http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/sci-fi-projections.html
Systems create images on glass, in thin air
March 22, 2007
By Denise Deveau, CBC News
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device - the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground - captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture. The airborne film of moisture generated by the device — the black box with the large slot pictured in the foreground — captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape. Shown here, the laptop in the background is running a video of a woman on a cellphone, while the Heliodisplay simultaneously turns it into an image that appears to be floating in thin air.
Free floating images in thin air that you can move with your hands, windows that morph into touchscreen displays for passersby — welcome to the new world of projection applications that are literally opening up a new window to the world.
Next generation presentation technologies are now delivering a bona fide interactive experience on anything from solid glass to airborne vapour. And all it takes is a projection system, some cool presentation software, a set of infrared sensors and a few complex algorithms to make it happen.
As with a lot of the high-tech "fun stuff" these days, much of the innovation in this area is coming out of Asia, says Chris Synn, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based Innotive Inc., a developer of interactive presentation software. Innotive's touch-enabled technology, developed in South Korea, is just one example of the types of systems pushing the boundaries of old and familiar interactive display applications.
With the lightest of touches, users can grab and shuffle images around, zoom in and out to see the minutest of details, or simply wave their hands over an image to make it come alive on screens as large as 100 inches or 254 centimetres. "Instead of a stylus you just use your finger to interact," explained Synn.
Adding a touch of interactivity to screens
Since the interface can work with projection technology, retailers can actually turn an entire display window into a screen — and that, said Synn, is where the wow factor comes into play. "Once people try to interact with it, it's breathtaking. Navigation is so fluid."
Toronto-based media specialist Optiadmedia is heading in this "window to the world" direction with its Window F/X offering, a through-glass storefront multimedia projection technology that was developed in Asia. It all works like a floating screen that can run content of all shapes and sizes on store windows or other clear display formats.
Window F/X combines a rear projection system with a near invisible film that is applied to the window to allow light to be captured to display images. It can be programmed to run any kind of digital content, including animated footage and still images. Optional touchscreen features allow passersby to browse catalogues and surf the internet. Window F/X also has the potential to incorporate audio and Bluetooth wireless capabilities into such things as store-window displays.
The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand. The Heliodisplay from IO2 Technologies can project any kind of static or moving image, from photographs to movies, without the need for a solid screen. Pictured here, an arrow icon appears suspended in the air in front of a person's hand.
Optiadmedia partner Michael Dellios is working on new ways to harness this emerging medium, which was launched into the commercial market in the latter part of 2006. "It puts a new spin on the term window shopping. It's starting to be used a lot for event promotion, because it can be used on portable screen — it's very eye catching."
The Nestings Kids junior home store at Eglinton and Avenue Road in Toronto is among the first to explore the Window F/X experience for its display window, said company owner and president Lisa Rosen. The store's new 46 cm by 61cm translucent screen offers rotating images of products, as well as animations — like snowflakes falling or vintage children's shows to catch the interest of passing shoppers.
"It's great because it doesn't interfere with what we're doing with our window displays, and it makes our products more accessible," Rosen said. "It's just a fun way to get attention. As soon as it was up and running at night, we got calls from people saying how great it was."
Rosen hasn't made the leap to an interactive program for the system yet, but that may come, she said. "That's the fun thing about it all. It's a true idea of what window shopping could be in the future."
Images in thin air
A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers. A person uses their hand to manipulate the ghostly, floating image of a digital camera, projected by an IO2 Technologies Heliodisplay. The display has optional motion sensors that let people move computer-generated images around with their fingers.
The future has even more interesting possibilities for Chad Dyner, a San Francisco-based developer and founder of IO2 Technologies. He's the creator of Heliodisplay, a projection technology that works with suspended particles of moisture that can create an interactive display experience literally out of thin air.
Heliodisplay projects computer-based images onto thin particles of moisture generated by a particulate emitting device. The moisture film generated by the device captures the light from the projector to allow the images to take shape.
Heliodisplay can project any kind of static or moving images, from photographs to movies. The piece de resistance — or added "wow" factor if you will — is an optional interactive capability that uses motion sensors to let people move images around with their fingers.
So far, commercial applications have included venues such as museums, trade shows and special events, and Dyner is the first to admit that his innovation is still in its developmental stages. Work is still being done to perfect content and image delivery.
"It's not a mainstream product by any means," he said. "But I definitely think it's the future. I believe we'll start to see more ways to have unobtrusive displays and new ways to interact with information. What we use now is from a previous era."
"This type of thing is not just a novelty item," noted Synn. "You can make it interactive. You can update content. It's all free form so you can do so much with it. It's all pretty cool stuff."
Showing posts with label convergence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label convergence. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Local Broadcasters Deliver Digital Ads, Drawing From New Revenue Pools
After taking knocks from upstart digital media, local broadcasters are starting to receive sizeable benefits from next wave of new media development, said speakers at the Kagan Radio/TV Values & Finance Summit in New York City on Thursday.
Kagan Research forecasts that radio and TV stations will generate $1.7 bil. in 2007 revenue from online media sources—which will deliver double-digit growth in the years ahead. That covers station-owned websites, multicast channels in digital broadcasting, podcasting and station content monetized on third party platforms, including budding wireless broadband media.
"It's a pretty positive outlook for radio from my perspective," said John Blackledge, senior analyst covering radio, TV and outdoor at JPMorgan. Summit speakers noted that selling digital platform ads and drilling deeper for local advertisers that never bought broadcasting before brings completely new ad money, as the accompanying table indicates.
"The pie expands," said Tom Castro, president and CEO of radio group Border Media Partners. "It's not a zero sum game" anymore.
Tapping new-to-broadcasting advertising money is crucial because ad revenue from traditional advertising is trending flat to slow-growth. Excluding online/digital, TV stations' $44.9 bil. in 2006 total ad billings and—to a lesser extent—radio stations' $20 bil. in ad billings ride a see-saw of ups-and-downs based on election and Olympic years.
Last year, Kagan estimates new media revenue contributed 2.7% of all ad revenue at radio and TV stations. Local advertisers can create their own ads using the self-serve tools available via websites, which relieves stations of time consuming account service and ad creation work for the smallest advertising accounts.
"Broadcast stations—both TV and radio—are ideally positioned to be leaders in their local online markets due to their strong ties to the community, leading local content, and seasoned sales teams with strong ties to area advertisers," said Kagan Senior Analyst Robin Flynn. "According to Kagan Summit speakers, TV station owners are at most in the very 'first innings' of developing the local online opportunity—if not still in Spring training."
Digital media is not a cake walk to riches because operating websites and enlarging local content creation raises broadcast station expenses. But speakers said broadcasters seemed to have turned a corner by holding their own amid the bombastic arrival of fast-growing new digital media rivals, such as subscription satellite radio and the Internet.
There are worries ahead. New digital media revenue streams can't be automatically counted on to lift profits, given spotty weaknesses in conventional radio advertising, particularly in the automotive category. However, political ads seem to have morphed into a non-stop business, not just an election year windfall in even numbered years, broadcast executives said.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Why most of the CPA/Brokerage industry will not be around in 5 years.
from Digital Moses March 22, 2007
by Adrian Bye
Many people currently involved in the CPA industry feel that this industry is rock solid and not likely to change anytime soon. They may be in for a shock. There are developments coming from technological, business and legal areas which are going to have huge ramifications on the industry. One of those just happened.
Specifically I am referring the brokerage fees that CPA networks and brokers charge (around 20%) to push offers to fill the internet demand for remnant inventory, and the inefficiencies and expenses that are put in place by having so many humans involved in making web advertising work. Over time these people will be replaced by technology, just as many industries have been overturned in the past by modernization causing blue collar workers to lose their jobs.
The three biggest sources of traffic for a typical network are:
a. Email marketing
b. Pay per click traffic
c. Web inventory such as banners and text links
We’ll talk about these one by one.
CPA search marketing
Pay per click marketing is changing. Google has just announced it is going to offer a CPA model. At the moment it is possible to make a decent living by being good at PPC arbitrage of CPA offers. This works right now because Google and Yahoo have focused their business model around selling clicks, rather than selling actions. They do this because this is their version of branded CPM advertising – they can generally get more for it.
However, this causes huge inefficiencies in the system, because it is time consuming and complicated to figure out how to drive lots of PPC traffic, enabling therefore arbitrage opportunities.
Since Google has now started offering a CPA system, and Yahoo certainly will, this will change dramatically. Advertisers will be able to add a bunch of creatives into the system, along with a list of keywords and a CPA they are willing to pay. The system will then automatically test the base keywords you inserted, along with an extra list of keywords google generated itself. It will test them all against the various creatives you made; keeping pricing under a certain CPA you have set. The entire system will be fully automated, and the current arbitrage which is possible today will go away. Google and Yahoo can make quite a lot of money by making this change, given the average network commissions and the money made by PPC arbitrage players. Google has already switched and it is just a matter of time before Yahoo does as well.
Notice I don’t mention clickfraud – I don’t believe this impacts Google and Yahoo moving to a CPA model.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an area which is going to change on two fronts. CANSPAM is a law with many loopholes, one that allows people to send as much mail as they want under certain (not very restrictive) limitations. A lot of mail is being sent which does not provide true value to consumers, its simply mass market monetization that is driving volume, a process I really disagree with. At some point a new email law will be passed which requires something like "at the time of sign up, the sending FROM address must be displayed clearly so the consumer knows where they will receive mail from". And brokering of email data will be exclusive only. You join one list, you unsubscribe from that list, period. It’s only a matter of time until something like this is legislated. Don’t think so? A few years ago the telemarketing industry was doing great – now its been decimated with the FTC’s do not call rules. This kind of thing can happen literally overnight – look at how the online gaming industry has been affected recently.
Secondly, deliverability is going to get much more difficult. Right now, most ESP’s can get mail delivered almost anywhere except major ISP’s such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Reputation management is a new trend in email which will change this dramatically. Reputation management means that every IP address which is sending email is certified by an independent third party as to how that IP address is being used to send mail. It provides a lot of data to email receivers on exactly how that IP address is being used. If you’re certified and your reputation is positive, a lot of your mail will automatically be delivered. If you’re not, you’ll get blocked as spam.
Right now reputation management is being used by the major ISPs to confirm mail delivery – but once this is rolled out more widely across internet mail servers, mail blocking will improve dramatically, and those who are sending bulk co-reg data will find their deliverability falling through the floor.
Behavioural targeting
Thirdly, behavioral targeting is going to get much better. This has been talked about in the past, and never seems to truly work properly but it is starting to get much better now. Networks like Blue Lithium and turn.com are making a lot of progress with targeting and collecting a lot of data on their userbase. Reports I hear about Blue Lithium in particular are that it performs extremely well.
Impressive things are being done on the advertiser side to take advantage of behavioural targeting. For example, Think Partnership has a new product called Second Bite which saves shopping cart abandoners. If you decided not to buy a product and half completed your shopping cart, Second Bite will work to get you to finish your purchase. Think Partnership is just starting to buy banner inventory to save the cart purchase. What this means is that you can be browsing the web and you’ll see a banner saying "hey – come back and finish your purchase on and get a 10% discount". Once this kind of inventory is brokered out to major behavioural networks, no general interest CPA offer will be able to compete with the CPM’s they will be able to pay to save a purchase. Sure, this is a narrow application, but many more clever targeting applications of behavioural targeting will appear, increasing CPM’s across the board.
In addition, client side behavioral targeting will increase. By this I mean that users will allow more data to be mined from their computers locally, and some of it will be passed back to the network. In an extreme case, imagine if Microsoft made its Windows OS completely free – but in return for being able to mine behvioural data from your machine. This data would be fed back to online targeting networks such as Blue Lithium, to target web advertising more accurately. No popups or any other nasty applications would be included. That could be a huge value add for consumers – with free software AND better advertising. Yes, this has huge privacy implications, but over time these will be worked out – the ECPM increase from accurate targeting will be too valuable, and consumers will not mind their data being mined in aggregate.
That’s not to say that everything is bad. Some areas of the CPA and brokerage industry will continue to work well. These include:
1) Coupon and affiliate sites. Publishers that are actively going out and finding links to promote on their site for consumers will continue to make money and want to use CPA networks. The human interface in this instance provides tremendous value to consumers since the publishers truly understand what their market wants.
2) Newsletters. This will become the standard for email marketing as the more aggressive forms of email marketing will be made illegal. This is similar to coupon and affiliate sites where publishers will actively seek out links to target their audience due to their understanding of their market.
3) Web and chat spam is going to increase. Right now we’re seeing quite a bit of spam on myspace, and given the progress people are making on defeating CAPTCHA mechanisms, this will only increase. If the postings cannot be effectively blocked by computers, then more of it will be done. Unfortunately CPA networks will see more volume from various forms of aggressive webspam as time goes on.
The branding industry will have some impact on these, but it likely won’t change much from the way it is now – some inventory will be sold at higher ECPM’s for major brands, and the rest will be remnant inventory. Of course the big question is how high the ECPM’s can get for behavioural targeting and whether they can beat branded advertising.
Some people will read this article and be thinking to themselves "no, he’s wrong, this has always worked, and it will continue to work". The reality is that the internet marketing industry has been around for a very short time, and we really don’t have any data points to compare against long term. The right way to think about it is "where is the true value for consumers and advertisers". If your business model doesn’t provide true value to all stakeholders, then at some point what you are doing will stop working.
If your business model depends entirely on brokering, you may want to consider how you will operate in a few years time once the above become reality.
A good way to think about whether your business will be around in the future is simply by answering two questions:
1) By running my business, am I creating true value for all my stakeholders (customers, employees, consumers, partners)
And
2) Am I keeping up with the very latest trends that might affect my business, including industries that are not directly related to my daily focus?
For number 2, you can say you’re doing the right thing because you’re reading this. J
Does this mean that all CPA advertising and lead generation will go away? Of course not. These are very fundamental models and the backbone of internet commerce.
Just watch out if your business model is entirely focused around brokering remnant advertising. If this is your primary business, make sure you stay on top of your strategy. You don’t want your company to be made irrelevant like has happened with generations of blue collar workers in the past.
by Adrian Bye
Many people currently involved in the CPA industry feel that this industry is rock solid and not likely to change anytime soon. They may be in for a shock. There are developments coming from technological, business and legal areas which are going to have huge ramifications on the industry. One of those just happened.
Specifically I am referring the brokerage fees that CPA networks and brokers charge (around 20%) to push offers to fill the internet demand for remnant inventory, and the inefficiencies and expenses that are put in place by having so many humans involved in making web advertising work. Over time these people will be replaced by technology, just as many industries have been overturned in the past by modernization causing blue collar workers to lose their jobs.
The three biggest sources of traffic for a typical network are:
a. Email marketing
b. Pay per click traffic
c. Web inventory such as banners and text links
We’ll talk about these one by one.
CPA search marketing
Pay per click marketing is changing. Google has just announced it is going to offer a CPA model. At the moment it is possible to make a decent living by being good at PPC arbitrage of CPA offers. This works right now because Google and Yahoo have focused their business model around selling clicks, rather than selling actions. They do this because this is their version of branded CPM advertising – they can generally get more for it.
However, this causes huge inefficiencies in the system, because it is time consuming and complicated to figure out how to drive lots of PPC traffic, enabling therefore arbitrage opportunities.
Since Google has now started offering a CPA system, and Yahoo certainly will, this will change dramatically. Advertisers will be able to add a bunch of creatives into the system, along with a list of keywords and a CPA they are willing to pay. The system will then automatically test the base keywords you inserted, along with an extra list of keywords google generated itself. It will test them all against the various creatives you made; keeping pricing under a certain CPA you have set. The entire system will be fully automated, and the current arbitrage which is possible today will go away. Google and Yahoo can make quite a lot of money by making this change, given the average network commissions and the money made by PPC arbitrage players. Google has already switched and it is just a matter of time before Yahoo does as well.
Notice I don’t mention clickfraud – I don’t believe this impacts Google and Yahoo moving to a CPA model.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an area which is going to change on two fronts. CANSPAM is a law with many loopholes, one that allows people to send as much mail as they want under certain (not very restrictive) limitations. A lot of mail is being sent which does not provide true value to consumers, its simply mass market monetization that is driving volume, a process I really disagree with. At some point a new email law will be passed which requires something like "at the time of sign up, the sending FROM address must be displayed clearly so the consumer knows where they will receive mail from". And brokering of email data will be exclusive only. You join one list, you unsubscribe from that list, period. It’s only a matter of time until something like this is legislated. Don’t think so? A few years ago the telemarketing industry was doing great – now its been decimated with the FTC’s do not call rules. This kind of thing can happen literally overnight – look at how the online gaming industry has been affected recently.
Secondly, deliverability is going to get much more difficult. Right now, most ESP’s can get mail delivered almost anywhere except major ISP’s such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Reputation management is a new trend in email which will change this dramatically. Reputation management means that every IP address which is sending email is certified by an independent third party as to how that IP address is being used to send mail. It provides a lot of data to email receivers on exactly how that IP address is being used. If you’re certified and your reputation is positive, a lot of your mail will automatically be delivered. If you’re not, you’ll get blocked as spam.
Right now reputation management is being used by the major ISPs to confirm mail delivery – but once this is rolled out more widely across internet mail servers, mail blocking will improve dramatically, and those who are sending bulk co-reg data will find their deliverability falling through the floor.
Behavioural targeting
Thirdly, behavioral targeting is going to get much better. This has been talked about in the past, and never seems to truly work properly but it is starting to get much better now. Networks like Blue Lithium and turn.com are making a lot of progress with targeting and collecting a lot of data on their userbase. Reports I hear about Blue Lithium in particular are that it performs extremely well.
Impressive things are being done on the advertiser side to take advantage of behavioural targeting. For example, Think Partnership has a new product called Second Bite which saves shopping cart abandoners. If you decided not to buy a product and half completed your shopping cart, Second Bite will work to get you to finish your purchase. Think Partnership is just starting to buy banner inventory to save the cart purchase. What this means is that you can be browsing the web and you’ll see a banner saying "hey – come back and finish your purchase on
In addition, client side behavioral targeting will increase. By this I mean that users will allow more data to be mined from their computers locally, and some of it will be passed back to the network. In an extreme case, imagine if Microsoft made its Windows OS completely free – but in return for being able to mine behvioural data from your machine. This data would be fed back to online targeting networks such as Blue Lithium, to target web advertising more accurately. No popups or any other nasty applications would be included. That could be a huge value add for consumers – with free software AND better advertising. Yes, this has huge privacy implications, but over time these will be worked out – the ECPM increase from accurate targeting will be too valuable, and consumers will not mind their data being mined in aggregate.
That’s not to say that everything is bad. Some areas of the CPA and brokerage industry will continue to work well. These include:
1) Coupon and affiliate sites. Publishers that are actively going out and finding links to promote on their site for consumers will continue to make money and want to use CPA networks. The human interface in this instance provides tremendous value to consumers since the publishers truly understand what their market wants.
2) Newsletters. This will become the standard for email marketing as the more aggressive forms of email marketing will be made illegal. This is similar to coupon and affiliate sites where publishers will actively seek out links to target their audience due to their understanding of their market.
3) Web and chat spam is going to increase. Right now we’re seeing quite a bit of spam on myspace, and given the progress people are making on defeating CAPTCHA mechanisms, this will only increase. If the postings cannot be effectively blocked by computers, then more of it will be done. Unfortunately CPA networks will see more volume from various forms of aggressive webspam as time goes on.
The branding industry will have some impact on these, but it likely won’t change much from the way it is now – some inventory will be sold at higher ECPM’s for major brands, and the rest will be remnant inventory. Of course the big question is how high the ECPM’s can get for behavioural targeting and whether they can beat branded advertising.
Some people will read this article and be thinking to themselves "no, he’s wrong, this has always worked, and it will continue to work". The reality is that the internet marketing industry has been around for a very short time, and we really don’t have any data points to compare against long term. The right way to think about it is "where is the true value for consumers and advertisers". If your business model doesn’t provide true value to all stakeholders, then at some point what you are doing will stop working.
If your business model depends entirely on brokering, you may want to consider how you will operate in a few years time once the above become reality.
A good way to think about whether your business will be around in the future is simply by answering two questions:
1) By running my business, am I creating true value for all my stakeholders (customers, employees, consumers, partners)
And
2) Am I keeping up with the very latest trends that might affect my business, including industries that are not directly related to my daily focus?
For number 2, you can say you’re doing the right thing because you’re reading this. J
Does this mean that all CPA advertising and lead generation will go away? Of course not. These are very fundamental models and the backbone of internet commerce.
Just watch out if your business model is entirely focused around brokering remnant advertising. If this is your primary business, make sure you stay on top of your strategy. You don’t want your company to be made irrelevant like has happened with generations of blue collar workers in the past.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
CBS Interactive Nabs Google Exec As New CMO
CBS Interactive Nabs Google Exec As New CMOby Gavin O'MalleyAnother sign that CBS is serious about becoming a digital media powerhouse: It nabbed Patrick Keane, Google's head of ad sales strategy. As executive vice president and CMO of CBS Interactive, Keane's new mission is to market and sell CBS content over emerging platforms and expand the company's ad roster. - Read the whole story...
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