by Jacqueline Koch | May 2, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
How do medium-sized publishers take advantage of revenue opportunities offered by online video without taking on the prohibitive costs associated with building out their own video production capabilities? This is the problem that four-year old San Francisco startup, Tout, set out to solve.
Participants on the 2016 Digital Innovators’ Tour got a first-hand account of how Tout is changing online video distribution from CEO and founder, Michael Downing.
Downing pointed out that many publishers are having a hard time making the transition from a print paradigm to more of a television paradigm. That is because today, 125 websites are driving 95 per cent of the US$9bn of revenue that online video is generating. “We are trying to democratise continent distribution by providing technology, content and expertise to allow a larger group of publishers to participate in the online video revenue opportunity,” he said.
Tout: How does it work?
Tout works with large video content publishers like television stations who need to find new ways to distribute their content beyond their own web properties. “For large content creators, online advertising is the largest source of digital revenue but they have run out of space to carry more ads. Syndication is important for continued growth,’ he said.
Then Tout works with mid-tier publishers who do not have the in-house capabilities to create their own video content. These publishers make all the articles they publish available to the Tout platform where the text is scanned. The platform then identifies which videos are relevant for each targeted article and the video is seamlessly integrated into the story.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Apr 22, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
There is a growing trend in San Francisco/Silicon Valley where corporations are considering startups to be outsourced innovation labs – a kind of ‘try before you buy environment’. This means that corporations work with organisations like RocketSpace, a technology campus for entrepreneurs, startups and corporate innovation professionals, to identify startups working in areas of interest – and then acquire them so that they can take their products and services to scale. RocketSpace was the first company participants on the *2016 Digital Innovator’s Tour visited on day one.
RocketSpace, which has been home to startup up ‘unicorns’ (companies now worth US$1bn) including Uber and Spotify is increasingly developing services to bridge the gap between the startup world and the corporate world.
RocketSpace’s SVP of sales, Boris Pluskowski says, the company teaches corporates:
- Which startups they should be looking at – corporate clients identify an area of interest and RocketSpace finds the set of startups operating in this space and makes the introductions
- How to work with startups – RocketSpace guides corporate clients on the realities of collaborating with startups
- How to work like startups – corporate clients learn how to innovate at scale and pace
An increasing number of corporates are setting up innovation labs at RocketSpace and international startups from countries including Australia and Brazil looking to expand their presence in the US are using the firm as a local launch pad. RocketSpace then introduces these foreign startups to critical Silicon Valley resources.
On the flipside, RocketSpace is seeing their startups looking to be acquired by a corporation as their key strategy. Fewer and fewer are expecting to become unicorns, Ron Yerkes, RocketSpace’s director of corporate innovation services said.
At the same time RocketSpace is seeing a growing trend where founders are realising that they have to be part of an ecosystem to succeed. “It’s very rare that two guys can create a successful venture in a garage these days,” said Pluskowski. Instead founders understand that ‘it takes a village” to succeed.
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*Boost! Collective was the US organizer of the 2016 Digital Innovators’ Tour for FIPP and VDZ
by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 27, 2015 |
One publication that appears to be thriving in this new digital age is women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which saw a whopping 45.9 per cent year-over-year audience growth in August 2015.
In August, the audience for magazines in the United States grew 4.2 per cent year-over-year to 1.67bn, according to the most recent MPA Magazine Media 3600 Brand Audience Report. While any growth in the publishing sector is good news, it is important to point out that most of this growth is coming from the mobile web, where the audience grew by 42.4 per cent to over 440m in August 2015. In the same timeframe the audience for print and digital editions shrank by 5.6 per cent, while the web (desktop/laptop) audience declined by 1.1 per cent. This is a downturn from the July numbers, where the web audience grew by 3.2 per cent.
These statistics tell a good news, bad news story. While the overall audience size has grown, there is much work to be done by publishers to keep and grow their audiences as technology continues to turn this industry on its head.
One publication that appears to be thriving in this new digital age is women’s fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which saw a whopping 45.9 per cent year-over-year audience growth in August 2015.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Oct 27, 2015 |
By Gretchen McLaurin
VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. This term was initially used by the US Military in the late 90’s to address planning and leadership for the post-Cold War era.
Developed to explain a fast-paced, increasingly unstable and rapidly changing world, the concept has since migrated into business schools and corporate boardrooms to frame strategy and leadership development in the 21st century.
Because VUCA is a leadership model, we can look to the leaders of companies for insights in how to thrive in today’s rapidly changing world. There are several characteristics common to those who are best able to navigate a VUCA world: Individuals should be lifelong learners with the ability to flip problems into advantages. They see connections where others don’t and learn from nature, striving for balance. They understand rapid prototyping and smart mob organising, making it fun and easy for teams to achieve success. They are motivated by significant emotional events, whether personal or global. And they have a sense for nurturing shared assets and knowing how to bring resources together.
With hindsight we will look back at the technologic, economic and demographic factors that fostered some of the most profound media disruptions in the last decade and see whether VUCA principles could or should have helped leaders anticipate them.
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