Welcome to the Summer Quarter! Our class of 46 students has a great cross section of interests and careers represented.
Please be sure to download and review the Syllabus and let us know if there are any questions or additional topics that you want covered.
Here is the TRENDS presentation which I began, and will continue on July 8th.
In the first class I covered the Syllabus including course obj
ectives, topics, and the assignments. Three of the assignments are designed to encourage class participation:
- Discussion Article
- Media Diary
- Mystery Shopper
The other 2 are will also fuel discussions, allow you to go deeper into subjects of interest, and form a broader basis for your grades:
- Book Report
- Elevator Pitch or Research Paper.
I have created an Amazon bookstore for the course. Please select a book from here, or suggest one. Please get approval on a book for your book report, and on your topic for the research paper.
Please take advantage of the opportunities to get to know each other, network, and learn from each other.
In the first class we we fortunate to have Tammara Holzman as our guest speaker. She provided valuable insight into the online/Interactive advertising world and shared here experience
with AVVENTA Worldwide , a large Interactive agency that provides services to some large ad agencies such as DIGITAS as well as directly to large advertisers such as General Motors. They create campaigns for entertainment, publishing, sports and other sectors. They keep personnel costs low by maintaining offices and tech teams in Costa Rica.
She pointed out
how complex the Interactive ad business has become with so
many technologies and metrics and how it is constantly changing. "Internet used to added value for advertisers, now it is considered essential by advertisers."
We began discussion threads regarding audience fragmentation and the decreasing effectiveness of the 30 second spot.
Next week's class will be given by guest Instructor MARK HENNINGER, founder and President of 11AMPS . Mark has Co-Instructed the class for the past 2 years and will deliver his lecture on THE HISTORY OF CONTENT which covers the origins of radio, television and the Internet up through the present.
In preparation for this class, also please read the first two sections of my white paper:
Overview of the Entertainment Industry in The U.S.: History, Business, Technology, Trends, and check out these two timelines which will put things in perspective and which we will refer to for the rest of the quarter.
Thats Mark on the right below.
6 comments:
Thanks for the post!
Hello, everyone! I'm Yingying Wang from China. Glad to have this class with ALL of you! This is going to be very interesting and exciting!
Best
Yingying Wang
facebook: Cathy Yingying Wang
I am eager to learn about advertising models that have potential to make online ad-supported video content economically viable, where viability will presumably be determined by metrics like users registered, products/services (up)sold, media and data aggregated, and ads served.
A related issue that I would love to dig into is the question of how much (or, more importantly, how much of which types) of advertising are consumers willing to tolerate -- the Hallmark short film/advertisement-in-disguise that we saw in class strikes me as a great example of advertising that would be well-enjoyed (let alone tolerated), and the amount of advertising consumers are exposed to on Hulu seems to be "tolerable" -- however, unfortunately for Hulu’s ad sales team, keeping the ad-experience “tolerable” requires a far-lower ratio of ads to content compared with traditional TV. In conjunction with the far-higher number of eyeballs that TV can bring to the table at a fixed time, this must present a big challenge for those who would profit from distribution of ad supported video. So...what kind of experiments are being conducted to determine how to push the envelope of "tolerability"?
My own opinion is that experiments in this space, combined with increasing availability of bandwidth and improvements in integration between/among third-party web-apps and video overlay technologies, will result in a customer experience akin to watching video on a player that looks like a dynamic sponsors’ billboard/microsite, complete with immersive branding and calls to action like “buy,” register,” -- it's just a question of how to implement such a bombardment of branding, while keeping off your target-customers’ last nerve.
Would love to hear any thoughts -- and I look to getting to know you all.
Hi Everyone!
My name is John Blythe, originally from Bakersfield, California and have had roughly five years experience in film and have worked as production manager, controller and executive producer primarily on low-budget independently financed films in the U.S. and Canada. I am taking this course as part of the certificate program in entertainment business management.
One of the key factors that I have paid closer attention to is the growing independent film market, and seeing how digital film production has become increasingly popular, and more cost-effective, even though the competition in distribution on the market is still tough with the major studio systems.
So basically, what I am extremely interested in, is knowing precisely were these different alternatives measures of distribution will take us into the future including ancillary markets and also such as the use of internet and Iphones, and if it will eventually someday down the road become more popular than typical theatrical exhibition?
Just curious and I am sure this class will elaborate more clearer on those areas.
Best of luck to you all, and I look forward to meeting you all in class!
John Blythe
Hi everyone,
My name is Austin Clements, a Los Angeles native who works in finance. While my backgroud is seemingly a bit different then most others in the class I am eager to learn about the future of the media and entertainment industry. I'm not taking the class as a requirement or part of a program, I just think it would give me a better idea of what's happening in an industry that I cover as an analyst.
With regard to the first class, I thoroughly enjoyed it picking up on a number of interesting stats and concepts. While many of you may work with it everyday that was the first time I ever heard the concept of 'branded entertainment' like the Hallmark short.
I look forward to hearing more about each of your respective careers and opinions. And who knows, maybe I'll take a real shot at actually creating the business I come up with for the Elevator Pitch project.
Best regards,
Austin
Class #1 Digital Entertainment: Notes taken in Class
Instructors: Levy Shaprio and Stuart Volkow
svolkow@ucla.cedu
www.xtropia.com/ucla.htm
No tests in this class
Please turn in everything in PDF format.
Check the blog for notes/comments, uclamediatech.blogspot.com
Important Note about the Digital change:
• June 12th ABC and NBC lost 2 million viewers from the digital change
• Nelson is out of date and needs to consider how we are actually interacting with our media
o Are we watching TV and are on the computer at the same time?
o How are video games cutting into our TV time?
o How effective are TV commercials?
o How are we dealing with the fact that people might get rid of cable and start watching everything online? And how do you account for what shows are popular, and do we start mixing tracking systems that account for online ratings?
General Overview of Assignments:
1) Weekly News Item Discussed in class
• You do not actually have to bring in the article.
• Discuss the article to the whole class.
• Related to media and technology, www.techcrunch.com etc…
2) Neilson Diaries
• You do not have to turn a paper in for this.
• Discussion in class about your media habits.
• Literally write down what you watch and how you watch it.
3) Elevator Pitch/Mini Business Research Paper
• Paper on Entertainment tech topics-to be approved by teacher
• Do a pitch for a project and present/sell to class
4) Mystery Shopper
• One page paper
• Pick an electronic and turn in a page about how you came about purchasing the product
• See if the class agrees with how/why you picked the product
5) Book Report
• Summery of tech book
• Get approval from teacher
Guest Speaker: Tammy Holzman
Email: Tami.Holzman@avventa.com
Works for avVenta Worldwide
• Global Business Development
• Entertainment, Publishing, Sports vertical
Why they are competitive in their rates:
• They have outsourced their labor to Costa Rica
o Developers are much cheaper there than in the US
o Digital Productions are there
• They work with and for their competitors
• Why?
o Because there is so much work out there
Examples of their Work:
• GE
o All of their web site advertising
o Co-branding with Transformers
• Partnerships with Paramount
Digitos
• Their perfect business model
• They are the “production staff” and Digitos is the “Director/Producer”
Facts to know:
• Pre-roll: Ad in front of footage
• Pod Blasting: Purchasing a commercial block/infomercial during a program
o It is 2 min and/or the whole commercial break
o Basically replaces the pod of commercials
o Very hard to do these days unless it is a station that is not so
“busy” with ads
o Very restrictive
• Micro sites: Small sites within sites, used for commercial purposes
Stewart Volkow Works at
• TheInstituteonline.com
o Works with directors to develop movies
o Also develops pod blasters: Hallmark Channel-guy who couldn’t read and then learns, and the ending is that he can read a Hallmark card from his child
The Internet:
• Worldwide the mobile phone is the most used device to access the internet
• The internet is basically big data stations and submarine cables all over the world connecting/transferring data to each other
o The largest submarine cable is the Trans-Atlantic
• Asia: Highest internet usage next year, in the world, ½ billion people have mobile phones in China alone
• Middle East: Fastest growing internet usage in the world
• Korea: Most available internet/best internet connectivity in the world
• Global Telecom Communications: Puts the cables underground/in water for internet
• Wireless is where internet is growing
o Over 3 billion mobile subscribers in the world
o 48% wireless coverage is mobile
o As the price for the devices goes down, the service prices keep going up
• How to find the highest rated websites:
o Use:
o Quantcast
o Alexa
o Comscore
• They all use a different system to measure traffic, but the top sites are almost all congruent
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