Letters on online TV opportunities

Will agencies and indies grasp the new opportunities offered by online TV?

In this week's issues of Broadcast and Campaign magazines, our letters argue that Internet television offers indie producers the chance to launch global hit shows and that it is also at the very forefront of how advertising and content will work together for the rest of the century.

Click to read the full text of both

Online offers new global opportunities (Broadcast 2 May 08, p23)

Sofia’s Diary airing on Fiver confirms that online show production is moving from the fringes into the television mainstream – and that indies have an important new market.

The key commercial element is household name advertisers backing the shows: see Cadbury Creme Eggs in KateModern and Unilever’s Sure Girl deodorant in Sofia’s Diary.

Consequently, series have entered second and even third seasons, with budgets rising to support increasingly ambitious production values.

Just as UK indies cracked the US market with The Office and reality and game show formats, online now offers the prospect of launching worldwide hits across the Internet, mobile and broadcast television.

Agencies need to grasp online TV opportunities (Campaign 2 May 08 p20)

Reading Perspective on MindShare’s restructuring (“MindShare’s new model challenges all agencies”, Campaign, 18 April), I completely agree with the conclusion that it’s “throwing down a major gauntlet to media and creative agencies alike.”

And I would add that the battle lines over content are already visible, in online television.

MindShare is a pioneer in sponsorship for original Internet shows. In the USA, it brokered deals for Unilever to back In The Motherhood and 24 spin-off The Rookie. In the UK, it is involved in the Ford / Ogilvy / Channel 4 trendspotting programme Bite and matched Sofia’s Diary with Unilever’s Sure Girl. (Sofia’s Diary is now the first original UK Web show to cross to broadcast TV, with Fiver.)

The agency’s wholehearted enthusiasm for online programming was evident when I recently saw MindShare Interaction Managing Partner Jo Lyall inviting indie TV producers to work with them.

Omnicom is now catching up in America by partnering with NBC Universal and arranging brand integration for Intel, Microsoft and UPS in the NBCU sci-fi show Gemini Division. Here, the Havas-Cake deal is all about Cake’s expertise in advertiser-funded programming and live events. Meanwhile, Bebo’s teen show KateModern has brought Cadbury Creme Egg together with viewers, live in central London.

Online television producers are proving to be cost-effective, innovative and willing partners in helping brand owners communicate with viewers across multiple platforms – online, mobile and conventional television.

In short, online television is now at the very forefront of how advertising and content will work together this century. But the relationships between the different parties involved are at a very early stage of development and nothing can be taken for granted.

All agencies, whether creative, media or even digital, that fail to grasp the opportunities afforded by this new medium risk defeat in the battle for content.