MipTV featuring Milia

7.-11.4.2008, Cannes

www.miptv.com

TV and online advertising shake hands

At last year's MipTV everyone talked about the demise of television advertising, this year's discussion was about TV and online advertising being complementary channels supporting each other. For example online advertising adds value for TV campaigns by reaching audiences also in the daytime.

Online needs to be addressed as a medium of its own, not just a repurposing channel for TV advertising. In online, users want shorter content. Online can also be seen as a piloting environment for TV advertising to see what kind of content works best - without having to pay for airtime.

Of new ways of TV advertising, sponsoring was discussed a lot but product placement only a little. UK's ITV has developed the concept of sponsoring further: their client dog food vendor Pedigree paid for the whole production of a six-part series Dog Rescue and also became a rights holder of the production.

All in all, advertisers are increasing their role in programme production. It is seen a joint goal for TV programme makers and advertisers to reach the right audiences and to build a lasting relationship with them. Of course, not everyone in the TV production like this trend. Advertising agencies had a lot of presence at the event this time. Ogilvy France director Natalie Rastoin boasted that "we [ad branch] want not to be the cash cows of the TV business, we want to be in the TV business".

Mobile advertising to boom soon

Many speakers stated their belief in mobile advertising as another complementary channel for making contacts with the audiences - and added, that this time mobile advertising would "really" take off. Ogilvy's Rory Sutherland analysed that while the traditional media is targeting by demographics (by "who") and digital online media by usage situation (by "when"), mobile media can add targeting by location (by "where").

For younger audiences mobile device with a small screen means personal, while big bold flat screen TVs yearned by older age groups mean for kids disappointedly "sharing viewing with the parents". A growing proportion of people insist on making things with their mobiles, so advertisers also need to address these people with mobile channel.

Mobile TV shows successes and failures

Another mobile application, mobile TV, shows some successes, while in many cases promises are yet to be met. Perhaps the best commercial success so far has been cellular network mobile TV service MobiTV. They report three million subscribers in the US. In Japan, where mobile TV service is a part of the country's digital TV system, there are 12 million mobile TV handsets in use. Japan's service is free for consumers. In South Korea's two networks there are 11 million viewers, however, businesswise the services are doing quite badly. Europe's most advanced mobile TV countries are Italy with little under one million mobile broadcast subscribers and France with one million cellular mobile TV subscribers.

MediaFLO service in the US doesn't disclose any subscriber numbers, which may tell that the numbers are on a low level. Dermot Nolan, the director of the UK industry association Digital TV Group, tells that some interesting trials are run this year in the UK using TDtv, which is a technology allowing multicast transmissions in 3G cellular networks.

European Commission has mandated DVB-H mobile TV technology as an official European standard. This year it will be interesting to see how DVB-H makes progress especially in Germany and France.

Social media is piloted everywhere

Social media was still high on its hype curve. It is evident that social media services reach big audiences, however, media companies still wonder what is the money-making formula there and if there would be a way control how the networks work. Big social media services of course generate ad revenues and big-money acquisitions still continue: at the event there was a keynote from UK company Bebo, which was acquired last month by AOL for USD 850 million. Bebo presented their flagship online drama series KateModern and Sofie' s Diary.

MySpace, on its behalf, announced a co-operation with production company Shine-Reveille. MySpace will commission online drama content from Shine to compete with Bebo's successful online drama series, and Shine will distribute some MySpace TV content on international markets. This is kind of a family deal, as MySpace is run by Rupert Murdoch's empire and Shine is founded and headed by Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's daughter.

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