The early stages of the content delivery wars are beginning to shape up as this year progresses. It can be anticipated that 2008 will see a full scale attempt by the many varied broadcast services to assert dominance not only within their respective niches, but also to encroach on established delivery services in an attempt to garner market share and establish primacy in the minds of consumers. Q1 2007 has seen an unprecedented number of acquisitions and an astonishing number of developments on the IPTV and VOD fronts and it would be a mistake to assume that these two trends are unrelated. The two pronged approach towards acquisitions that we are witnessing center around the areas of delivering viewers to content providers and on being able to exploit those viewer metrics through the use of targeted metadata. In short this surge can be characterized by the need to push advertising to select demographics while at the same time creating a source of deep-layer user data to further refine and capitalize on future viewer habits. While at first it may appear that such endeavors have little impact on the content creation community, a peek just below the surface would indicate that content creators of all types may well be in for boom cycle as the market readjusts for anticipated content repurposing and highly targeted, demographic specific content and advertising. Most news has centered on acquisitions by Google and Microsoft of metadata driven advertising and tracking websites such as aQuantive, DoubleClick and Feedburner. Yahoo previously moved in on the territory with its acquisition of Right Media and the WPP Group acted on acquiring 24/7 RealMedia. Even CBS has moved into somewhat unfamiliar territory with its purchase of last.fm. This surge of activity has at its core the need to not only track users but also to cultivate them and ultimately deliver them to advertisers. Furthermore, the emergence of the internet television broadcaster Joost, and it’s partnership with Viacom also underscores the radical shift taking place on the broadcast side of the spectrum. Networks and broadcasters are rapidly creating new alliances and investing in emerging technology in order to solidify the hold they already have within consumer’s homes. There is real anxiety that the content delivery paradigm that has existed for the past fifty years could be about to shift, and it is unclear at this stage in what direction it may go. This ambiguity extends to Apple’s attempts to gain leverage within the video markets through its introduction of AppleTV and by its efforts at seamless integration of content creation software such as FinalCut Pro into the value chain. Furthermore, Apple’s integration of YouTube in its next generation AppleTV product offers a glimpse into Apple’s ultimate strategy within the content aggregation and creation businesses. Even TiVo has introduced new features into its product matrix enabling closer integration of DVR capabilities with web searches and internet content playback. We are witnessing the blurring of the line between content creators, broadcasters and advertisers. The traditional view of metadata has long been one of supplemental data in support of a product structure such as a website or even a software package. Over time this has grown to include user feedback, product diagnostics and usage statistics. However, the thought that metadata in and of itself was as valuable as, if not more valuable than, the actual product itself is a novel concept. This amended view would support the very high price tags that the aforementioned acquisitions have been able to fetch. In fact the prices of recent acquisitions would suggest that the purchases revolve primarily around the metadata and not the products or services being sold. This is a reversal of traditional economic sense – and yet it carries a logic that is as inescapable as inevitable. Traditionally websites have been measured by the number of unique visitors as well as daily visits and that core metric was used to determine the value of properties. Add into the mix advertising revenue, possibly Google AdWords and a strong compliment of inward and outward links and a websites relative worth could be estimated. However with the rise of social networks and user generated groups and content the metrics used to determine value began to change. Relative worth is determined now by slightly less measurable, but far more significant metrics such as stickiness and a site’s potential to generate revenue through future, as yet undetermined, product promotions. It was this metric that Amazon chose when evaluating dpreview.com – and that sites extensibility from reviewing digital cameras to feeding readers into Amazon’s website is ultimately what determined price. Of course there is more to it than simply this. While sites such as YouTube bring in particular demographics and some usable metadata not only about users but also the equipment and software they use to create their content; other sites such as dpreview.com also are able to bring in a pre-qualified group of users who most likely are in the market for a new digital camera. It is precisely that prequalification that made it such a desirable property and not its daily statistics. Additionally the data gathered surrounding product reviews and user ratings has the potential to be parsed into usable data that manufacturers can utilize in future product improvements and features development. At the other end of the spectrum is the proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google. The acquisition is so significant that the FTC has been looking very closely at the implications such a combined force would have. The investigation would look not only at the implications from a data privacy perspective but also from the standpoint of what the ramifications would be within the advertising and search markets. Although the DOJ has the primary mandate for enforcing antitrust laws and the FTC might well determine that such an investigation is warranted, the likelihood of any antitrust investigation is small given the obscurity of metadata (and if metadata could even be considered within the realm of antitrust) and the highly dispersed nature of internet advertising. Ultimately though, given the broad nature of acquisitions in this area over the past 12 months, what are the likely ramifications of metadata driven marketing, content creation and viewership? The insistence that fundamental user interactions are at the heart of all products, websites and even television shows has given rise to the new understanding that each medium supports and reinforces the other. Each medium can no longer be considered separate from an advertisers or data aggregator’s perspective. In other words, what a user does in one medium has significant bearing on the other. What has tremendous weight in this revised worldview is not so much what the viewer can be exposed to once, but rather what they can be exposed to again and again…and that can only happen with deep tracking mechanisms operating within an unified media platform in which the internet, television, print and movies seem to operate as a single entertainment unit. The long-term consequences point to highly personalized forms of entertainment and advertising. In the same way that DVR led to appointment television the age of personalized advertising and demographic-driven, personalized content delivery is just around the corner. The trickle-down from these mega acquisitions to the individual content creator will be no less revolutionary. Content providers, and by extension content editors, will increasingly be driven to tailor content specific to particular audiences. No longer will broad stoke demographics such as 18-25 suffice. It may well be that the viewer fragmentation that was witnessed in the internet marketplace might extend into the film and television markets. Television may well become defined not by just the tailoring of ads to a particular, highly segmented demographic but also by the specific tailoring of content to that same fragmented demographic.
This inevitably will lead the need to particularize and define specific data within any scene shot. The need to highlight every aspect of a scene from a metadata perspective in which all of the elements within a scene are identified and tagged is becoming increasingly apparent. Unfortunately no software exists yet that can adequately handle this task, but every element within a scene is potentially saleable to future advertisers and deliverable to future viewers. Clothing, soft drinks, furniture: all ultimately will be tagged and matched up with user metadata captured from multiple databases; then parsed and redelivered to those same viewers in a different context. This is what the big picture acquisitions mean in terms of future advertising revenue and what the near term impact will be on the content creation business. | 
