I just spent 4 days in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was a spectacular event.
With over 140,000 attendees, CES is the largest trade show in America.
In addition to the latest gadgetry, including the biggest and thinnest plasma screens and the smallest HD cameras, CES also hosted Digital Hollywood, a conference program dedicated to content, entertainment and technology.
Despite some interesting topics, the sessions consisted of the usual industry rhetoric and hyperbole. Cutting through this, one panel made some predictions for how digital media will evolve in the coming year:
Eyal Hertzog, Founder, Metacafe: “More content owners are going to realize the value of the long-tail and make their material available online. There are still millions of hours of content out there and there’s no reason not to make it available.”
Patrick Kearney, Participant TV: “There’s going to more openness on the side of the big media companies and more APIs developed over the course of 2008.”
Peter Pham, Photobucket: “There will be more indexing of video and photos, making it much easier to serve more targeted and relevant content to the end user. Big media companies will also embrace super distribution models.”
Art Sindlinger, Starcom: “There is going to be more focus on engagement and emphasis on participation, rather than on page views. The CPA (Cost Per Action) model will become the norm in terms of how advertising spend is measured.”
Robert Blatt, AOL - “Technology barriers will be removed making it much easier to consume media across multiple sites. We will also see consumers taking ownership of their online identities.”
My other highlight from CES was the Digital Entertainment Group breakfast and keynote given by Jason Forbes of Cap Gemini.
One insight was that although TV consumption is in decline, it is not being offset by an increase in online video consumption.
Cap Gemini’s research suggests that this is due to a massive increase in time spent engaged in social networking and online gaming.
So what does this mean for traditional media? In Jason Forbes’s view, the big media companies need to find ways to align production with demand. This means that new forms of programming need to emerge that embrace the changes in how people are consuming media. Does this mean that we need more ideas for mass participatory programming formats? Menthol TV certainly thinks so.
