Hello and welcome to my report on MipTV, the TV content market and conference held in Cannes this week. The report is published in co-operation with digibusiness.eu service.

A multitude of business models

In a multi-channel world we will have a multitude of business models for content owners. Both main approaches, advertising and pay-for-content models will see new forms or applications emerging. On the advertising side at MipTV there was much emphasis on branded content, that is advertisers taking part in production processes through product placement or various sponsoring concepts.

News Corp’s digital arm chief Jonathan Miller predicted, that the most successful model may be a moderate pay-per-view charge complemented with some advertising.

Miller noticed that the question is not only whether the model is pay-per-view, subscription or something else, also value chains differ: as e.g. Amazon is a reseller who buys products with a wholesale price and sets their price independently, Apple is running an agent model where they decide on pricing and deliver the vendor a provision.

Now that I mentioned Apple: In Jonathan Millers vision iPads will turn newspapers into multimedia content providers and thus into another online TV or video access channel. iPads are more interesting as a platform than Kindle and other “e-book-readers”, as iPad has multimedia capabilities.

Online TV is the new normal, utilising measurement data brings new opportunities

Hulu, US web TV service backed by major broadcasters, disclosed that they generated last year 100 million dollar revenue and will this year reach 100 million in the middle of the year. According to Hulu SVP Johannes Larcher, their two last quarters have been profitable. Currently, Hulu reports 40 million monthly users.

US company Jumpwire launched their service for analysing internet torrent traffic to provide data on viewing demographics. The company points out that researching also illegal delivery they can gather useful information for content owners about viewers and their geographical locations. Should a TV show be frequently downloaded on a market where the show doesn’t air, the content owner might consider selling the programming on TV channels on such a market.

Also YouTube emphasises their friendship with content owners. According to Patrick Walker of YouTube, they are able to provide not only advertising services but also valuable viewing data. News Corp’s Jonathan Miller also found that online video delivery brings much needed data on viewing demographics and habits. According to Miller, online delivery can lower content development costs as new shows can be piloted on online services before deciding on full-scale TV production. Online piloting gives information on the popularity and viewer profile of the show. Miller estimated that News Corp. will be using around 10 million dollars this year for made-for-web TV productions.

Don’t forget the mobile

Mobile TV as it was promoted couple of years ago is next to dead in Europe. Despite of this, mobile devices and mobile viewing may have an impact on TV business, many experts reminded. The concept of mobile Apps – however trivial for software engineers – will bring interesting difference to how content is sold and bought on mobile channel.

Now that media companies are actively promoting mobile content and services (largely sparked by iPhone and iPad), the role of telecom operators seems to be becoming difficult. Especially, if they want to expand their business from the basic data transfer.

Yahoo Widgets live on TF1

Yahoo, Samsung and French commercial broadcaster TF1 had launched last Saturday interactive TV service running on Yahoo Widgets platform. In France, Samsung TV set buyers get access to a variety of TF1 and Eurosport add-on content. Yahoo lauched the Widget platform early 2009 and this is one of the first deployments in Europe. TF1 is also participating in another interactive platform development, HbbTV.

3D progresses surprisingly fast, will largely challenge content production

3D seems to be progressing much faster than anticipated. However, in the short term stereoscopic picture will play role mostly for cinemas: There seems to be a business model in a form of placing premium in movie ticket prices. Cinemas can also handle the viewing glasses issue better than homes, where the need for glasses is a real problem. It will take at least a couple of years until we will see 3D TV sets on market that do not require special glasses (this is called “autostereoscopic viewing”).

3D is not just a technical change. It has an impact on production and narration. In 2D, the programme is edited to emphasise details according to director’s vision. In 3D, the viewer’s eye does a part of this work. If the content is cut in too short segments, viewers may suffer of headache in 3D viewing.

Optimally, the distance to main target in 3D shooting should be 10-15 meters, the camera should not be far up from the ground level and the background should be not too far away. This results in that high-quality 3D production cannot be directly integrated in 2D shooting and editing processes.

In sports programming tennis, boxing and small stadium football are favourable for 3D. Gabriel Fehervari, CEO of major technical production company Alfacam noticed that 3D football in the FIFA World Cup may be a disappointment as the mentioned optimal conditions will not be met there.

As a sign of 3D importance and potential, Singapore has chosen to foster heavily 3D production. Production companies there have an access to a funding that covers 80 % of the extra cost in 3D productions compared with 2D.

3D advertising content hasn’t yet taken off. 3D spots are shown mostly just before cinema movies. Clearly advertisers don’t find the TV 3D advertising coverage to be adequate.

Social media didn’t find its role at a TV conference

Every reputable professional conference needs to mention social media. Real news, applications and business models related to TV viewing were few at MipTV.

Swedish company Starling launched a platform for TV channels to provide viewers ways to communicate and interact during TV shows. The idea reminds me on Sofanatics service that concentrates on sports content.

Video summary

Check out also our video wrap-up: Digital Media Finland MipTV Video Summary

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Timo Argillander is a consultant specialised in digital media strategies and business planning.