Futurescape - digital entertainment, online television and social media R&D

Digital Media Insight

Futurescape provides industry insights and identifies commercial and creative opportunities in online television and digital entertainment.

Founded in 1998, our customers include international advertising and media agencies, branded entertainment specialists and television companies.

We publish multi-client reports with actionable intelligence, new thinking and key data for well-informed decision making.

The latest title is 2008: The Birth of Online TV – answering essential questions on original American and British comedy and drama shows on the Internet.

• Who commissions shows? Which brands sponsor them?
• How much do shows cost to make? What are the financing models?
• Who are the new studios, their founders and investors?
• What are the challenges in production, funding and distribution?

The report features:

• In-depth interviews with producers
• Show profiles - budgets, sponsors, innovative features
• Comparative production budgets
• Listings of start-up studios and production companies
• Continue reading report preview | Save preview as a PDF | Buy now

Be informed – upcoming reports

Be the first to know about our next reports and receive an early bird 20 per cent discount on publication. Click on the titles below.

Online TV Show Production: USA Data

A comprehensive analysis of US Internet television shows produced or in production by the major studios and new online production companies.

Brands Sponsoring Online TV Shows

A detailed guide to how major brand owners such as P&G and Unilever are rapidly embracing Internet television shows for product integration.

360 degree commissioning panel

Written by Colin Donald
Posted Wednesday, 16 July, 2008 at 11:31 AM

Looking forward to sharing insights about online comedy and drama shows - in the context of 360 multiplatform creative content and its future - from the 2008: The Birth of Online TV report at Channel 4 tomorrow evening for the 360 Degree Commissioning evening organised by Top TV Academy.

On the panel:

• Danny Cohen, Controller BBC 3
• Jim Harrison, Head of Broadcast, Endemol Digital media (UK)
• Roy Ackerman, Creative Director, Diverse Productions
• Louise Brown, Head of Operations for New Media, Channel 4
• Melissa Goodwin, Controller of Mobile ITV-Mobile
• Colin Donald, Director, Futurescape

Google - the dominant Web show distributor?

Written by Colin Donald
Posted Thursday, 2 July, 2008 at 02:23 PM

Google is about to deliver television-scale audiences to brand advertisers with a new online cartoon series.

It is taking a giant step forward in advertising by offering brands everything online that they can normally have only via television – professionally-produced video programming by top talent, distributed to a well-targeted demographic and with TV-scale reach.

As reported in the New York Times, Google is the distributor for an Internet-only cartoon series, Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. MacFarlane is the creator of the highly popular Family Guy (pictured). The new cartoons have been made with online viewing in mind, targeting the young male demo, with a multi-million dollar budget (probably the largest ever for original Internet content) funded by Media Rights Capital.

MRC is the Hollywood finance company behind movies such as Babel and Sacha Baron Cohen’s forthcoming Brüno. Its investors include the major talent agency Endeavor, advertising conglomerate WPP, AT&T and Goldman Sachs. (More details from another New York Times article.) MRC is both funding the show and also selling the advertising inventory.

Google will present the series not only on YouTube, but throughout the publisher sites signed up to its extensive AdSense network. This transforms the already powerful and hugely profitable AdSense pay-per-click system into a content syndication service. PPC has never been particularly well-suited to brand advertising, but MacFarlane’s cartoons offer the choice of pre-roll ads, a banner under the video, a “brought to you by” announcement and even original commercials animated by MacFarlane himself.

This gives advertisers the best of both worlds – the cartoons can properly showcase brands, while the platform can still provide the accountability of pay-per-click.

Competing platforms

If you look at this innovation from the viewpoint of competing platforms, its significance becomes even more profound.

AOL’s Bebo and New Corp’s MySpace commission original online series such as Roommates and Sofia's Diary to entertain their membership and gain revenue from them by offering brands the opportunity to integrate their products into the shows. This means bringing together talent, a format, funding, advertising and distribution.

And now Google is assembling those components in a different combination: high-profile talent and an original format from MacFarlane, backed by MRC funding and ad sales into brands – all supported by unrivalled distribution from Google.

It finally gives the advertisers what they always complain that they cannot find online: television-size reach. Google claims that the Google Content Network has a 75% reach of unique Internet users in the USA and UK via hundreds of thousands of publisher sites, including The Times, The Daily Mail and Channel 4.

Through the Content Network, MacFarlane's new show will not be restricted to just one site however large (Bebo or MySpace) but it will be, in practical terms, ubiquitous for the young male demographic.

So Google can leverage its network with top-quality content, but without having to manage the whole commissioning process. Or pay upfront for it.

And the sheer scale of distribution unquestionably makes an enormous difference to viewing figures. When we interviewed online TV producer Kathleen Grace, who made the comedy series The Burg, she pointed out that the episodes distributed via the VideoEgg platform reached ten times the viewers that the top episode gained from the show's own site. (From our report 2008: The Birth of Online TV.)

With YouTube already a massive presence in online video, this initiative to extend professional video content into AdSense takes the platform war onto a whole new level.

If this experiment with MacFarlane’s cartoons proves successful, how many other Web shows will look to Google as their primary, perhaps only, means of distribution?

Is Google about to become the dominant Web show distributor?

Intelligent TV and rich radio

Written by Futurescape
Posted Wednesday, 25 June, 2008 at 03:51 PM

Two more “provocation” presentations from the recent Media Futures conference in London.

Intelligent TV

First from digital media guru Milverton Wallace, with a terrific image of what a smart, networked television service might look like. It’s a riff on the Clay Shirky post about the four-year-old girl who can’t find the mouse for the TV. Milverton imagines what kind of TV she will have in 10 years.

Key observations

1) There's no brand. No BBC, No ITV, No TV3, No Canal Plus

2) Just feeds

3) Programmes must compete on quality, not marketing

4) Our kid is not a passive consumer

5) She can socialize the experience

6) By subsuming it into her social networks

And the big question - Are the TV networks ready for this de-centralised world?

Our take on it.

For an average viewer now, it looks like a lot of functionality - too much, perhaps?

But of course, if you are the girl who has never known a world without the Internet, maybe all this is the least you would expect...

See Milverton’s blog for a full more insights and a super-size version of the screen.

Rich Radio

From James Cridland, Head of Future Media & Technology, BBC Audio & Music Interactive, there was a fascinating explanation of how the BBC and other broadcasters are collaborating on RadioDNS.

Golddigga in Sofia's Diary - case study

Written by Futurescape
Posted Tuesday, 24 June, 2008 at 05:20 PM

The Media Futures conference here in London last Friday included some very relevant presentations, so we’re blogging the cutting-edge media talks.

Track three in the afternoon comprised a series of seven-minute presentations, which is a pretty good format, because makes the speakers focus on a few key points and get them across effectively without rambling, particularly with e-commerge guru Ian Jindal keeping everyone strictly to time.

The snappily-attired Philip Slade, creative director at the 7th Floor Consultancy agency talked about “Getting on with teenagers” and used Golddigga on Bebo and Sofia’s Diary as his case study.

The campaign included Golddigga clothes being integrated into the show’s storylines. One of the product appearances was used as the springboard for a competition:

“In episode 17 of Sofia's Diary, Josh burns the golddigga dress that Sofia is supposed to be looking after. It all ends up being ok (phew) but we want to know how you've got out of an awkward situation before? Vote & tell us your story in the comments bit below! (Comp closes 4th July).”

Here’s the clip (note the Unilever Sure Girl sponsorship in the pre-roll):

And the Golddigga profile on Bebo.

Philip observed after his presentation that great care has to be taken with the scripting and it involved rewrites so that the clothes were part of a proper storyline and not too obviously just pushed at the viewers, who are perfectly capable of finding the brand for themselves once it’s been mentioned.

Click below for more insights from the case study

Bebo innovates live video with Kyte

Written by Özlem Tunçil
Posted Monday, 23 June, 2008 at 08:45 PM

Online television is increasingly overlapping with live events, an area in which Bebo is pioneering some innovative formats, such as KateModern inviting viewers to join the show in real life.

But how does a social network both offer fans the opportunity for a real-life encounter and also ensure that people who can’t make it to the venue can still participate?

Bebo has come up with an elegant solution in a campaign for teen stars the Jonas Brothers.

The real-life element is that fans are invited to enter a competition to join the brothers on a private open-top bus tour around London, as they play an acoustic set.

If you don’t win but are in London, the route is being shown via a map on their Bebo profile so you know where to come and see them on their way to an in-store appearance at HMV in Oxford Street.

And for those who can’t be there in person on Friday 27 June.....

Bebo has a deal with Kyte, a platform provider that specialises in branded digital content production, distribution and user engagement, for the whole afternoon to be streamed live on video into the band’s profile, from Nokia N95 mobiles.

It looks like a compelling way to include all the band's fans on Bebo and demonstrates that live event programming is just as relevant for online social networks as for broadcast television.

More analysis of how social networks and online video are integrating live elements in a future post.

Product placement for UK online shows only?

Written by Colin Donald
Posted Wednesday, 11 June 2008 at 01:56 PM

Has the British government just given UK Internet TV shows a financial boost?

Making a shock announcement today, culture secretary Andy Burnham has said that the government will not accept an EU directive to permit product placement on broadcast television.

In his first major speech on broadcasting, Burnham set out the case against product integration:

"There is a risk that product placement exacerbates this decline in trust [in television] and contaminates our programmes."

Although the government will still consult on the issue, this is a significant reversal for commercial broadcasters and advertisers.

For online television, however, it looks to be good news. Product integration is well-established in Web series such as the successful trendspotting show Bite (pictured) by Channel 4, Ogilvy and MindShare for Ford, now in its second season, as blogged by Ogilvy.

There is nothing in Burnham's speech to suggest that he intends at present to extend the ban from broadcast television to the Internet.*

So if the advertisers can't go on television, that leaves the Net as the only video option.

Update: Looks like the City is unhappy about how this will play out for ITV - it's cut 3% off the share price.

* However, as we have pointed out in a letter to the FT, there is an unresolved, long-term contradication in Burnham's policy proposals.

He is keeping the placement ban for TV and is also aiming to begin regulating online video. The logic of this would eventually be to ban placement in Web shows, too.

Yet Burnham also has a remit to support the UK’s creative industries. Extending the ban to Internet shows would seriously damage a fast-developing sector.

The minister needs to explain his reasoning. In which ways is online video similar to broadcast television and therefore to be regulated – and in which ways is it different and to be left alone?

And more debate on this at Guardian Media and PaidContent.

What do Web shows cost?

Written by Futurescape
Posted Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 08:50 PM

Daisy Whitney at TV Week uses the production cost analysis from Futurescape's 2008: The Birth of Online TV report for a fascinating comparison of current Web shows in her New Media Minute video.

From New Media Minute:

What does it really cost to produce a Web video series? $200 per minute or $2000? Or maybe $20,000? Daisy Whitney's "New Media Minute" gives you the low-down.

The numbers may surprise you. This week's "New Media Minute" breaks down a range of costs for Web series such as “Dorm Life,” “Sanctuary” and “Foreign Body” and compare those price tags to traditional TV.

Eisner: viewers will watch long webisodes

Written by Özlem Tunçil
Posted Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 05:21 PM

One of the five myths we identified in researching 2008: The Birth of Online TV is that webisodes have to be short, because Internet viewers have such a short attention span.

Producers interviewed by Futurescape maintain that viewer feedback contradicts this widely-held belief. Kathleen Grace, producer of The Burg and The All-For-Nots, describes a possible tension between the requirements of advertisers and viewers.

"The ad industry [wants] three to five minutes because you can get more impressions and views with shorter content. But we've had very successful episodes that are longer. People will watch five minutes, 15 minutes or even 22 minutes if it's compelling."

The report concluded that longer episodes, with the opportunity to deliver more complex and entertaining storylines, look to be a likely development.

Michael Eisner, who is creating pioneering online shows such as Prom Queen, The All-For-Nots and Foreign Body via his Vuguru production studio, has just been making much the same point, speaking at Microsoft's advance08 digital advertising conference (via Todd Bishop at the Seattle PI, also AdAge):

"Internet users ... will stay with a story for as long as it's good. It's not just 90 seconds or two minutes. They'll stay with a story if it's 10 minutes, 20 minutes, even 30 minutes. That's why it is so exciting to be a part of the birth of the Internet as an entertainment medium, because there are no rules. We are simply making them up as we go along."

Exactly. Original Internet shows represent a new medium and nothing should be taken for granted.

MediaPost covers online TV myths

Written by Futurescape
Posted Monday, 19 May 2008 at 04:31 PM

Gavin O’Malley at MediaPost, which is essential reading for media planners and buyers, writes:

“Thanks to viral marketing, engaging and well-produced content will distribute itself online, right? Wrong, according to a new report from Futurescape, a London-based digital entertainment R&D firm, which details several myths related to original Web content production in the U.S. and U.K.”

He goes on to discuss in detail three of the myths we identified in our report 2008: The Birth of Online TV:

1) Good content will automatically go viral (it actually requires promotion)

2) Internet shows are cheap (in fact, there is a wide range of budgets)

3) The industry is still in an experimental phase (complete end-to-end production models are already in place)

Read the full article here.

Internet shows lead branded content

Written by Futurescape
Posted Monday, 19 May 2008 at 11:41 AM

Our letter to Marketing magazine: how Internet television shows are leading the way in branded content.

Don't be left behind in the online TV stakes (Marketing 7 May 08, p26)

Your features on the importance of branded content (Advertisers starting to fund and distribute content, 15 April) and online television (Web lowers cost of brand-funded content, 22 April) are very timely.

Internet television shows are now at the cutting edge of advertiser-funded or sponsored content. Car makers, including Chrysler, Volvo and Toyota have been quick to support online shows. Ford is particularly active, backing Bite on Channel4.com, Where Are The Joneses? and other US productions.

Mindshare is already instrumental in matching Unilever brands with several programmes, including 24-spin off The Rookie and Sofia’s Diary. The Mindshare re-organisation, which has created a powerful content division, is likely to permeate this enthusiasm and expertise throughout the whole agency.

The point about TV ads signposting online branded content is well made and anticipated in the USA last year by the HamptonHighRevealed.com campaign for Acuvue contact lenses in which the broadcast commercials were trailers for Internet episodes.

As shown by the Sofia’s Diary deal to broadcast the show on Fiver, online television is now thoroughly integrated into the whole television business.

Marketers and agencies that ignore online TV opportunities now will find it hard to catch up later.