On Digital Media

What is it?

On Digital Media is a podcast about the technology, creation, distribution, consumption and monetization of digital media and its effects on traditional media and marketing. If it's part of the digital media ecosystem, you'll likely hear about it here. Your hosts are John Federico, Chia-Lin Simmons, Ken Gellman and Steve Hatch.

On Digital Media, Episode #43

In this episode John Federico, Chia-Lin Simmons, Ken Gellman and Steve Hatch discuss:

Lots of M&A activity this week
- Hearst buys gaming network UGO. Forbes estimates the deal to be around $100 million given the company’s $30 million in annual revenue and $82 million in venture capital.
- AOL buys behavioral targeting ad network TACODA. Ken likes their strategy of buying up ad inventory on networks of sites that aren’t based on Time Warner properties. We discuss the death of certain print publications and the rise of their succesful online namesakes. (Elle Girl and Premiere magazines come to mind…) Kudos to their management for taking bold steps.
- Microsoft bought advertising exchange platform AdECN. (A direct competitor of Yahoo’s Right Media.)
Digg FIRES Google as its contextual advertising partner and replaces them with MSN. We struggle with the cheezy relationship metaphors. John arrives at the right metaphor, but manages to momentarily take the conversation to sophomoric levels. (So it goes…) Steve wonders how Digg’s notoriously anti-Microsoft community will react to the presence of MSN advertising in their midst. Federated Media maintains its sponsorship and display sales relationship with Digg.
Ken is surprised at the valuations of the ad networks that are being bought and contrasts the current M&A market to a couple of years ago. We delve into a discussion about the value of display advertising vs. search advertising and whether these investments will pay out for these acquirers.
Nielsen is now tracking display advertising in video games on consoles as well as casual games on the web and mobile devices. Despite his disgust for old audience measurement models, John is excited that Nielsen is going to be bringing its brand to this medium to help legitimize it.
John’s happy to witness (and influence) the formation of The Association for Downloadable Media but is perplexed by the formation of Scott Bourne’s “Association of Podcasters & Online Media Producers.” (Well, not really. John has a theory about Scott’s agenda…)
Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is “going Web 2.0.” Get the Shark Week Widget! Get the Shark Week FaceBook App! Listen to the Shark Week podcast! Play with the Shark Week Video Mixer!…
PayPal is going to award $10,000 for thest FaceBook Application that uses PayPal. Ken compares PayPal/eBay’s ability to make nimble, forward-thinking moves with Yahoo’s inability, as of late.
Ken likes to point out to those of you/us who may consider the old guard internet companies dead, take a look at Amazon’s earnings: the company tripled it’s net earnings this quarter, along with some other very impressive metrics.
Speaking of metrics…Apple had a 73% increase in profits this quarter and sold 9.8 million iPods and 250.000 iPhones during the first three days following its release. Mac Sales set an all-time record.
Steve wants to know when Apple is going to stop selling computers and focus on selling iPods and iPhones. In reponse, John wants to know when Microsoft is going to stop selling Windows and focus on selling only Zunes…in brown. (Ah yes, fanboys on a rampage…)
Jeff Bewkes thinks that all of TV should go VOD. Needless to say, we agree. Again.
Visible World is now working with A & E Networks to start delivering customized, targeted ads in to viewers of A & E and The History Channel. We think Visible World may be a direct competitor to BackChannel Media, but we’ve got to do some investigating to be sure.

Our wine this week was a 2004 Altos De Luzon Jumilla (from the Wine Library, of course).

Our closing music is Democracy from Alexander Blu.

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