Alex Kelleher’s Blog

At university I did a thesis on how people react to movies (part of which went into a chapter I co-wrote with Julian Friedman for his book How to Make Money Scriptwriting).  Turns out, if we empathise with a character on screen, we mimic what they’re doing with small (undetectable) muscle movements – if they’re running, our legs twitch, etc.

What’s even more fascinating is how we SEE the movie.  When we blink, we lose up to 10% of our viewing time.  So it’s really important that we time those blinks to moments when we won’t miss anything too important happening on the screen.  And that means that in an average movie (or YouTube clip), most of us will blink at the same time.

Synchronized blinking, in short.

A recent study discovered that it’s not always when expected (i.e. a scene break), but at points where something has completed, or the main character is off the screen for a moment.  So the result of a natural moment of low interest, when our brain calculates it can give the eyes a break.

Part of that seems obvious to me (our eyes would dry out if we waited for scene endings), but the fact that almost everyone anticipates the same best place to blink is pretty interesting. 

Watching where people blink could be a pretty strong indicator of interest not just in movies, but in video ads (if we blink when they show the brand, opportunity lost), in top-level sports (especially fast-moving sports like table tennis) in warfare (when do fighter pilots blink?), and so on.

Blinking useful.

admin Psychology, Television

Having just been to WPP’s Stream 09, and spoken at CTAM’s Eurosummit last month, I’ve been exposed a fair bit to a topic that affects both the cable (TV) and online industries fairly equally: video.  And, more importantly, how to monetize it.

YouTube generates billions of hours of viewing, and still are struggling to break even.  I’ve talked to people at YouTube, and clients of YouTube, and the frustration is the same: no clear way of applying advertising to the medium that both brings benefit to the brand, and to the user.

My 2cents worth on that a bit further down, but before that, something that just jumps out at me: Video is video is video!  There will be (at latest within 2-3 years) no distinction between online, digital TV, cable.  If (as someone else at Stream pointed out) I want to watch Family Guy, that means I want to watch Family guy.  What screen it’s on, what size that screen is, and what the platform is called doesn’t matter to me one bit.  What matters is watching the show – and soon (by which I mean very soon) I’ll have a set-top box under my TV that is “online”, no different from the box under my ‘lean-forward’ PC screen.  Forget the puny attempts by Panasonic et al to put some widgets onto a TV screen.  I mean full online access, with some optimisation to compensate for sitting 8ft away. 

What am I participating in then?  Online video?  Video on Demand?  Digital TV?

No, just video. So there is no “online or TV” debate, to my mind.  There’s “video”, that’s it.

Back to monetization: I did make the point to the YouTube guys that Google hasn’t yet done what it did so smartly with search.  There, it turned advertising into a user benefit (GoogleAds are of course frequently more relevant/useful than the organic results and generate up to perhaps 40% response from the audience).   And the format matches the context (short text snippet search results). 

With YouTube, Google seems to be forgetting its drive to innovate, and just wanting to copy TV advertising (pre-roll, post-roll and so on), or slap something up (annoying overlays).  The debate seems to be about how to annoy users least (by only pre-rolling, keeping the ads short and so no) rather than how to help users the most.  Helping users the most to my mind will help brand advertisers the most.

What’s really needed (especially in short form video, long form can probably carry TV-style advertising for a while) is a new, game-changing way of monetizing the content.  I spoke to quite a few people at Stream about this, and I’ll bet something will emerge soon.  As a thought-starter I regularly mention Net-a-porter (and have talked to Mark Sebba the Chief Executive recently about this and other things) as a great, simple example of smart monetization of content.  In their case, it’s like having a copy of Vogue magazine where women can click  on the clothes on the models, and buy them immediately. 

Perhaps there’s something in that approach for brand advertisers and video?

admin Television

The recent rise-and-rise of Spotify indicates one thing to me: the liberation of content.  What do I mean by that?  I mean owning digital stuff on “hard” physical media that we can reach out and touch, and put in our bags, is on the way out.

Actually owning the hard drive that the data is stored on, or the DVD/Blue-Ray/CD/SD will be very early2000′s.   A friend of mine, not long out of college, has never, and will probably never, buy a CD or a DVD.  I still buy DVDs, but only because the alternative (movies-on-demand) doesn’t always offer the movies I actually want to see.  When I get home and unpack the disc, it’s a pain to actually get it up and running (made worse by having lost the DVD remote control).  I hate it, and the moment someone releases a competent iTunes for movies (aside from Sky, which I can’t get where I am), I’ll buy it.

So, my predictions are:

• Spotify will do well until iTunes “liberates” their music
• Music, Movies and Images will (and are) be the first content to be stored remotely to the user
• Blue-Ray was a (very expensive and late) last-step in circular spinning discs
• Cloud computing WILL take off, although storage for some time will be with “trusted” providers rather than just “out there somewhere”
• The change will take longer than we hope, but less time than we expect (answers on a postcard if that makes sense)

admin Television, Web

I like this one as the tech involved looks/comes across about as novel as a spinning top, but the effect it creates (“proper” 3d display) is really quite novel.  You wouldn’t want to put your hand too close to it, though….

admin Engineering, Technology, Television

This out in August, but missed me until now.   Ofcom’s (UK communications regulator) “Communications Market Report“.  Apart from talk of the UK getting faster broadband (I’m not holding my breath, although buying a BT iPlate increased my connection speeds by almost double, I kid you not), something grabbed my attention.  The share of media time in terms of average minutes spent a day in each medium is:

• TV: 218 minutes
• Radio: 164 minutes
• Internet: 60 minutes

That’s right, the “lean-forward” medium we’re all breaking our backs over is a mere 60 minutes, or 13% of an average person’s day… 

Mind you, as my digital TV reception worsens, any TV I do watch is online via iPlayer and the equivalents at ITV and Channel 4.  That’s kind of half “lean-forward” half “sit-back” behaviour, as a) the screen isn’t big enough to be that far away, and b) endless Outlook email alerts interrupt anything I do try and watch.

admin Television, Web