Anuj Agrawal

My Posts on TechCocktail

 

 

 

When I first started this blog, it was a great place for me to throw out my perspectives on mobile and the tech world in general. But then I realized, it would be great if this site had an audience who could actually read this stuff.  So I went out and started contributing to TechCocktail, a popular tech blog based in the DC area.  TechCocktail is one of the most comprehensive outlets about startups and entrepreneurship across the country.  My posts tend to have a bend on the product choices and strategy of the companies that I write about, both startup and Fortune 500.  Below is a running list of my contributions to the blog:

11/22/2011 - App Review: Unleashing Your "Creativity"
10/6/2011 - The Apple iPhone Strategy: We've Seen This Before (picked up by Techmeme)
9/15/2011 - 9 Startups Created at Startup Weekend Delaware
9/1/2011 - ZipTip's Mobile Payment App Acknowledges Great Service
8/26/2011 - Jumio Update: Targeting Bloggers
8/12/2011 - 3 Ways to Survivie App Fatigue
8/4/2011 - Jumio: Processing Credit Cards Through Webcams
7/19/2011 - Goshi: The Location-Based Marketplace
7/5/2011 - MoviePass Launch Fizzles Out
6/24/2011 - "Shazam"ing Interactive Content on TVs
6/9/2011 - Food for Thought: Analyzing the Pizza Industry for Startup Ideas
5/27/2011 - Apple: Eating Their Own Dogfood
5/19/2011 - The Chicken and Egg of 3DTVs
5/5/2011 - Is the Battle for the Living Room Becoming Over-Rated?
4/21/2011 - Kindle Library: Driving Mass Market Customer Adoption
4/14/2011 - Newspaper Digital Paywalls: A Test of Consumer Loyalty
4/7/2011 - Mobile Payment Apps: A Starbucks Case Study
3/25/2011 - Keeping the Madness In Your Pocket With Live Mobile Streaming

The Changing Landscape Of Online Video - What's Next?

With Hulu’s pending launch of their premium service, let’s take a step back and theorize how the video content industry is changing.  It is incredibly hard to get people to start paying for something that was previously free.  While Hulu’s idea is to provide access to older episodes as part of the premium model, they are still asking people to pay to consume video online.  In my view, the only way you can charge for content is to have access to some type of exclusive content that is not available on every other video aggregation site.  Rather than trying to change consumer behavior to pay for online content, the more likely structural change will need to be on the advertising side of the equation, since consumers are already used to seeing ads. 

Right now consumers create value in 2 ways: they pay a cable/satellite TV bill (the access fee), and they view ads. Online, they pay no access fees for video, and they significantly fewer ad spots. So of course more people are moving online, it’s basic consumer behavior!  However, as this deteriorates the industry’s value, the structure of the business will need to change.  Think about the value chain players:  content creators, providers, distributors, and consumers.  Providers ultimately get paid for ads, but those ads need to be seen by people, thus, the newfound power of the cable distributors to command higher fees from the networks.  While there is a shift in consumer usage from the TV to a variety of online devices (PCs, gaming consoles, mobile devices), at some point content creators need to continue to be paid to actually be incented to create the content.  But if people continue to cut their cable cords and too much value is taken out of the traditional distribution model, more expensive or higher volume advertising inventory will need to be created within online video streams.

Microsoft Live Search: New Dog, Old Tricks

It's been about a month now since Microsoft launched its Cash Back promotion around its new search engine, Live Search.  When I first saw the promotion, I found it to be an interesting concept.  Setup a standard affiliate program (although MS probably gets better rates than others) and pass back the affiliate commissions back to the consumer.  However, in looking at the rates on the Cash Back offers vs. the affiliate rates posted on their retailers sites, clearly Microsoft was giving more than standard affiliate rates.

In actuality they're giving consumers a portion of their ad revenue. They are applying a new model to search by collecting payment from advertisers after SALES instead of CLICKS.   This is clearly a strategy to differentiate from Google and lure advertisers to the Microsoft engine.  But my question is, what is the sustainable advantage for this model?  If this turned out to have traction in the market, Google could simply create a similar program to eliminate any incentives advertisers have in going to Microsoft.  And all this would lead to eroding profits in the online ad world as all the search engines one up each other with cash incentives.