We have just launched the Future of Media Predictions Markets, run in conjunction with the Future of Media Summit 2008. These will tap the collective wisdom of participants at the Summit in the US and Australia, as well as other media leaders globally. Anyone can participate in the prediction markets.
The predictions will be used during the Summit itself to help generate more pointed discussions and specific views, and to garner international attention and coverage for the Summit.
For those who haven’t come across prediction markets before, they mimic financial markets to aggregate a large group’s opinions on what will happen (see Wikipedia definition and Prediction Markets Cluster). Specific questions are posed on what will happen, and participants place bets on the outcome by buying and selling in the markets.
Our partner for the Future of Media Prediction Markets is Inkling Markets, one of a handful of commercial providers of prediction markets. Their clients creating public markets include CNN to predict the 2008 presidential elections, while many companies such as Cisco, Chrysler, O’Reilly, Procter & Gamble, and Wells Fargo are using their prediction markets for internal applications such as product development and sales forecasting.
In the Future of Media Prediction Markets we have just launched five markets:
* Which IPTV channel will generate the most revenue in 2009?
* Will Yahoo! exist as an independent company at the end of 2008?
* When will the New York Times stop printing on paper?
* What will global digital advertising revenue be in 2010?
* Will The Bulletin be relaunched in Australia by 30 June, 2009?
If you have opinions on any of these topics, go to the Future of Media Prediction Markets and make your opinion heard!
Register on the site and you will be given $5,000 to place your bets on the markets. Either buy or sell whatever predictions you think are mis-priced. As the markets move with further participation (and maybe changing circumstances), you will make or lose money. As the markets evolve you can trade actively by buying and selling positions.
Let us know if you have suggestions for prediction market topics other than these initial ones. We’ll be expanding the range of questions as more participants join.
See you in there – may the best media futures trader win!
The future of privacy and targeted advertising
By Ross DawsonOne of the key themes at our Future of Media Summit 2008 (Silicon Valley July 14 simultaneous with Sydney July 15) will be the future of privacy and targeted advertising. The panel run across the locations will include top executives from Traffic Marketplace, Dataportability.org, Acxiom, and Electronic Frontier Foundation (see event site for details).
This topic is at the heart of the future of media. In a world awash with advertising, shown to a fragmented and increasingly cynical audience keen to avoid it, the value (and thus the price) of advertising is falling. Media proprietors are finding it harder to pay for content production, and in many cases media properties are getting smaller.
Source: eMarketer
What could entirely change the equation is targeted advertising, in which people are shown advertisements that are relevant to their interests, profile, and forthcoming purchases. Often the best way to understand people is to study their behaviors, thus the current emphasis on ‘behavioral targeting’. This would make the advertising far more valuable to advertisers, media companies would make more money, and media consumers should be happy because they get relevant and interesting advertisements.
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Free webinar this Thursday on SmartCompany: Six Driving Forces Changing Media
By Ross DawsonSmartCompany.com.au is one of the most interesting online media ventures in Australia. Established in February 2007 by Amanda Gome, formerly a journalist and editor at BRW, it is targeted at entrepreneurs and owners of small to medium size businesses.
While the site initially had both free and subscription content, within the first six months they decided to make the site entirely free. The site reaches a highly targeted audience, so attracts good advertisers, and has excellent content and resources.
As part of SmartCompany’s media partner role in the Future of Media Summit 2008, SmartCompany is running a free webinar this Thursday where I will be presenting on Six Driving Forces Changing Media, in conversation with Amanda Gome – click through to register.
The framework I present in the webinar will be in the Future of Media Report 2008 (following the extremely popular Future of Media Report 2006 and Future of Media Report 2007), so this will in effect be a sneak preview for the webinar audience. I’ll put it up in summary form on this blog shortly after.
Other special content being developed for the Future of Media Report 2008 include a Future of Media Participation framework (I think this might turn out be our most popular framework yet) and a Future of Media: Strategy Tools spread. Coming soon!
Mark Pesce wows the Personal Democracy Forum: see Mark at Future of Media Summit 2008
By Ross DawsonMark Pesce is one of my favorite media visionaries. Back in the late 1990s I was a big fan of Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which was co-invented by Mark. I proposed using it as a tool for concept representation, among other applications. Mark has since focused largely on the media space, doing some great work. I wrote about a report on IPTV by Mark last year, and his insights at a conference on public affairs we both spoke at a month or two ago.
Mark will be speaking at our forthcoming Future of Media Summit 2008 in a couple of weeks on the Future of TV and Video panel, which will be run between Silicon Valley and Sydney. I’m particularly looking forward to this panel, which will uncover how existing broadcast and cable TV is intersecting TV and video on the Internet to form an entirely new landscape.
Mark spoke earlier this week at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. A review of the event in The Huffington Post described Mark as “the best speaker at PDF”. A brief excerpt:
What do you think will happen in media? Participate (and win!) in the Future of Media Prediction Markets!
By Ross DawsonWe have just launched the Future of Media Predictions Markets, run in conjunction with the Future of Media Summit 2008. These will tap the collective wisdom of participants at the Summit in the US and Australia, as well as other media leaders globally. Anyone can participate in the prediction markets.
The predictions will be used during the Summit itself to help generate more pointed discussions and specific views, and to garner international attention and coverage for the Summit.
For those who haven’t come across prediction markets before, they mimic financial markets to aggregate a large group’s opinions on what will happen (see Wikipedia definition and Prediction Markets Cluster). Specific questions are posed on what will happen, and participants place bets on the outcome by buying and selling in the markets.
Our partner for the Future of Media Prediction Markets is Inkling Markets, one of a handful of commercial providers of prediction markets. Their clients creating public markets include CNN to predict the 2008 presidential elections, while many companies such as Cisco, Chrysler, O’Reilly, Procter & Gamble, and Wells Fargo are using their prediction markets for internal applications such as product development and sales forecasting.
In the Future of Media Prediction Markets we have just launched five markets:
* Which IPTV channel will generate the most revenue in 2009?
* Will Yahoo! exist as an independent company at the end of 2008?
* When will the New York Times stop printing on paper?
* What will global digital advertising revenue be in 2010?
* Will The Bulletin be relaunched in Australia by 30 June, 2009?
If you have opinions on any of these topics, go to the Future of Media Prediction Markets and make your opinion heard!
Register on the site and you will be given $5,000 to place your bets on the markets. Either buy or sell whatever predictions you think are mis-priced. As the markets move with further participation (and maybe changing circumstances), you will make or lose money. As the markets evolve you can trade actively by buying and selling positions.
Let us know if you have suggestions for prediction market topics other than these initial ones. We’ll be expanding the range of questions as more participants join.
See you in there – may the best media futures trader win!
Web 2.0 and human resources – who should drive Web 2.0 initiatives in the organization?
By Ross DawsonThe UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has recently launched a discussion paper titled Web 2.0 and human resources, designed to help HR professionals to understand what Web 2.0 is and to contribute to organization’s activities in the space.
The paper is built around the key elements of my Web 2.0 Framework, which they nicely attribute me for, though also brings in a number of new elements, and wraps up with three case studies, including Pfizer’s Pfizerpedia, UK government departments’ use of forums, and T-mobile’s use of social networks for recruitment.
As I see and work with many organizations grappling with how to respond to and take advantage of Web 2.0, one of the challenges is that there is no one obvious place in the organization where these initiatives should reside. IT, HR, marketing, strategy, risk management and other functions all need to be involved, and the reality is usually none of them individually have the capabilities to successfully drive the full breadth of the potential across the firm. In successful organizations, often individuals who implicitly understand the issues help to define activities, and very importantly communicate across the wide variety of stakeholders.
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Mark Scott, Managing Director of ABC, at the Future of Media Summit: thoughts on the future of media
By Ross DawsonThe Future of Media Summit 2008 is designed to have a far broader reach and impact than for just those who attend. Part of the way we do this is to get contributions from the speakers beforehand on the Future of Media blog and websites, setting the scene for deeper discussions on the day, and providing context for those who can’t make the Summit.
The CEO Panel on predictions for the future of media will be held at 1:20 – 2:00pm in Sydney, just before the Unconference session, and will be the final session at 8:20 – 9:00pm in Silicon Valley, over drinks. Panelists for this session include Mark Scott, Managing Director of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Mark’s pre-event contribution is two papers:
* A recent op-ed on the role of the ABC in 2020 that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
* The ABC in the digital age – Towards 2020, about the ABC’s shift to digital media.
The ABC shares with a few other organizations such as the BBC and CBC the special issues of public broadcasters in a rapidly shifting world. The papers describe the evolving role of publicly funded media in a world awash with information, and the steps the ABC will take to fulfill that role, including the new digital channels it will implement.
Below are a few excerpts from the papers that are particularly worth highlighting in the lead-up to the Future of Media Summit:
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How Web 2.0 creates value
By Ross DawsonBelow is the sidebar I wrote in for BRW‘s Web 2.0 feature, accompanying our Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list. The reason I was most pleased about getting the list into a mainstream business magazine is that it is a significant step in getting the broader business community to understand the value and transformative power of Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call the participatory web). While the geeks and early online adopters are swimming in this world and engage in continual conversations with each other about what’s happening, it is critically important that the messages spread beyond this community. That is central to what I’m trying to do.
Another sidebar in the report written by Technology Editor Foad Fadaghi on Start-up challenges is available online (though that’s all – the rest is subscriber only :-( ).
Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.
Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.
Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.
Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.
Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace. They are central to Australia’s integration into the rapidly growing hyper-connected economy.
UK and Australia lead the world in online advertising per capita
By Ross DawsonTechcrunch has just published a very interesting analysis of valuations of social networks. Here is its methodology:
I have charted the figures of interactive advertising spend per Internet user from this data below.
Source: Techcrunch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Comscore
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What marketing executives think about your privacy
By Ross DawsonAn article in Forbes titled What Privacy Policy? quotes data from a study by the Ponemon Institute, summarized below.
What it shows is distinctly fairly different attitudes and perception from privacy and security executives at large organizations, compared to those of marketing executives.
At the Future of Media Summit 2008 held in mid-July in Silicon Valley and Sydney we’ll be looking at the future of privacy and targeted advertising. Broad behavioral advertising requires either dominant players that have the breadth of relationships that they can serve relevant advertising to many viewers wherever they go on the Internet, or sharing of detailed information and profiles between market participants.
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Mapping newspaper layoffs – where will the journalists go?
By Ross DawsonErica Smith of Graphic Designer has done some great map mashups of US newspaper layoffs so far in 2008 (4,490+) and in the last seven months of 2007 (2,185+), as below.
While you can pick out trends from the maps such as a big rise in layoffs in the North-East, this is more about underlining the trends in newspaper jobs.
One of the key topics at the Future of Media Summit 2008 on July 14/15 will be the future of journalism. I absolutely believe that journalistic skills and training are immensely relevant in the economy today. However many current newspaper journalists will have to adapt their skills to new jobs and roles, often outside traditional media. We will explore, among other issues, how this transition might happen.
US newspaper layoffs: 2008 to date
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