Media Must Adapt To Unprecedented Opportunities And Change
The media must adapt to the unprecedented opportunities that the changes in the industry are bringing, according to BSkyB chief executive, James Murdoch, who was speaking at the IAB Engage 2006 conference in London.
Echoing the views aired earlier in the day by Yahoo! CEO and chairman, Terry Semel, Murdoch said that there is a trend towards a ubiquity of connectivity across all of the media and that advertisers will need to be increasingly holistic in their approach.
Murdoch said the industry was only at the beginning of this process of media integration, and that the real world will intermingle and overlap in “new and surprising ways”.
Personal connectivity is the key to the future of the media, and Sky will need to move faster in more ways and innovate across new platforms for its customers, he said, illustrating the company’s recent moves into HDTV, mobile and broadband (see 1 Million Customers Register Interest In Sky Broadband).
Murdoch said it was wrong to look at the various different platforms and types of media as separate. They are “beginning to become part of the network,” he said, and they are “all glued together not just by the Sky brand and by similar content, but by the ability to access them all from a single point.”
The winners in the new integrated world, he said, would be those that combine the best content with the most innovative ways of delivering it to the customer. “The next step is how we take this approach to how we sell advertising,” he said, admitting that plurality and control were key.
For advertisers, the explosion of content across the media will “lead to a marked polarisation between mass and niche opportunities,” he said. “In the converged age, smart brands will gravitate towards the twin poles of mass reach and niche targeting.”
Murdoch also referred to the fact that every Sky+ box currently being installed has reserved capacity, a partition hard drive for enhanced services. “One of the most exciting new applications taking advantage of that partition hard drive is to use the space as a local ad server, inserting adverts directly relevant to you for the viewer according to your ad preferences,” he said.
On the potential threat of IPTV to satellite television, Murdoch said he believes it cannot compete with Sky and it can’t replace it. However on the subject of the potential NTL Telewest ITV merger (see NTL Telewest Could Merge With ITV), he remained tight-lipped.
“The key thing is to try and keep your mouth shut for as long as possible,” he said. “It certainly doesn’t seem to be making it easier to fix either of the challenges on either side… I think the whole industry is waiting to find out a lot more in the next couple of weeks.”
BSkyB: 020 7705 3000 www.sky.com IAB: 020 8683 955 www.iabuk.net