we want to bring Bill O’Reilly, Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper, and a myriad of niche influencers onto our screens.

Technology has empowered consumers to become programmers who dictate what they watch, where they watch, and when they watch.  Our ability to obtain compelling information, on multiple topics and across multiple platforms continues to grow at a dizzying rate.  Just look at the iPhone’s penetration into the American mainstream.  A few weeks ago Apple announced it sold 1 million iPhone 3GS’s… in just 3 days.  Earlier in April the iPhone App Store surpassed 1 billion downloads in just 9 months, thanks to the tens of millions of iPhones in the hands of consumers around the world.

It’s not a stretch to assume the iPhone played a big part in the 52.2% growth in the U.S. mobile video audience that Nielsen reported earlier this year.  Nielsen also discovered that in the first quarter of 2009, mobile video users watched videos on their handheld devices on average longer than on their computer screens. That’s evolution at work.

So what does this mean to content owners and advertisers?

For content owners it could mean a unique opportunity to experiment with different offerings – new programming themes, short-form vs. long-tail, etc.  Content producers should create, distribute, test and refine the programming to suit consumers.  Audiences today demand quality and relevancy to their interests.

Advertisers should continue to experiment with new approaches to deliver targeted messages to more specific audiences.  Understand where your target audience is going to find video content.  If approached correctly, the right messaging at the right time could increase both your brand affinity and the ROI of your ad buy.

Hmm.  With all of this opportunity in front of us, who has time to relax this summer?

Anthony Bontrager

Sorry, gotta love Elvis Costello, but today’s blog title is actually apropos.

Here at 1cast, we’re very committed to bringing the best of television news from around the world to your desktop, mobile or any other device. And yesterday we delivered a breakthrough that goes far beyond technology.

Many of you have already started to see clips from Al Jazeera in your search results and micro-casts. We are pleased to be the first company in the U.S. to bring this content to viewers from coast-to-coast. In times like these, we believe our viewers will appreciate the perspective our newest partner – Al Jazeera – brings to issues in the Middle East. More importantly, we all benefit from the access and insight that only the world’s largest Arab news channel can bring to events that have impact far beyond the borders of countries at the center of conflict, challenge and hopefully change for peace.

The addition of Al Jazeera brings to 1cast one of the most impressive line-ups ever assembled of world news leaders. If you’re interested in global affairs there’s probably no better place online or off than 1cast for keeping track of the day’s world headlines in near real time. 1cast viewers can simply enter terms they are most interested in and immediately see the best of the day’s television news coverage from BBC Worldwide, Agence France Presse, Reuters, CBC and now Al Jazeera.

Viewers simply won’t find this kind of world news coverage in a single place anywhere on the web or mobile devices. So let’s all become a little more enlightened about the world we live in. We’re just getting started in bringing our viewers worldwide news sources that expand our horizons as well as our understanding.

Anthony Bontrager

One of the greatest gifts the Web has bestowed on content owners and the advertisers that support them is the mountain of data that is available at every turn. But this is also turning into a problem for advertisers and publishers alike. Are brands taking behavioral targeting too far?It won’t come as any surprise that the Web has transformed advertising, maybe more than any business in the world. Google, the poster child of the Web’s dominance, has built an empire around an advertising model that not only didn’t exist 15 years ago, but really wasn’t even possible. Dynamically matching advertising to content, although now seemingly commonplace, is revolutionary in every sense of the word.

The first decade of this century has seen the rise of data-driven marketing. ROI is king, everything is measured, and that means everything is targeted. The age of “18-35 year old males” being a sufficiently specific demographic was dead before the ship even sank. Now, thanks to Facebook, Gmail, Del.ici.ous and a bevy of other social services, we have access to enough data to learn significantly more about people without any personal interaction. Furthermore, we can track those people across multiple properties and indefinitely improve our accuracy in targeting them with relevant, desirable content and advertisements.

For advertisers, this mountain of data means they can refine their targeting orders of magnitude more than ever before. We’ve come a long way from the entire world being broken up into a dozen or so buckets. Entire marketing campaigns are being built around demographics so specific, you may have to test the limits of the six degrees of separation theory before finding a hit. It might take you years to find someone to fit the bill of “Asian females from the Southwestern United States age 22-27 who like skateboarding and have been to at least 2 professional sports games in the last year,” but that might be a slam-dunk market for a major brand advertiser. This is, without doubt, the greatest gift to advertisers of the last half century.

Getting back to our original question though, have advertisers grown a little too smart for themselves? These micro-targeted groups benefit from brand advertising, but it’s nigh on impossible to find enough people fitting the demographic to justify large scale brand recognition ad buys that programmers and publishers need in order to afford to make this type of hyper-targeting possible in the first place. On the mobile side, this audience just got the kick in the pants from the iPhone it needed to convert consumers to video on the phone — Nielsen just announced that viewership is up 50% over last year — but this audience is still in the early days and trying to impose these highly targeted, yet micro ad buys on what is essentially an early adopter audience isn’t moving our industry in the right direction. One could argue that such micro-targeting could in fact become the mad-cow disease of our industry, killing off many viable businesses in the name of raising the engagement needle a few points.

Occam’s Razor theory states that the simplest explanation is often the correct one. Perhaps in our quest for more detailed metrics in the hunt for greater ROI, we’ve actually moved further away from what we were originally seeking. I would suggest we stop holding online and mobile video advertising to a different standard or litmus test of value. These platforms (desktop & mobile), by their nature already offer tremendous insight into our respective user/viewer bases and if managed and mined correctly, give us sufficient data to derive a much more quantifiable ROI than television, in its one-size-fits-all, bulk format, could ever hope to offer.

So perhaps what we truly need is less focus on advanced mathematics and a more concrete focus on the basics of user engagement, personalization and seamless mobility of the user experience.

Anthony Bontrager