Oisin Lunny just contributed an interesting post in TheGuardian Media Network quoting some of my comments on the future of content and advertising:
Indeed, the current economics of the content and advertising industries are going to be turned on their head by the new mobile video paradigm, according to futurist and Guardian contributor Gerd Leonard. He said: “We are no longer in the business of distribution, we are in the business of attention. Advertising as we know it is not going to survive on these personal devices, because it was based on interruption, on noise, on pollution. You are going to see complete fragmentation of all video, which means that you will have tens of thousands of channels at your disposal. Good brands like RedBull, Nike and Amex are already becoming broadcasters, every brand is becoming a TV producer now.” Gerd also sees a change in our telecoms infrastructure: “Internet traffic is pretty much moving to a mobile world, so in five years 80% of all web traffic will be mobile. The three billion people that are coming online in developing countries will go straight to always-connected mobile devices, and will never become cable or satellite TV users. Mobile video is inevitable because people are switching to mobile devices. The networks will need to be better to make that happen on a large scale. Operators that think of themselves as infrastructure companies have to start thinking of themselves as a platform. As just a pipe they become useless.” Its clear that smartphone mobile video use is dramatically influencing the content that's created, and changing the entire distribution ecosystem. Gerd continued: “This is part of the emphasis of my new book, called “From Ego to Eco”, if we don't have an ecosystem that fits the digital domain then the ecosystem is incomplete and it will crash. This is basically what we have in music, the ecosystem is incomplete because the legal structures are messed up, the business objectives are not aligned, so that ecosystem is dysfunctional, as you can see now its only working for some of us.”
A big thank-you to Oisin:) PDF download: Why micro-content is big business | Media Network | Guardian Professional
