At the Future of Television conference in Hollywood, a group of panelists debated the global opportunities and challenges of distributing and monetizing online video. Panelists included John DeMarchi, EVP of sponsorships & distribution, Saavn; Alistair Jeffs, EVP/ COO, Oil Productions; Brett Wilson, CEO, TubeMogul; Eric Garland, CEO, Big Champage;Joy Marcus, US GM, Dailymotion;

Future of TV panelists

Future of TV panelists

and Sharon Metz, vp, vertical marketing, Macrovision Solutions Corp. The panel was moderated by Colin Dixon, senior analyst & IPTV practice manager, The Diffusion Group.

Online video has become a huge commodity, and these experts discussed the obstacles they currently face to make it bigger than ever. Metrics and metadata were two of the most talked-about issues.”

“We’re looking for measurement and sponsorship,” said DeMarchi, who says Saavn distributes Bollywood content globally. “Metadata is crucial for us. Branding and sponsorship are important, but advertisers are behind the ball.” DeMarchi reported that Saavn distributes content to 160 providers. “Everyone wants [the content] a little different and there are different legalities. Whatever the rules of your country are, whatever your language, we’ll figure it out.”

Sub-titling is a particularly challenging issue for Bollywood content, since Hindi has 400 letters; trying to create metadata that can accurately link to content is an accompanying issue. “My hope is that it will get easier,” said DeMarch. “[Online video]is so new. This is TV in 1957. Nobody has this all figured out.”

TubeMogul’s Wilson noted that “everyone accepts different file formats and some sites take different characters.” “We show you what it’ll look like,” he said. “We have default mapping, and if you don’t like it, we’ll override it. We don’t solve content rights issues, but we’re trying to keep a single standard for audience engagement. We’re not solving all the problem but we’re close to delivering a standard. If we can do that, it’ll be a catalyst.”

Garland noted that the history of metrics reveals that broadcast metrics have also left a lot to be desired, including self-reported diaries that are still in use. “You’re always talking about moving towards the best compromise that allows for the intricacies of measuring online,” he said. “There’s a race on [to come up with a reliable method of metrics] and companies like ours are jockeying for position. We want to see standards sooner rather than later. In five years, we’ll be looking at real metrics.”

Speaking from the point of view of a distributor, Dailymotion’s Marcus said they ” we live and die on analytics.” “We need analytics so content providers and advertisers are happy,” she said. “Right now, they’re not all that happy because the metrics aren’t there.” Marcus noted her dilemma was knowing which metrics company to get involved with. “A site like ours is bombarded with proposals for the next great thing, and how do you sift through that?,” she said. “Five years in this industry is a life time. We need to see this standardized in a year.”

The moderator pointed out that metadata also has its complications. “If you buy something in the US, my metadata will be in English but it might have to go to a German audience,” he said. “How do I cope with this complexity in international distribution?” Metz said that “as an entertainment metadata company, Macrovision has been researching how to take metadata, prioritize markets and translate.” She revealed that the company is already partnering with a provider in Japan, but she notes that key to the issue is starting with quality data. “At the end of the day, the data without the guide is irrelevant,” she said. “We’re looking at how you look ahead to what the market needs worldwide and create enough depth to facilitate search and discovery.”

DeMarchi added that an estimated half a billion people will be coming online for the first time in the next few years, from China, India and Russia. “Those challenges need to be solved in a hurry,” he said. “We need to be able to searching for programs in their native languages and deal with the legal issues.” Wilson predicted we’ll start to see Hulu for Latin America and China. And Marcus noted that user-generated content complicates the issue several-fold.

But piracy isn’t always a bad thing; DeMarchi pointed out that the people who re-mix Bollywood music or do Bollywood parodies are often the biggest fans or evangelists of the real thing. “You can either stay out of that conversation, which is okay,” he said. “Or go find those people and turn them into your digital street team.” Jeffs said his company wants to find those people and make them their audience. Once again, he said, it comes down to metadata. “Only recently has the need for metadata been realized,” he said. “Some people are being pretty lazy about it – and viewers are paying the price.

When it comes to mobile content, said Dixon, content creators and distributors also have to factor in bandwidth issues, device issues, TV standard issues, and rights issues. “If you’re watching content on an EDGE network and you go to Canada and it’s a much lower bandwidth and your content looks awful – how do you cope?,” asked Dixon. Jeff noted that there are ways to deliver content optimized for a specific device or bandwidth. “What we try to do is not force a piece of content created for, say the web, and shove it down a mobile device which may not be capable of handling the speed,” he said. “It’s about optimizing the content for the platform, leveraging what elements come with each platform.” For Oil Productions, an interactive, multi-platformed drama and entertainment company, the production of “Routes” was aimed at the online platform. “We could have optimized those games and made them into mobile games, but we didn’t feel that mobile was the right way to extend the entertainment experience,” he said. “We utilized mobile for an SMS short code interaction because we knew we could reach all the demographic with the short code, not just some of them. There are interesting revenues tied to a multi-platform interactive entertainment entity not just tied to sponsorship.”

Since so much entertainment now intersects with social media, Dixon wanted to know how that translated to international markets, since social media platforms can vary from country to country. Jeffs answered that most large global social networks have a presence in different countries, and Wilson posited that “our thesis is if you pick one venue, you’re not maximizing the size of your audience.” “Some people use Facebook or MySpace,” he said. “The price you have to pay to use all these great social networks is you need manpower on the ground in each social network interacting with the people who consume your content.”

Geo-blocking–the blocking of content for certain countries or regions–was also discussed. “We are required to do so, for various reasons,” said Marcus. “In many cases, they have pre-sold to other countries. The rights in professionally produced digital content is heavily scrutinized and we live with these restrictions right now. Will it change very very soon? I can’t imagine that, not with the traditional Hollywood content. With the purely made-for-digital content, people are getting savvy and hanging on to their international rights. If it isn’t originally made for TV and we get something made-for-digital originally, that’s where geo-blocking will begin to end.”

Garland added that the issue isn’t about “pay versus non pay.” “Piracy has made it so that if something is released in North America, it’s available every place on that same day. Is that going to change? No, of course not. But that’s where the rub lies. The pirate marketplace doesn’t really care about the needs of the business, it cares about access and convenience. Geo-blocking is academic. Its’ trying to create scarcity in a venue that doesn’t support scarcity. We have reams of data that proves that. Just as the music industry, we’ve learned something: when you make it available in a legitimate way an audience will stay with you.”