The final day of DCM Europe provided panel discussions on hot topics including ‘The growth of VOD: getting your product the customer where and when they want it’ and ‘Delivering results through social media: likes, engagement, and monetization across all customer groups’ (pictured). Todd Kurie of MyCube set the scene with a presentation on ‘Monetizing social media through social exchange’. The web today, he pointed out, has 250 million distinct websites, 150 million blogs, and 600 Facebook profiles. Every day there are 300 million tweets, 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook, and every day eight years’ worth of content is uploaded to YouTube. “You are competing against a lot of content!”
Kurie’s message: “You need to make your content discoverable - metadata offers the best ROI.” Content doesn’t necessarily have to be free, he stressed - if people can find your content they are willing to pay for it. The comedian Louis CK offered the video of his Live at the Beacon Theater gig from his website for a fee of $5. No DRM, no restrictions - pay $5 and do what you like with it. “Over one million people bought it.” Leverage social media to attract passionate and ‘tribal’ consumers, and embrace direct monetization.
The panel discussion on the growth of VOD concurred, with panellists agreeing” “Content discovery the next big thing and a huge opportunity for all of us.” Multi-screen access is growing - consumers demand content when and where they want it. “A screen is just a screen,” said Charles Muirhead of Rightster. “It’s up to the technology providers to make it work.” Social TV is going to be the ‘way to go’ was the opinion of George Meek of Kaltura.
The panel discussion on delivering results through social media managed to avoid the ‘last-session-of-the-day’ empty seat syndrome, with an audience keen to hear the panellists’ insights. Social media could be a hugely successful marketing tool, said Denise Parkinson of Yahoo! “When you have someone like Vin Diesel with five million fans on Facebook, he can drive traffic to like trailers of movies and then we can show our major studio clients that there is a huge interest in a title before it is released.”
Localization is important, so social media needs to be monitored carefully and “Research, research, research,” was the message of moderator Dana Al Salem of FanShake. She cited an example of the Middle East and North Africa, where there are two mobile phones per person. “Even if someone can’t afford to call or text, they still have two phones.” So if you are looking at growing a market in that region, looking at mobile is the way to go, she said. That sentiment was echoed by Henning Linblad, VP of Marketing at the WTA (women's tennis association), who said that what fans in China want is very different from what US or UK fans want. Facebook needs to be treated almost as another country in itself.
