5 June 2009
As reported by Tornado Insider, Italy-based beeTV, a provider of a personalized entry system for television viewers, has raised 5.6 million in a Series B round of funding. The investment was led by Italian VC firm Innogest. The deal will fund the companys growth, including plans to invest in sales and expand its penetration into the US and Asian markets. Erik Lumer, founder of Bubblegum and Graphvine, will join beeTV board on behalf of Innogest.
beeTV was founded in 2006 in an aim to deal with the stunning range of content currently offered on TV. The company believes that number of choices actually restricts viewers rather than improves their TV experience. Subscribers must sift through the vast amount of content available on their platform in order to choose what they ultimately would like to watch. Meanwhile, preferences seem to change depending on the time of the day, context, and mood of the viewer. According to beeTV, solutions such as channel surfing and electronic program guides fail to please subscribers as the choices are presented in an inherently bland, impersonal and time-consuming manner.
beeTV has chosen a different approach. The company offers subscribers their own so-called Personal Content Channel or PCC, which is placed in their set-top box (be it IPTV, cable, satellite, mobile or DTT), their mobile phones and their PC. The device identifies the subscriber, searches all available content sources, including broadcast TV, subscription TV, VoD, SVoD, PPV, and PVR/Catch-up and uses a contextual matching algorithm to decide on the relevancy of content to the subscriber. The PCC then pushes the relevant content through a personalized channel, while anticipating the viewers desires by taking into account context, schedule, behavior, and even mood.
The white-labeled PCC is designed to serve TV, mobile and PC screens. Providers can integrate all three screen PCCs or choose a combination that best fits their own marketing and distribution needs. The company launched the beeSTBox product (for TV) in September 2008, and the beeWEB (for PC) and beeMOBILE in March of this year.
5 June 2009
AP reports that Mexican media giant Televisa and the social networking website hi5 plan to provide TV programming free online in Latin America.
Registered hi5 users will be able see Televisa programming on a new hi5 page as soon as this summer, the San Francisco-based company said. Many of the sports, soaps and other shows are already available on Televisa’s website, but the partnership is intended to boost both companies’ audience, hi5 spokesman Mike Trigg said.
The page won’t be accessible in the U.S., though, where Televisa and its one-time partner Univision are battling over Internet distribution rights. Grupo Televisa SA is the world’s top producer of Spanish-language TV programming.
Internet use grew 16.6 per cent in Latin America last year, nearly triple 5.7 per cent growth seen in Canada and the U.S., according to comScore Inc., an Internet researcher. Televisa and hi5 already reach more than 33 million users in Spanish-speaking Latin America, or 63 per cent of the market, both companies said.
Hi5 was the world’s 12th most-visited website by page views last year, according to comScore, and Trigg said the site has more than five million unique users in Mexico. A spokesman for Televisa could not confirm financing details for the partnership, but hi5 supports itself largely by advertising.
5 June 2009
Fast-growing Chinese vendor Huawei has complained that unfounded national security concerns in India are jeopardising its future success there, according to a report in the Financial Times (FT). Huawei is currently bidding for some of a US$1.7 billion GSM network contract to be awarded by state-owned operator BSNL. However, recent Indian media reports have suggested that giving contracts to Huawei would constitute a national security risk because of the company’s alleged Chinese military background (the two countries have had a turbulent relationship). The FT report notes that Huawei is a privately-held company and claims to be mainly owned by its employees, with founder Ren Zhengfei owning less than two percent. The report adds that Ren is a former officer of the People’s Liberation Army, and this, combined with the fact that Huawei does not publish details of its shareholding structure, has fuelled speculation that the company has close links with the Chinese military. Huawei has previously rejected such claims. In the FT report, Huawei’s Vikas Dewan, India sales head, said: “As we are getting big enough to trouble our biggest competitors, there are allegations emerging similar to those we faced in the US.”
The FT report notes that India is an important market for Huawei, generating US$2 billion of the vendor’s US$18.3 billion global revenues last year. According to research firm Dell’Oro Group, Huawei enjoyed an extremely strong first quarter of 2009, roughly doubling its share of the global mobile network equipment market to 15 percent. This put it in third-place, behind western rivals Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. (Source: GSMA Mobile Business Briefing)
4 June 2009
Reuters reports that Germany’s public broadcasters will significantly reduce the programming they put online. This move is a response to attacks from commercial channels and newspapers that the online offerings represent unfair competition.
Markus Schachter, director of public broadcaster ZDF, said the channel will reduce its online offerings by 70 percent and cut the length of time that catch-up programming is available for streaming. Reports on the official websites of ZDF and sister channel ARD will now be taken down after one week, and reports on sporting events, such as Germany’s Bundesliga soccer games, will be pulled after only one day online. Schachter also said ZDF would focus more on posting video to its site and greatly reduce its text-only offerings.
The German newspaper industry has been complaining for some time that ARD and ZDF’s free websites unfairly compete with the online versions of their publications.
4 June 2009
Advertising budgets for mobile channels are expected to buck the downward trend and exhibit strong growth over the next five years, according to a new report from Juniper Research.
The report found that constraints on budgets, imposed in the wake of the global economic downturn, had resulted in an increasing migration of adspend from above the line to below the line channels: the need for engagement with the consumer, and a quantifiable ROI, meant that mobile was increasingly being perceived as a key medium through which to pursue this strategy.
However, the Juniper mobile advertising report stressed that, while this was encouraging, the level of growth had to be put into context that mobile advertising still remained very much a nascent medium, and even by 2014 it would only account for up to 1.5% of total global adspend.
The report noted that, while a number of major brands had made relatively large investments in the mobile platform, advertisers have yet to be fully convinced that mobile has sufficient reach to warrant substantive adspend. As report author Dr Windsor Holden pointed out, “These investments still form only a small proportion of a brand’s total advertising budget: Regardless of mobile’s advantages its personal nature, the facility for highly targeted advertising advertisers will not commit more budget until they perceive that the audience for their advertisements has reached a critical mass.”
Other findings from the Juniper report include:
Mobile Internet will become the most popular mobile delivery channel for advertisers in 2009, and will attract the largest proportion of mobile adspend throughout the forecast period
Mobile Cost Per Clickthrough (CPC) and Cost Per Mille (CPM) rates have fallen sharply over the past year in large part due the negative impact of the economic downturn
Mobile advertising response rates remain substantially higher than those in other media
Juniper Research assesses the current and future status of mobile advertising based on interviews, case studies and analysis from representatives of some of the leading organisations in the growing mobile advertising industry.
1 June 2009
More than 1000 delegates from 100 countries are expected to attend the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn which begins on 3 June. DW Director General Erik Bettermann will open the Global Media Forum.
Deutsche Welle’s Global Media Forum began in 2008 as a platform for intercultural exchange between global media makers and users and was conceived to address ways to cope with challenges and developments whose course is largely influenced by media worldwide.
The 2009 forum has set its focus on conflict prevention in the multimedia-age and examines the opportunities and challenges presented by new technologies and consumer habits.
Deutsche Welle’s Global Media Forum 2009 will bring together media users and producers, peace building and conflict prevention specialists, representatives from the fields of media technology and security, public relations, the military, the arms industry as well as members of government and political parties to network and discuss the challenges and solutions for the future.
AIB CEO Simon Spanswick will chair the main plenary session on Thursday morning. The session will examine the multimedia revolution and what it means for traditional media.
“I’m delighted to be involved in this year’s GMF,” says Spanswick. “This is an important and influential meeting that brings together opinion-formers and media leaders from all over the world for three intensive days of workshops, discussion, debate and networking. It’s vital – even in these economically challenging times – that dialogue between media organisations old and new continues. GMF ensures that it does.”
For the full programme go to:
www.dw-world.de/globalmediaforum
Digital press kit:
www.dw-world.de/presse
Weblog:
http://training.dw-world.de/gmf
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dw_gmf
Photos:
www.flickr.com/deutschewelle
Audio excerpts:
http://soundcloud.com/dwgmf
