*michael parekh on IT*

ON THE BEST & WORST ADS FROM THE 41st SUPERBOWL ONLINE

PLAY BY PLAY

Updated 2.5.07:  Gizmodo has a good rundown of the Superbowl ad hits and misses.

YouTube is letting their users rank the SuperBowl commercials, with the winner unveiled on Tuesday, should be a fun game to watch in itself.

CBS itself has got all the commercials lined up as well (quarter by quarter, no less), but you need to make sure you have the latest versions of either your WIndows Media Player or RealPlayer all installed to see them...it's too bad if you're using an Apple Mac like yours truly tonight. 

Why, in the age of YouTube, do traditional media sites still make mainstream users jump through the hoops of downloading and launching standalone media players?  I know, I know, for the "better", higher definition quality of course, but is the trade-off worth it?.

Well that rant aside, the Colts beat Da Bears 29 to 17.

And the best, most creative, SuperBowl Commercial this year, in my humble opinion, is still the Coke Ad I highlighted a couple of days ago.  It's fitting indeed that the SuperBowl this year is being played in "Vice City", what with Grand Theft Auto game with that name being the inspiration for the Coke commercial.  That's one man's opinion, right or wrong.

We'll see how the zillions of other surveys online and off rate and rank the commercials.  For now, I'll continue with my take on the ads.

The Bud Light commercial with Mencia teaching English as a Foreign Language was a pretty good second tied with the OTHER Bud Light "But he had Bud Light" commercial. 

OK, the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions, was also a hoot.

The worst one this year has got to be the Dunkin Donuts "Maple Syrup" ad, followed closely by the Emerald Nuts "Robert Goulet" ad (what the heck was that one about??

Although a lot of polls loved the Bud Light "Rock, Paper, Scissors" ad, I thought it's inspiration, the Sprint ad that ran in last year's SuperBowl was funnier, probably because the basic concept was SO new and surprising back then.  Sprint tried something different, as this post from Influence 2.0 notes, spoofing drug company ads with it's ad for wireless broadband.

In the truck category, Toyota Tundra beats Ford hands down, especially with the big "See-Saw" commercial.  They made me want to buy a Toyota pick-up vs. a Ford, even though I'm not in the market for that product.

A new phenomenon this year of course was the "user-generated" ads trend, where Doritos, Chevrolet and others committed to run ads created by consumers.  The two Doritos ads, "Live the Flavor" (Fred Wilson's favorite ad), and "Checkout Girl", were pretty good, and hold up well against those produced by the pros, in terms of concept and selling the product proposition.

Fedex was pretty lame this year so far compared to the hilarious "Caveman" commercial last year. I still remember it a year later.

(More links to follow).

P.S.  As mentioned above, the inspiration for the winning Coke Ad above is obviously the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto, Vice City. 

If you're a fan of that game (like me), or if you've never played the game, check out these two videos from YouTube (Part 1 here, and Part 2 here).  Together, they're a TERRIFIC summary of the Vice City "story", and you get a good feel for what all the fuss was about.

It's a labor of love by TomH88 (lots of spoilers if you plan to play the game).

Each clip is a relatively long nine minutes or so, but well worth the investment, especially considering that you'd have to invest days to play the whole game and get the whole story.

P.S. 2:  TechCrunch has a good post on some relatively lame Web 2.0 "SuperBowl" commercials on YouTube, and where to go for the REAL Superbowl commercials online, both during and after the Big Game...YouTube, Google and Yahoo! are good places to start

ON COOL ADS THRU YOUTUBE

MUSIC FOR THE EYES

(Update:  on a separate note, the Rice Krispies song is also of note).

I love TV commericals...from all over the world.  And until recently, they were hard to find.  Unless you saw an occasional Clio awards show somewhere on TV...or of course watched the Superbowl only for the commercials (I confess).

So I couldn't agree more with David Pogue of the New York Times, when he exults:

Oh, man, you gotta love YouTube. How else would you ever have gotten to see the cleverest ad for a washing machine in human history?

Here's the ad he's referring to:

It reminded me of this Microsoft XBox 360 ad from India, which I wouldn't have discovered without YouTube:

Pretty clever ad for a game console, don't you think?

ON ENJOYING THE SUPERBOWL ONLINE

"GO STEELERS!"

(Update 2.4.07, Here's the latest post on the Big Game, along with the post on Superbowl XI (41) ad outlook).

With the Superbowl about to start in a bit and my wife being from Pennsylvania and a die-hard Steelers fan, the pre-game excitement is palpable in our household. 

As a naturalized US citizen, I'm still trying to get a handle on the rules of the game.  Having said that, I'm addicted to the Superbowl commercials, like millions of other folks. 

I'm all set with my laptop to track the commercials both online and off, much to the chagrin of my better half (we've got some company over).

This year though there are some more online options for Superbowl commercial junkies like yours truly.

The Chicago Tribune for example has a good article titled "How the web is playing off Superbowl".  It starts off by highlighting how old media is protecting it's turf online:

"Television may be rushing headlong onto the Internet, but when it comes to an event such as Sunday's Super Bowl, the old medium still protects its turf.

You won't be able to catch a live video stream of Sunday's game anywhere on the Net, only on good old ABC itself."

It also highlights a new site:

"Even before the game, you can watch the Super Bowl of Advertising unfold at SuperBowl-Ads.com, a pioneering site that serves news about the ads in advance, offers still images from many of them and provides links to the few that are available in preview, including United Airlines' extravaganza, a surprising 60-second spot from a company just out of bankruptcy."

So, do enjoy the game today everybody, both online and off.  If you miss any of the commercials, check them out on ifilm.com here.  We'll tally the best ads later.

ON MASS VIDEO DISTRIBUTION: REUTERS & DVDs

LET IT FREE

An article titled "Before you buy a ticket, why not buy the DVD?" by Laura Holson of the New York Times, offers some interesting anecdotal example of how the economics of video content, DVDs in this case, can change significantly for the publisher using the Internet:

"Peter Broderick, president of Paradigm Consulting, an independent film consultant based in Santa Monica, Calif., advises moviemakers on how to distribute their films in theaters and online. In 2003, he attended the Cannes Film Festival, where he helped sell "Faster," an independent documentary film about motorcycle racing narrated by Ewan McGregor. It had a limited release in theaters.

The makers of "Faster" had the right to sell the DVD themselves, and the film got its biggest boost on its Web site, Fastermovie.com. In particular, said Mr. Broderick, "They had a killer trailer."

Mr. Broderick said the film sold 5,000 DVD's the first two weeks it was for sale online, and an additional 8,000 DVD's in subsequent months. He estimated that by selling the DVD for about $23, the filmmakers earned about $16 to $18 per disc, compared with the $2 they would have made under a standard studio contract.

Later, when the filmmakers sold the DVD in retail stores, they added a bonus documentary and more footage. And as an incentive for fans who already owned the DVD, they offered a free T-shirt with the purchase of a second. Mr. Broderick said the film sold about 50,000 DVD's in retail stores and an additional 7,000 of the extended version on the Web site.

But most important, filmmakers get the names and e-mail addresses of fans, and can use that information to market their other movies, Mr. Broderick said. "The filmmakers have a sense of their audience that the studios don't," he said."

Let's take a closer look at the numbers here.  The movie sold 50,000 DVD copies through traditional retail channels, presumably accruing $100,000 to the publishers at $2 a DVD under a "standard studio contract".

They sold a total of 20,000 DVDs directly through the web site, which excluding the merchandise revenues, presumably gave them gross revenues of $340,000 at an average of $17 per DVD. 

That's almost 3.5 times the revenue with only 40% of the unit volume!

And that's using word-of-mouth advertising, and presumably little other marketing, online or off.

And this is all BEFORE  the next generation "microchunked" video distribution technologies and networks that are coming into play soon, courtesy of startups like Brightcove and others.

As an example, Reuters announced today that they'll be using video distribution startup company Brightcove's platform to distribute their video feeds in a highly atomized, or "microchunked" way to a much wider audience than ever before.  From the CNET article (via memeorandum):

"International news agency Reuters is launching a pilot program on Tuesday that will allow blogs, news organizations and other online publishers to show Reuters news video on their Web sites.

The video affiliate network program will enable Web site operators to place a video player on their Web site and show up to 20 of Reuters' breaking news stories from around the world that will be updated throughout each day, said Stephen Smyth, vice president of the media division at Reuters...

Reuters is working with Brightcove, an on-demand Internet TV distribution service, on the video distribution and eventual monetization of the service, said Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Brightcove.

Brightcove handles video distribution for the Oxygen broadcast network, A&E Networks and others and has a broad distribution and syndication agreement with Time Warner's America Online Internet unit, Allaire said."

For me, this news echoes the announcement by the NBA a few days ago, which also "embraced" the idea of widely distributing their video content on the web.

It's encouraging to see these "fairer" distribution models emerging from traditional producers of video content.  There may be a broadband content light at the end of the rapidly growing broadband tunnel (see Om Malik's detailed post) after all.

ON ELECTRONICS ARTS BUYING JAMDAT MOBILE

GOING, GOING, GONE

Well, mobile games are going further mainstream.  Just announced after the closing bell, via the Wall Street Journal and AP:

Electronic Arts Agrees
To Buy Jamdat Mobile

Associated Press
December 8, 2005 5:35 p.m.

Videogame giant Electronic Arts Inc. agreed to acquire cellphone game publisher Jamdat Mobile Inc. in a deal valued at $680 million.

Electronic Arts said it will pay $27 in cash for each share of Jamdat stock and assume outstanding stock options. That would be a 19% premium over the $22.77 closing price Jamdat reached on the Nasdaq Stock Market before Thursday's deal was announced.

The acquisition, which is expected to close in early 2006, would quickly give the world's leading videogame publisher a stronger foothold in the growing and lucrative mobile game market, estimated to be about $1 billion globally.

Jamdat, based in Los Angeles with 350 employees world-wide, is a publisher of wireless entertainment software. Its portfolio includes hit cellphone games such as Tetris, Bejeweled, and Jamdat Bowling.

"We decided we wanted to move really fast on this, so we joined with the leader in North America to enable our content to be deployed on mobile phones more aggressively here and globally," said Larry Probst, EA chairman and chief executive officer.

EA, based in Redwood City, Calif., said it plans on publishing over 50 games for mobile phones during the first year of the acquisition.

Upon closing the deal, the mobile businesses of both companies would be combined into one team, and Jamdat Chief Executive Mitch Lasky is expected to lead EA's mobile games business worldwide, the companies said.

EA said it expects the acquisition to result in a one-time charge of 10 cents to 15 cents per share in its fiscal fourth quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were expecting the company to earn 28 cents per share for the fourth quarter on $749 million in revenue.

Good second exit for VC firm Benchmark , after having the company do a successful IPO last summer (...Congratulations all around.

In a way this is a vote for sports and "Casual" games on mobile hand-sets.  It's a category that's seeing increasing interest by consumers and by game publishers.  As Yahoo! uber-blogger Russell Beattie notes in a post today,

"Casual games rock. When I’m sick of PGR racing, WWII combat or Halo, puzzle games like Hexic are perfect. Actually it’s the other way around, most of the time I actually prefer puzzle games - Tetris, Lumines, Bejeweled, Polarium, etc. - rather than 3D action games."

Casual games are a bit different than what EA is used to...as this article in the HollywoodReporter notes,

"But there's still quite a difference between what it takes to build a tiny, 10-megabyte casual game and what it costs to develop a large "hardcore" -- or non-casual -- game.

The average casual game is built in nine months, often by a team of three to five people at a cost of about $100,000. Compare that to a triple-A title at a large publisher like Electronic Arts which can require hundreds of people working for 18 months at a cost similar to making a small movie.

If the casual game brings in $300,000, it's considered profitable. A hardcore game can rake in $50 million. Atari's blockbuster "Enter The Matrix," for example, sold 4 million copies and brought in $250 million worldwide.

Given the pint-size revenue that casual games generate, what do the largest distributors of the games find so enticing? Several things, actually, the primary one being return on investment (ROI). The distributors rarely pay developers an advance.

When the game is sold online -- typically at $19.95 -- the distributor can take as much as 75% depending on its contract with the developer. The distributor has no production or replication costs, no inventory expenses, minimal distribution costs, and no involvement with retailers."

It's important to note that mobile gaming are still at a very early stage.  Wireless broadband networks are just now being deployed in the US and overseas, and are SLOWLY being priced for mainstream consumer applications.

Handsets are getting more powerful, with faster processors and more memory, and as of this year, with iPod like hard drives. 

So the type of mobile games we'll see over the next few years will likely make today's mobile games look like Pong on a PC.

ON AN A LA CARTE SATELLITE TV SERVICE?

ALL THE TV, ALL THE TIME

At a time when we're focused on the potential pros, cons  and politics of a la carte cable and telco TV services (via Om Malik...also, see my earlier post), it may be time to also think about a la carte satellite TV.

Zoli Erdos has a great post titled "12 Satellite Dishes, 5000 Channels, and 32 TV sets", that illustrates two people, one with 12 satellite dishes on his porch to pick up over 5000 satellites channels from around the world, and the other with over 32 TV sets in and outside his house.

But it was the first picture that captivated me...the one with Al Jessups' 12 satellite dishes (although my aging eye could only count 11).  Nevertheless, that picture crystallizes one way the satellite companies can potentially compete with the cable and telephone industries that can offer far greater bandwidth into homes via wired connections than with wireless connections. 

See this BusinessWeek article about Rupert Murdoch's "troubles" with DirectTV for more.

But Al Jessup's set-up if of course far from a mainstream reality.  His is a labor of love, not to mention who knows how many hours of hooking up, tinkering and programming his satellite dish farm.

It strikes me that it may be possible for the tech industry to come up with a more "productized" dual-satellite dish contraption, where both dishes are highly maneuverable in an automated way. 

Then a sophisticated box programmed to receive any of the five thousand plus channels from around the world would allow the user to tune into any program he/she wanted.  While the TV is showing one program, the other one would re-orient itself to find the next desired program.  And the box could always be kept up-to-date with programming info on new channels by the satellite company.

Essentially, this box would be an "Open" box, not beholden to any satellite-TV distribution company that currently maintains "walled gardens" around their programming, much like the cable industry.  Additionally, it could even serve as a meta wholesale aggregator and re-seller for an array of satellite programming providers around the world.

And of course, it'd have a cool Web 2.0-style web site, where users from around the world could share their thoughts on the best programming and how to tune into it, tags and all.

It doesn't solve the bigger broadband internet access challenge that satellite has vs. cable and telco competitors, but does start to address the content disparity.

The above-mentioned "dream product" would also have the ability to store, Tivo-style a substantial amount of programming on a home server, AND then direct streams into ANY connected TV and/or PC in the house, both through wired and wireless connections.

As Al Jessup describes the joys of 5,000 plus channels:

“New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, you name it,” Jessup said. “I get everything but Alaska. But if I pointed something toward Alaska, I’d probably get Alaska.

“... I can scoot one over and see what’s going on in Ohio ... or the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

His Beckley home would likely rival most government communications centers. Not only does he pick up stations from across the country, but across the world as well. He picks up stations from Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Jerusalem and other foreign locations.

“Sometimes they speak English, and sometimes they don’t,” he said. “You never know.

“It’s just interesting to watch stations from far away.”

Having grown up in the middle east, in a country with a VERY controlled two to three channel line-up choice, I remember vividly our family's excitement, whenever my Dad got the TV guy to add additional TV antennas on the roof to pick up additional channels from neighboring countries.

We'd thoroughly enjoy the sometimes very grainy programming coming through these antenna and rabbit-ear jiggling efforts. 

I remember it today as even more fun with it's static and graininess than the best HD channels I can receive through by HDTV subscriptions on the plasma screen today, although I'm sure nostalgia over old memories plays a part there.

Of course, the problem with this fictional product is NOT the technology, but the licensing/content subscription issues, especially when you're talking about grabbing satellite feeds from around the world.

But we're already in  a world where much of this type of programming is already in the air, and available to fans/fanatics like Mr. Al Jessup in the above-mentioned story. 

Furthermore, much of this TV content will increasingly be made available for free and for a fee over the broadband Internet, much like radio programming has moved onto the Net over the past ten years. 

In this context, moving in this a la carte direction may be both a defensive and a good offensive move for the satellite industry.

ON ABC SPORTS USING BLEEDING EDGE CAMERAS FOR INDY 500

"I"LL BE WATCHING YOU"

This item from Lost Remote's Cory Bergman changed my plans for today on this holiday weekend, even though I'm not an Indy 500 fan:

Get a load of ABC's setup for Sunday's Indianapolis 500: 36 wireless cameras on board 12 different cars; 15 robotic cameras on the track; 7 robotic "pan cams" mounted on top of selected cars and 2 "visor cams." Good grief.

Good grief indeed...the referenced story in the Hollywood Reporter, elaborates further:

ABC Sports will deploy more than 70 broadcast cameras around the 2.5-mile track, including a camera on the same type of 87-foot Strada crane used to film 1997's "Titanic," 15 robotic cameras to cover the action on the track and in the pits and up to 36 wireless cameras on board 12 different cars.

OK, you say...what's new about that...they've been doing that sort of thing for a while now...it's just more cameras this time...wait...

But that's not all. Danika Patrick and six other drivers will carry Pan Cams, newly developed on-board cameras mounted on the top of their cars with the ability pan 180 degrees to show side-by-side racing in traffic.

And finally, the piece re resistance:

There is even a plan to attach an ultralight camera, developed exclusively by On-Board Video, to a helium-filled balloon that will provide a "balloon's-eye view" as it ascends with thousands of multicolored balloons traditionally released at the start of the race.

You've got to think the folks at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, AOL and Yahoo! are watching these camera experiments given the on-going "space race" in satellite/mapping/local services segment of the portal business. 

The adjacent picture from the Wall Street Journal depicts Microsoft's Virtual Earth showing San Francisco at a 45-degree article.  In a post dated titled "Google taking to the Skies" last month, I noted that company's experiments in New York City on sky-based images. 

They may all learn a thing or two from the high-speed, high-definition, and wireless infrastructure developed and deployed by the folks at ABC sports...