Good comment here: creating new ways of making $$ with advertising with take time - one should not underestimate how long this change will take. I would say that we are 2-3 years away from what I like to call "Advertising2.0" - a new adverting ecology based on Content and CONTEXT not just on page views. More on this soon.
"The process of creating a new standard can be quite a lengthy one. It usually involves a coalition of both media companies and advertisers coming together and negotiating the key elements of the standard. The composition of the IAB board is usually dominated by larger online media companies and it can be hard for a startup to have much influence on this decision making process. It can often be easier to align youself with the interests of a larger media company and let them carry the water up the hill, rather than trying to do it independantly as a startup. If you’re Dogster, you’ll have less success pushing a new standard for “sponsored profiles” than MySpace/FIM or AIMpages/AOL. So making sure that your sponsored profiles packages contain the same elements as those of the big guys will make your life easier as they take this new ad unit through the standardization process
The alternative approach is to make sure that your new form of advertising so closely parallels an existing standard ad unit that it can be considered within the existing bucket. 30 second online video ads (same format as TV),online leads (similar to phone leads) and new variations of CPC advertising (similar to search) have all been “close enough” to an existing ad unit that they have been able to tap existing ad budgets and grow quickly..."
So... here is a very interesting announcement. I must admit I had some minor input here ;)
Reuters reports on this here Google news links here The Online Demos
FAQ is here Technorati links here
New: watch the Youtube videos by Ged Doherty (CEO), Mike Smith (MD Columbia Records UK), Craig Logan (MD RCA Label Group), and James Lambert-Martin (Online A&R Manager)
"SonyBMG, the world’s No 2 record label, has had a rough couple of
years. Boardroom splits, a European Commission competition inquiry and
a loss of market share have left the company reeling after its 2004
creation from the merger of Sony’s and Bertelsmann’s record labels.
Now,
though, in Europe at least, Ged Doherty, the chairman and chief
executive of Sony BMG Music Entertainment Europe, wants to change the
tune, and SonyBMG has a plan to reinvent itself by binning the
requirement for demo tapes and boldly setting up online demos for fans
as well as executives to judge. From Monday the next Arctic
Monkeys must upload a video or MP3 audio package to a new SonyBMG
website where it will be assessed by label bosses and any musician or
fan who chooses to log on at columbiademos.co.uk or rcademos.co.uk.
The
change is necessary because Mr Doherty does not believe that recorded
music, overall, will recover. “Digital sales are not going to make up
the decline in physical CD revenue,” he says. “By 2010 income from CDs
will be down 50 per cent. The old world is gone for ever. “We
need to enter into a new relationship with our artists, where they see
us as partners rather than the enemy.” The demo blogs are designed to
create an open, transparent access point for musicians.
“Artists
will get a quicker, fairer response to their demos online from a wider
group of people,” says Mr Doherty, whose latest signing, the
singer-songwriter Ross Copperman, broke download records with a track
given free to iTunes. The theory is that, if signed, SonyBMG artists
will continue to offer music and gain feedback through the company
portal. Yet, that will not be enough. The old-style,
royalties-based major-label deal is dead, Mr Doherty says. Revenue from
live concerts, sponsorship, mobile deals and merchandise will be shared
with SonyBMG.
“I’m willing to give up more of my revenue if
artists are willing to give up theirs,” he says. “By 2010 we want joint
ventures with all our artists. We have just signed our first ‘50-50 on
everything’ deal.” The Glaswegian, 48, believes that the “dust of
the merger has settled” with new signings, including The View and The
Gossip, hitting the charts, while the debut album from Amy Winehouse’s
producer, Mark Ronson, is tipped to be a multimillion seller. SonyBMG
has a 23 per cent share of UK album sales so far this year.
He
even claims not to be inconvenienced by the Brussels investigation into
the merged company’s alleged “dominant position”. However, it is not a
topic on which he cares to hold an extended conversation. He says:
“It’s in the background and I cannot influence the decision. I’m just
getting on with changing the shape of our business.”
Mr Doherty
was catapulted into the role left vacant after Rob Stringer was
promoted to New York-based president of Sony Music Labels Group. A
long-term “No 2”, he was taken aback by the response when he first
suggested as boss that CD sales were in terminal decline. “I was used
to everyone ignoring me,” he jokes. Not any more. Though not a
natural blogger, he was quick to join the queue of media executives
keen to flaunt their cool. He now eagerly relates meetings with Ozzy
and Sharon Osbourne on his site, gedblog.vox.com. “We might make
mistakes, and I might look an idiot at times, but I don’t care because
it’s the only way we will learn,” he says. “Our world is turning upside
down.”
To survive, there are plans to expand in television, to
capitalise on Mr Stringer’s strategic partnership with Simon Cowell,
which has generated a string of hit shows, such as
The X Factor. Mr Doherty also hopes to revitalise interest in the back catalogue, perhaps only for mobile phones. If the regulators let him, the ideas are the right ones, but getting back to growth is going to be hard work."
