multitude of potentially game-
changing media innovations cur
rently reside in the world’s labora
tories, academic institutions and R&D depart
ments. Some exist as emerging concepts – such as
the ‘semantic web’ of data – others as hardware or
software, quite probably filtering through after
doing time in the field as military applications.
But aren’t there always exciting gadgets and
gizmos out there being experimented with? Well,
yes. But what makes this particular point in time
unique, is that when it comes to fundamentally
shifting the media landscape – which in turn affects
the rest of the marketing communications food
chain – a simultaneous set of inter-reliant
advancements are currently taking place. Indeed,
the combined whole of these may equate to far
more than the sum of their individual parts. And the
subsequent potential for changes to how media is
consumed and communications targeted, makes for
some mind-blowing times ahead.
The semantic web
The Macquarie Dictionary defines semantic as “the
systematic study of the meanings of words …” Set
this against this reference, what the internet
currently does and does not do, what a semantic
web is, as well as what it could potentially offer,
should become clearer.
The internet currently resembles a massive
library with a retrieval system that allows your
computer to fetch, view and pass-on any page you
want. It uses html code as the language empowering
machines to display each document. But the
computers involved don’t know the meaning of any
of the words in those pages, they don’t understand
them. If you search ‘I love Supergrass’, for example,
the computers involved in the one-million-plus hits
that particular search generates don’t know whether
the related pages they hold correspond to the wife
of a mobster who grassed on his mafia boss, a
superior way to feed livestock, or a MySpace page
about a band’s album. Obviously, there are ways for
the creator of a web page to make it clearer what
that particular page is about – tagging of keywords,
for instance. But if computers could understand the
meaning of things you view and search, grasp what
they were and how they might relate to each other
via any possible data being made available online –
be it bands, brands, events, people, places,
concepts, whatever – then the internet could
potentially shift toward actively connecting people
with relevant things across myriad platforms and
allowing consumers to view correlations and
summaries of things currently quite separate.
Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the world
wide web, is at the forefront of a growing movement
toward the semantic web of data. In an online
interview for Technology Review last year, he used
the following scenario to help explain what it might
mean to individuals: “The challenge of putting data
on the web is that it will be about all kinds of things.
“I might look at my financial data, then move it
into my calendar view to see what I was doing when I
wrote that cheque. Then maybe to better figure that
out I will need to pull in some photographs, from
which I can go through to who was in that photo via
my address book or through the organisational
structure of that company. It’s movement from one
domain to another.”
So while today’s internet is about documents,
content and the accessing and sharing thereof, it
may soon be about ‘things’ and the semantic web of
data allowing for a previously un-charted way of
pulling once seemingly unlink-able related data
together with potentially staggering results.
At a more granular level, a semantic web that
understands the meaning of words will also make
search more focused. For instance, if you're a music
fan searching for Supergrass your browser will be
able to identify that you mean the band, so you
won't get a million-plus hits with many of them for
criminals or cattle-grazing techniques.
Seadragon
One side of two related photo-imaging applications
(the other being Photosynth), Seadragon is the most
visually mind-blowing of all the innovations
mentioned here. Seadragon allows for limitless,
seamless zooming of images – switching between
thousands of them if needs be and billions of pixels
besides – all without any hang time for pixels to
reconfigure and without placing massive strain on
data and connectivity speeds. Users can expect to
seamlessly view all their own digital pictures, from
holiday snaps to, for the sake of example, a one-
shot image containing an overhead map of Sydney –
with each at a high-enough quality that you can
zoom in, and in, and in, and in, to view the tiniest
detail at the highest quality.
Brett Rolfe, communications director at Naked
Sydney, says of the technology’s use in marketing:
“It's a concept that's been around for a while in
different forms, but no advertiser has used it that
much, as nobody has done it well and got a real pay
off yet. When the technology becomes ubiquitous,
like if Microsoft Seahorse is deployed across the
board, then that makes a huge difference, the sense
of scale and zoom you can get is enormous.”
What could it mean? For starters, it may make
print-media zealots reconsider arguments that
reading content online isn’t as engaging or as quality
an experience as the real thing. It may also spell an
end to all the clunky banners and buttons on web
and mobile sites if Seadragon truly takes off. For
example, imagine the front page of a newspaper’s
online edition, with a quarter-page ad for a car
brand placed in the bottom corner – add in infinite
zoom and things start to get pretty mind blowing.
Advertisers could include, for example, full specs
for the vehicle in question, other car brands, their
environmental policies, and any other details, all
without cluttering up the page and with incredible
ease-of-use for the user – thanks to the intuitive
touch-screen interactions people are now growing
used to. A case study along these lines was
demonstrated at a recent TED Talks lecture in the
United States (search Mircosoft Seadragon on
YouTube to view), and underscores the highly
relevant applications potentially available to the
advertising and media world. This isn't ‘blue sky’
stuff either. There are patents pending for
Seadragon mobile and PC uses, with a Seadragon
application for iPhone currently available to
download. All of this technology works in harmony
with a related product called Photsynth.
Silicon Batteries /
Ultra-Fast Recharge
Enormous developments have been made to the
batteries powering hand-held devices, and some of
them will be in production and on-shelf soon. On one
side, research institutions in the United States, such
as MIT and Stanford, have developed silicon (rather
than the currently used lithium) battery technology
that will boost life between recharges for hand-held
devices ten-fold. While on the other side of the
same coin, researchers elsewhere have developed
battery technology that potentially allows for 30-
second recharge times and even lower.
Naturally, this opens up hand-held devices to a
huge surge in the number of people consuming rich-
media content and other power-hungry functions on
mobiles – such as GPS systems and the
downloading of applications. However, while
upcoming technological strides in battery life will
resolve some frustrations of consumers and
content creators alike, the advances made are, to a
large extent, only as useful as those in mobile data
connectivity and download-speeds.
Camilla Cooke, digital strategy head at
Wunderman, says: “People will be going faster to
mobile devices and I think the phenomenal impact of
smart phones on internet usage, and the fact they’re
ultra mobile, also means the emphasis on location-
based services is going to get more important. The
big changes will be the coming together of very fast
download speeds and the thin mobile device.”
Even further ahead and right at the cutting edge
in the mobile power field, is the nano battery which
is the size of a microchip and constructed from
microscopic viruses. While a long way from general
use, and it’s worth noting that taking batteries from
the lab through to scalable commercialisation is
notoriously difficult, such extreme potential
underlines just how far things can still go in keeping
with Moore’s Law – that everything doubles in
performance every 18 months.
Wolfram Alpha
Dubbed a potential Google killer and created by the
eponymous physicist Stephen Wolfram, the
Wolfram Alpha engine answers individual questions
via its own computations and algorithms applied to
available online data, rather than by tracking down
and providing documents already in existence. And
unlike Google, it can give you answers to questions
that may have never been asked before. With a
stated intention of making “all systematic
knowledge immediately computable by anyone”, this
isn’t a search engine in the way we’ve come to
understand, instead it tries to answer questions and
deal with facts directly – intuitively providing
related information and answers to other queries
that may flow from that. It’s basically a massive
brain, rather than a massive library retrieval system,
as is the case with search in its current form. For
example, type in “Sydney, London, New York” and
Wolfram Alpha will use your location to understand
the cities you mean – if there are duplicate names
elsewhere for instance – and then present you with
comparative data you can look further into. Such as,
flight lengths between each city by distance and
time, the current time in each city, the comparative
population of each, the shortest distance around
the globe between each, and so on.
What it could mean? In short, Wolfram Alpha may
mark a move to more targeted search, and less
search results. It’s very early days, but Wolfram
Alpha went live a few weeks ago and has attracted
huge interest. It’s currently very academic in terms
of the data it works with and results it produces, but
as the wealth of data available for it to draw on
grows over time, the possibilities of the technology
are clearly enormous. If it can bring to the online
world the same marketing muscle that Google did,
then it could well start to attract significant chunks
of search-related media budgets too.
Perhaps the best indication of Wolfram Alpha’s
potential impact is the recent and strong reaction
from Google, which unveiled a ‘Squared’ element to
its own search capability. In a similar vein to
Wolfram Alpha, Google Squared is now trying to add
a level of semantics to searches and present its
best-guesses, in a useful form, as to what query you
actually want answered. As Wunderman’s Cooke
puts it: “Search engines will interrogate context as
much as they currently do text. So it will be much
easier to find meaningful stuff. And to some extent
it will be easier to publish and easier to manipulate
the information you publish, as essentially you're
putting in an interpretation layer.”
Considering the increasingly large slices of
budget that go on search, this is a must watch area
for the entire sector, as Google, Wolfram Alpha and
others are rapidly tipping the online world into the
Search 3.0 era.
4G / WiMax
Straightforward to grasp – just think turbo-charged
WiFi. The signal that mobile devices connect to the
internet via will soon be faster – at least five times
so – and travel further distances than 3G or WiFi
currently allows. And importantly, it’s scalable as
costs aren’t prohibitive for installing base stations.
In the United States, Google has partnered with
Intel and three of the large cable operators in a
multi-billion dollar WiMax investment – a move that
ties in with penetration of Google’s own Android
mobile phone platform and applications.
Explaining the technology, Jamie Wilson,
managing director of IT specialist firm eNerds,
notes: “WiFi is really just a way of sending out
whatever internet connection you have wirelessly.
So with these advances, connection speeds will go
through the roof and as the technology becomes
more sophisticated you’ll be able to receive more
and more data on mobile. Even in three years speed
has accelerated massively, Moore’s law certainly
applies to mobile internet solutions."
Buoyed by such advances, the significant
changes promised in mobile for quite a while will
come to fruition over the next three years, claims
Naked’s Rolfe. “Along with these faster networks,
we’re moving to always on and no longer having to
go through that handshaking process of ‘I’m about to
do some data’. Instead, access on mobile will just be
there. We have some good things about mobile in
Australia and some challenges ... The killer thing
here though is hitting the speed that allows for
streaming video.
“I can get a lot of use out of applications at the
moment, but 3G won’t get you heavy media content,
and that’s the transition you’ll see, from just
downloading and using applications to ‘oh, I’m
watching TV on the move’. We’re seeing our mobile
devices get to the point of being able to consume
digital content at the same time as the maturing of
YouTube and bit-torrent, and not necessarily
through big gate keepers like TV broadcasters or
telcos.”
The Cloud
You may have heard the terms ‘in the cloud’ and
‘cloud computing’ bandied around. Indeed, if you
work with or around digital types you’ll naturally
know what it means. But for the uninitiated, the
cloud is basically a place on the internet – accessed
via your web browser – that houses virtual
resources. You can store information and access
software and applications there, instead of buying
and storing it all yourself. The cloud cuts out the
need for large bits of kit and servers within your
office or home. Operating in the cloud is totally
scalable – so you might run, for instance, a small
business requiring only five users to access your
cloud resources, or you might want to open up your
cloud services to thousands of people across the
globe. Currently, charging structures are similar to a
metered taxi – pay as you go and a bit cheaper but
nonetheless a cost when idle.
There are still some fundamental concerns about
operating in the cloud though. In particular the
handing over of confidential data – such as
customer or financial information – to the third-
party operator. Also, some commentators have
expressed concerns that users of cloud services are
restricted in what changes they can make and are at
the mercy of the administrators of given cloud
services. Nonetheless, the savings businesses can
achieve through using the cloud means many big
brands are already on board.
The current darling of the cloud for the
marketing communications sector is
Salesforce.com – a customer-relationship
management resource already used by the likes of
Dell, Siemens and Starbucks. Yahoo!, Microsoft and,
of course, Google – which offers cloud applications
and also partners with Salesforce.com to link some
respective cloud resources together – are among
many businesses also highly active in the cloud.
eNerds’ Wilson, says: “As an opportunity, the
cloud is a great way to deliver services to
consumers and business. All your documents and
spreadsheets are on that server, and a cloud
solution comes with the expectation that they're
backing it all up and securing it for you, which is
great. But the uptake of cloud computing depends
on the speeds of connectivity and networks being
there, none of this is going to work very well if it’s
too slow.” As for businesses in the marketing
communications sector, if the success
Salesforce.com is anything to go by – and
considering the tens of millions of dollars many
brands spent on expensive CRM failures back in the
1990s, it probably is – then The Cloud may yet have
significant implications for marketing budgets. For
smaller agencies it also currently means cheaper
costs than in the past to use some software and
services – doubtless procurement departments are
switched on to this.
As for consumers, will they actually care about
the cloud? Only if it means they can’t access the
things they want, when they want. But much of that
issue is bound up in the progress of other
technologies this feature covers.
Highly Intuitive
Products
When the iPhone started appearing in people's
pockets, it seemed like a device that had arrived
from the future.
The touch-screen interface and intuitive
usability marked the beginning of a wave of similar
handset technologies, but looking further ahead
what currently seems like a large stride forward in
how we use mobile devices could on reflection
appear a mere baby-step. The much-maligned area
of voice recognition may, finally, when combined
with the now-popularised touch interface, bring
both at-home and particularly mobile devices to life
in such a way that they instinctively know what you
want to consume, when, where and how. And in the
near future the combination of touch and voice
functionality could displace the mouse or fiddly
mobile keypads.
With all kinds of automated intuition such as
location-based services, the behavioural patterns of
that device, and so on, there also stands to be some
potentially huge implications for advertisers and
their agencies in using the available data for
targeting audiences precisely.
“We can currently get rid of 20-50% definite
media wastage,” says Jonathan Axworthy, digital
director at PHD. “But with data gleaned from these
products we can take it to such a detailed level of
information about a consumer or that machine: ‘that
user has stepped out for lunch, he’s walking past
this shop, but he’s going to the gym so let’s not offer
him a Hungry Jack’s today ... let’s offer him
something on his way back from the rugby on
Saturday instead’. So, without being too scary or Big
Brother you can offer people all sorts of relevant
things. These devices potentially can know exactly
what you’re doing, where you are, and with
everything coming together such as micropayments
on your phone, therefore from a marketing point of
view you can genuinely speak to people who you
think will be open to your message.”
Add Moore’s Law in to the mix with the advances
being made in connection speeds, battery life and
data availability and compression, and you start to
get the picture of future potential for targeted
communications.
Conclusion
There are many more developments to consider
besides, and the more you look in to the area of
technological innovation and how it might be applied
to media, the more intriguing the possibilities
become. That said, applying these – and other –
technologies and concepts to businesses steeped in
history and, of course, whose objective is to make
more and more money, year after year, makes it
wise to end on a cautionary note.
As Wunderman's Cooke adroitly puts it: “There’s
always a lag, it’s like treading on a dinosaur's tail.
When it’s left to consumers things happen incredibly
quickly. But at the other end of the chain, the people
pumping stuff in, the corporate world, government
and enterprise, you always have this generation
problem that the people making decisions around
technology are often too old to embrace it.
“While the organisations at the epicentre that
see they can make money will be quick to the mark,
the people using it for their own secondary ends, to
publish, or sell for instance, will be slower to adopt.
“ That’s something we have seen and will
continue to see. In marketing there’s always a 10-
year deferral."
