As seen above:
The key to popularizing the aforesaid markets is establishing the most popular online market for the ad spaces on single-creator media.
Popularizing the ad-space market starts with attracting buyers and sellers who want to use OppTV’s barter currency.
Initially, OppTV will focus on attracting people who aspire to a (more successful) career in video production (e.g., writers, actors), because:
Online video has become the fastest-growing category of Internet ad spending in the past year [37].
Advertisers frequently complain about the shortage of video content worthy of sponsorship [38].
As a result, Web programs that attract as few as 10k viewers per episode are attracting the attention of big marketers [39].
Producers of videos, then, will benefit doubly by using ad rates from OppTV’s market to identify experts who are popular online, en route to hiring these experts to work on a video project and to help popularize it.
Presently, there are many more seekers of jobs in video production than there are jobs [40].
(Aspiring) video pros are easy to find online (e.g., via MySpace groups like the Video Entertainment Group, which has 61k members).
Media producers are increasingly aware of the importance of being sophisticated about leveraging user- generated content (e.g., blogs) to distribute media online. From the May 13, 2007 issue of the New York Times’ Sunday magazine:
“For rock musicians, being a bit of a nerd now helps you become successful. When I spoke with Damian Kulash, the lead singer for the band OK Go, he discoursed like a professor on the six-degrees-of-separation theory, talking at one point about “rhizomatic networks.” (You can Google it.) Kulash has put his networking expertise to good use: last year, OK Go displayed a canny understanding of online dynamics when it posted on YouTube a low-budget homemade video that showed the band members dancing on treadmills to their song “Here It Goes Again.” The video quickly became one of the site’s all-time biggest hits. It led to the band’s live treadmill performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, which in turn led to a Grammy Award for best video.”
From the May 14, 2007 issue of the Wall Street Journal:
“Internet stars exploit the power of the Web. They employ all the social-networking tools available on new-media sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube, inviting fans to comment on their work, link to it and even copy it. And they draw on email, subscriptions and other tools to alert fans about new offerings. ‘The most popular are the ones who have really tapped into the social fabric’ of the Internet, says Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing at YouTube.”
Importantly, bartering will begin once the first (aspiring) video pro arrives at the market, because OppTV will barter its ad space on OpportuniTV.com – the site of its ad-space market – to increase awareness of the ad-space market.
Of course, the bigger the perceived payoff to bartering, the faster the market will become popular. As such, the site of the 1.0 ad-space market will detail:
- why owning the most popular markets of the aforesaid kinds is an ideal way to grow for an American media conglomerate that owns a broadcast TV network
- OppTV’s plan to create a seller’s market for itself, en route to being acquired (i.e., how OppTV plans to turn the markets into an optimally meritocratic minor leagues for a media conglomerate)
- OppTV’s progress as the company works to create a seller’s market for itself
In particular, the site will detail OppTV’s progress as the company shoots a rough cut of the pilot episode of Land of OpportuniTV, and distributes the episode online.
OppTV’s efforts to popularize the pilot will center on bartering for ad space (e.g., on blogs of experts who have a lot to gain from OppTV’s success), because:
- business journalists routinely source stories from blogs [41] (Of course, OppTV will contact some journalists directly, starting with business and technology journalists who maintain a blog [42])
- OppTV’s efforts to usher in the age of "startup comedy" is a good story, as is the CECS industry being a great bet to create a lot of good jobs in America
The site of the 1.0 ad-space market also will detail OppTV’s use of XSB-powered search tools to identify sites (e.g., blogs) that are good places to advertise/distribute the pilot, and will host online versions of the tools (i.e., versions that other media producers can use at the ad-space market).
Of course, the more coverage OppTV receives on- and off-line, the more popular the markets will become, which will lead to more coverage of OppTV, and so on.
As is previewed above, the aforesaid conglomerates are scouring the Internet for video programming, Internet companies, technologies, etc. Hollywood talent agencies are also scouring the ‘Net, and they can open doors for OppTV at the broadcast TV networks [43].
In relatively short order, then, it can be expected that OppTV will be on the radars of the aforesaid conglomerates.
OppTV’s primary competitors will be small-ish companies that want to position their companies to be acquired by a media conglomerate, and that have assets that fit OppTV’s exit strategy. To be sure, there are – or will be – companies that will be at least partial competitors, as both Web-video production and the online “social graph” (i.e., linkages between single-creator media of the sort enabled by OppTV’s ad-space market) are getting white hot:
“Google’s goal - to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.
The short version: Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data.”
TechCrunch.com
September 21, 2007
“Get ready to start hearing ‘Social Graph’ as frequently as you hear ‘Web 2.0.’”
Venture capitalist Brad Feld
http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2007/08/social_graph_th.html#_
August 18, 2007
“Warner plans to sell its digital projects to advertisers through its own media sales unit. The studio is trying to gain traction in an increasingly crowded field. More than a dozen new production companies are angling for a share of the exploding online video business. Among the upstarts achieving early success are Generate, co-founded by a former Warner executive, and Vuguru, a new media company backed by Walt Disney’s former chief, Michael D. Eisner.
Brent Weinstein, chief executive of 60Frames Entertainment, a digital studio co-founded by the United Talent Agency, said, ‘We can get things to market a lot quicker than traditional media companies because we aren’t hamstrung by all their legal and rights issues.’”
New York Times
September 10, 2007
But it is exceedingly unlikely that OppTV’s competitors will be able to find substitutes for OppTV’s co-founders, or for the XSB-savvy software engineers that OppTV will hire. As such, companies that pursue OppTV’s exit strategy will probably seek to license OppTV’s software, or to acquire or merge with OppTV.
Also, it is important to not underestimate the extent to which Land of OpportuniTV will appeal to executives at the broadcast TV networks – and, hence, should further incline would-be competitors toward acquiring or merging with OppTV. Consider:
“I would start my fantasy network with a comedy. Because I think, especially today, a comedy is much harder to find. And I think that with advertisers there’s much more of a quest for a big, great comedy. I would try and target it younger, because it’s harder to find the young people, and if you make it a hit, everybody else will come.”
Jeff Zucker
President
NBC Entertainment
November 3, 2002
“The hardest thing to do in show business, by far, is to create and execute a high-quality, successful, long-running television series. And if you add comedy on top of it, that’s even harder.”
Chris Albrecht
Chairman
HBO
November 3, 2002
Finally, it is important to recognize that OppTV can benefit even if competitors develop would-be substitutes for OppTV’s offerings without developing a relationship with OppTV, as the value of OppTV’s assets/talent will be more evident to the TV networks. The relevant insight from game theory:
“Business is cooperation when it comes to creating a pie, and competition when it comes to dividing it up.”
Adam Bradenburger and Barry Nalebuff
Coopetition
1997
The below .pdf file contains the Sources and Uses of Funds section of OppTV’s business plan:
Download sourcesuses.pdf
A .pdf reader is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
