Looking Ahead on Tomorrow’s Tech Advancements

In a previous article I asked industry experts to recall their most amazing technological advancements from their early careers. Now I ask them to look forward and give me their best technological advancement predictions for 2018. My prediction is that more collaboration between companies will result in a more standardized system for buying, selling and tracking media. I also see A.I. playing a greater role in establishing behavioral patterns that can be used to craft content and target advertising. 

Jane Clarke, CEO, Managing Director, CIMM: In 2018, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers will launch an open standard audio watermark that can embed content and ad identifiers from EIDR and Ad-ID, along with time stamps and station identifiers.  This will hopefully bring innovation to automating TV workflows, and in the ability to track playout and measure audiences in real time!  

Sheryl Feldinger, Media Consultant: I'm fortunate to work with some tech-forward companies, so I see a lot of early adopter behavior at large organizations. In 2018, I think more companies will take a page from the social media playbook and embrace video chat in the work place. It works great, and does not require expensive equipment. The more traditional media companies are still a bit camera shy, but I hope that changes because video chat is as close as you can get to F2F meetings without leaving your time zone.

Dave Morgan, CEO and Founder, Simulmedia: The biggest technological advancement in 2018 won't be a new technology per se, but better utilization of technology that we already have. In 2018, the biggest advancement will be on the technology user side. Every day, more and more people working in the media industry are learning how to better exploit technology, whether it is the cloud or machine learning or predictive analytics. The biggest technological impacts this year will be driven by people, not some new code.

Brad Adgate, Independent Media Researcher:  I think the use of Artificial Intelligence to help manage the amount of data that are being used to make media recommendations will gain traction in 2018 and in the years ahead.

Caroline Horner, Co-Founder, Spicy Tequila: In 2018 it will be 1) Addressable hits scale with advancement from Spectrum, Comcast, OTT/Smart TVs, and 5G and ATSC 3.0.  And other intermediaries. 2) Blockchain technologies prove capable of resolving ID across distribution points. 3) MTA and AI optimize performance in tighter and more responsive cycles. And in 2019 I believe that it will be the re-emergence of the creative role in ad effectiveness.

Mitch Oscar, Advanced TV Strategist, USIM:  I predict that we will still be grappling with the technology and its functionality. We can now fast forward but what if the technology was able to extract the commercials so if I watch in the recorded mode I did not even have to fast forward. Some services are offering that capability now with a new setting. I see that as a real concern going forward. I also believe that addressability was introduced in 1996 and it is going to happen any day now. 

Arlene Manos, President Emeritus, AMC Networks: Greater expansion of OTT, and increased social media application.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Looking Back on the Technological Advancements of Yesterday

At this time of great disruption in the media industry, I find it interesting to look back and realize that disruption in media was always a constant. The systems we used to measure content continually changed, improved and even disrupted our ways of doing business. I recall that, when I was an intern at NBC years ago, I was impressed that my computer did not require punch cards. Am I dating myself? Probably. 

As we embark on 2018, I asked others in the industry to answer the question: “When you first started in the industry, what was the most amazing device/application/program/aspect/item at the time?” One person noted that in the 1990s when she was at Discovery “it was PCs and the internet. That technology changed everything.” For others, it was a range of other advancements:

Arlene Manos, President Emeritus, AMC Networks: When I started at A&E, we did a lot by spreadsheet. Someone I hired as an intern’ recently mentioned in an article, that he shared a computer with me since they were scarce. The first system we were on was Columbine, followed by a Nesbitt system for planning and posting. Don’t remember any more than that.

Mitch Oscar, Advanced TV Strategist, USIM:  In 1999 it was the introduction of TiVo, The inventor came to my office to talk to me about advertising and TiVo’s functionality. At about the same time, the head of IPG called me and said, “So advertising is dead?” TiVo was momentous because everyone was worried about the impact of two functionalities – the recording of programming and the ability of fast forwarding to skip commercials. We wondered if the speed be would be fast or slow enough to see the brand messaging.

Caroline Horner, Co-Founder, Spicy Tequila: Well, this will show my age...a desktop PC with a spreadsheet and database application and for data...LNA, MRI, Scanner data (IRI, I think.) and IMS (I started in a healthcare agency.) Then it was online services (pre-AOL) and then anything internet… and a laptop, cellphone and modem. Then there was the introduction of Java and JavaScript and dynamic webpage generation with ad serving, SAS enterprise miner, set top box data, mobile video, growth of marketing database companies, Programmatic. Addressable TV!

Kathy Newberger, Advanced Advertising Consultant: I was working in local ad sales at the time and we said it was going to be digital ad insertion. We were going from six networks that were inserted using tape decks to sixteen networks using digital equipment. We thought that was going to be amazing … and it was. Now it’s amplified by 500 times more – every network is insert-able. And on top of that is OTT.

Brad Adgate, Independent Media Researcher:  I think the most important introduction early in my career were spreadsheets. Long gone products like Lotus 1-2-3 and afterwards Quattro Pro were being used. Before that, workers used those large green accounting pads and calculators to fill in the data, took a lot longer and more error prone.

Dave Morgan, CEO and Founder, Simulmedia: In early 1993, I was working in "new media" helping newspaper companies develop ad and content strategies for early online services and partnerships with telcos and cable companies and had a chance to play with the Mosaic browser. It was pretty clear, even then, that a user managed rendering engine like the browser would change the media industry, particularly for print companies with text and still photos, which rendered well even without high speed internet. It certainly did.

Jane Clarke, CEO, Managing Director, CIMM: Back in 1982, we were analyzing clickstream data from set top boxes in a Pilot Test for Time Teletext, which was a text and graphic service similar to the early AOL, but delivered via the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) of a channel on Time Warner’s cable system!  I never thought it would take this long to get to nationally representative samples of Return Path Data!

Sheryl Feldinger, Media Consultant: I often comment to my 16-year-old that the biggest difference between growing up today versus the 1970s is the pace of life. Everything happens so much faster today. The pace of communication, especially, flies at warp speed. Confession: early in my career, fax machines were a game changer. They revolutionized the work place. No longer could you tell the client, "We will messenger it to your office first thing tomorrow." The new retort was, "Why wait? You can fax it tonight!" It didn't matter that the edges of the thermal paper curled. All of a sudden, deadlines got pushed up and we all had to work faster.

Next article – Looking Ahead to 2018.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com