This is the Keynote I delivered at CeBIT 2009. In it I describe our business model against a backdrop of how media consumption is changing, which affects the content industry and the advertising business. The motto of this year’s CeBIT was “webciety”, which is why I use the term a few times.

Link:

Reflecting on the current discussions, last at the Delphi Executive conference in Bonn, and at CeBIT which I both attended as a speaker, I recalled the very lively panel at DLD 09 around online video and social media. If you are interested in the topic, the video gives you insights with Brightcove, Endemol, sevenload and Termor Media and a great moderator, David Kirkpatrick from Fortune Magazine.

Feel free to comment! I also embed the video here:

About the specifics of how we perceive the value of recurring WebTV Content, please check my Interview at ETRE in Stockholm:

Technical, economic and social developments, which are only inadequately described by IPTV, Web TV, Digital Special Interest Channels, and Web 2.0, are leading a fundamental structural change in the relationship between consumers/viewers and providers.

Until now, the value creation of television was geared towards offering content in order to gain the highest viewer attention percentage possible and to market a portion of this attention through advertising formats (e.g. TV commercials). As long as there were only a few TV stations available, this was a successful business model.

Today however, the viewer has the power to decide when and which media content he “consumes”. He/she can actively suppress advertising, zap or click to any media environment he prefers. At the same time, technology enables active navigation of media content, empowering the user even more:

- search,

- On-Demand streaming and download,

- and interactivity of content

These navigation tools offer viewers and consumers a completely new dimension of content relevance. The future belongs to

“Long Tail” specific, on-demand offerings, with context-relevant services and interactive ad formats that are targeted and relevant

These enhanced “program formats” are increasingly determined and - even outside the context of User Generated Content - “coproduced” by the users in increasingly differentiated clusters. This is the priciple that unifies the various new approaches from YouTube to Joost to sevenload.

Die technischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Entwicklungen, die mit IPTV, Web TV, Digitales Spartenfernsehen und Web 2.0 nur ungenügend beschrieben werden, leiten einen fundamentalen Strukturwandel im Verhältnis von Konsumenten /Zuschauern zu Anbietern.

Bislang war die Wertschöpfung des Fernsehens darauf ausgerichtet, Inhalte anzubieten, um die Aufmerksamkeit eines möglichst hohen Anteils der Zuschauer zu gewinnen, und einen Teil dieser Aufmerksamkeit werblich zu vermarkten. In der Zeit nur weniger Sender war dies sogar ein erfolgreiches Geschäftsmodell.

Heute entscheidet der Zuschauer viel differenzierter, was er wann medial konsumiert. Er blendet auch aktiv die werbliche Vermarktung aus. Gleichzeitig bieten die technischen Möglichkeiten

- zur Suche,

- zum Angebot On-Demand,

- und zur Interaktivität

dem Zuschauer und Konsumenten eine völlig neue Dimension der Relevanz von Inhalten. Die Zukunft gehört dem

“Long Tail” spezialisierter, On-Demand angebotener, mit Zusatzservices und relevanten interaktiven Werbeformaten

angereicherter “Programmformate”, die überdies von den Nutzern in immer differenzierteren Clustern mitbestimmt werden. Das ist das Prinzip, das die unterschiedlichsten neuen Ansätze, von YouTube über Joost bis sevenload, vereint.