SociableSport

The below is a point of view document I wrote with my work hat on. Please note that this blog has nothing to do with my work - I'm just quite proud of this particular article!

"Google Wave has been criticised by many as being arrogant in its aims. Here we argue that if anything, Google hasn’t been ambitious enough in its claims for Wave which is placed to fundamentally change the way we communicate."

"We are able to show that bringing the game to Australia and having the Asian continent with us at the same time-zone will benefit not only Australia, not only Asia, but the whole football world"
Frank Lowy, Chief of Australia's FIFA World Cup Bid and Australia's Richest Man

Asia comprises the world's fastest growing economies, the fastest growing television and media audiences and the fastest growing consumer markets. Intuitively, Lowy's claim seems to be sensible. But how valid is this regional bias? The three points below try to open this up a bit.

1. The combined audiences for West and East are broadly similar

By looking at FIFA's published TV and Out Of Home (which includes pubs and other public viewing areas) cumulative viewing figures by region we can compare the 2002 World Cup held in Asia with the 2006 World Cup held in Europe.

In terms of the number of viewers, comparing Europe with Asia is hard to swing in Europe's favour. In 2002 there were 2.7 Asian viewers to every European viewer. In 2006 this figure was cut to 1.6 but still, this is a huge difference. However, this only takes into account numbers for Asia and Europe. 'East' and 'West' is much broader.

By grouping together figures for Europe with North America, South America and Central America (EurAm) we get a better idea of what Western audiences actually add up to. We can then compare this with an Eastern group comprised of the Asia and Oceana (APAC). When we look at East vs. West in this hollistic way we get a slightly more even result. In the 2002 World Cup, held in Asia, there were only 1.3 Eastern (APAC) viewers to Western (EurAm) viewers but in the 2006 World Cup there were 1.2 Western viewers to Eastern viewers - despite the fact that the Germany World Cup was broadcast in 11 fewer EurAm territories than the 2002 World Cup.

So there wasn't that big a difference after all.

The audiences are pretty much similar from East to West. The drop off in audience attributable to changes in time-zones is nearly identical with both regions losing roughly 7% of their audience when the games were shown at more unsociable hours. Let's not forget, though, that with China's population alone being double that of the whole of Europe, Asia's 7% certainly represents more people. This brings us on to our next point - although the audiences are roughly the same, and the drop off is the same, advertisers will look for efficiency over reach and this may present the West with another argument against the Lowry.

2.  Rights fees are based on efficiency, not just reach 

Lowry also spoke about the revenue that an Australasian World Cup would bring in. He didn't go into specifics in the article I read but someone told me he'd quoted a difference of +$1bn. That's a lot of money and I'm not sure where he gets it from. Despite offering huge reach, there's going to be an awful lot of wastage in a market where the audiences are almost inconceivably large. In EurAm, penetration is much higher with a greater proportion of the total populations watching or experiencing the tournament. I don't want to waste any money speaking to people who aren't in the mood to listen, especially if there's millions of them.

Also, because there aren't many national broadcasters in the regions, the scope for competition among those looking to secure broadcast rights is smaller. Coupled with the lack of efficiency, this makes for risky - and tricky - business for those formulating broadcast revenue prediction models. Although, broadcast revenue isn't the only source of income from the tournament.

3.  A successful event needs the stadia to be full

Although we hate to admit it, everyone secretly loves the English. English football fans, like many of our counterparts, bring with them a fantastic enthusiasm for the game that heralds from decades of disappointment and ecstasy from following the nation's team. World Cup tournaments need these fans. They need them to fill up the stadiums and prevent what happened at some of Beijing's Olympic events where organisers had to give tickets away to locals for free (retail price was very high - around £90 per ticket) in order to fill the seats. In Sydney's Olympic games, kids were actually transported to the venues by buses to fill the venues with the right kind of audience.

What's the lesson here? Big TV audiences don't necessarily equate to a success on a national level.

We have a little time to go before the decisions for 2018 and 2022 will be made (December 2010) but at the moment, it seems as though the argument isn't as black and white as we may have originally thought. Let's see what FIFA say.

You can read more about Lowry's argument here
Picture found here

If a social network doesn't carry ad space, will this stop it from making money?

Sorrell sees mixed prospects for social nets LONDON: Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have less potential to generate ad revenues than sites such as YouTube and MySpace, which will benefit from their focus on online video, says Sir Martin Sorrell, ceo of WPP Group. According to Sorrell, one of WPP's main short-to-medium term objectives is to boost the share of its revenues derived from digital media to 33%, compared with the current level of 25%. He also argued that the various forms of web-based video currently being established are "probably the most revolutionary and most significant of the new media developments." Indeed, he predicted that the influence of this form of content could come to "dwarf what we saw from the personal computer and what we saw from mobile in terms of its impact on the media." Given this, it appears that "video-driven sites" like YouTube and MySpace will have a "greater opportunity for developing advertising revenues" than many of their online counterparts. By contrast, "sites like Facebook and Twitter are more social networking sites, where the advertising revenue potential is more limited and more restricted" due to their differing models. Indeed, Sorrell added, "we've seen cases, even in the case of Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg – who must be the person on the planet who knows most about social networking – has made one or two mistakes by trying to commercialise too much." When discussing Twitter, the rapidly-growing microblogging service, the chief executive of WPP credited the site with producing "a lot of noise", but also wondered "where is the cashflow?" Overall, the websites at the heart of Web 2.0 are "all very sexy stuff, but there is a lot of sorting out to be done and a lot of volatility and a lot will not be here in the future," he added. With regard to newspapers, Sorrell said the "online media model will only be successful if it's a mixture of advertising revenues and subscription revenues." As such, "looking for content that consumers are willing to pay for" will be essential if news titles are ultimately going to succeed on the web. Sorrell also said that WPP will be looking to target the "third sector" of "Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and central and eastern European regions" as it seeks to bolster its revenues. He added that the rise of nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China should be seen as "an unstoppable, irreversible trend in political, economic and social power." Moreover, Sorrell predicted that "the initial signs of recovery will not come from the West, they will come from the East; they will come from China." The Chinese ad market "did flip up quite considerably in April", meaning WPP saw a 25% increase in its "media business" in the country in the fourth month of this year, its ceo added. Data sourced from The Australian; additional content by WARC staff, 23 June 2009

What do all these things have in common? They are all examples of how looking for different kinds of information will determine the path you take to get there. It sounds simple enough - it is - but it's still worth exploring a little bit.

Your First Day at School
You're going to speak to people to find out where your classroom is because they know the place, you trust strangers to point you in the right direction because once upon a time they were in the same position you've found yourself in. It's also a good opportunity to bond with peers and bonding may come in handy one day, when you want to meet friends or join a club or speak to the pretty girls (or guys!).

Fire Exits
If there's a fire in your building, you're more likely to look at a wall map than ask someone where the exit is. Maps are easy to get to directly, have less room for error (none) whereas peers may panic under pressure or may not have been paying attention in the drills. Your life is at stake here, so it's quicker and safer to go with 'the writing on the wall'.

Star Trek
When it comes to exploring an area that's entirely new (like Space!), it makes sense to surround yourself with likeminded people who have the same goal as you but with different skill sets, just like Star Trek. If you don't happen to be on the SS Enterprise then it's good for you to be within easy reach of it, in case you need anything from them - particle matter, phasers, tractor beams etc. After all, they're the experts.

The illustrations above are analogies for how we navigate information. Websites are sources of information, but how we get there and what we encounter along the way is where the whole experience lies.

Being on the Enterprise would be awesome... at least for a while. A utility that allowed people to go back and forth from deep space, while giving them access to the knowledge and information the spaceship provides, would be an ultimate utility. For school, a utility that told you not only what you need to know, but what you may want to know, too - perhaps with different people's interpretations, would be more valuable than simply a list of sites. As for fire exits, lights and directions are utilities - the exit itself is the website. Sometimes all we want is direction.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the future doesn't lie in compiling information in a website, but in offering a service with which to digest it however you want - personal utilities.

In the future I don't expect to see websites appearing on Google. In fact, I don't expect Google to exist as it does now. I expect a sheet with a series of app-style tools that do the searching for me and don't offer me sites, but offer me information. More info, fewer sites, less clicks, more time.

Lyndon