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Survivor's Revenue Streams
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - May 25, 2001

The colossal amount of coverage generated by ITV's new reality-show Survivor, didn't stop with traditional media. The show also included pay-per-view options for web and mobile phone users. Following recent discussion focusing on generating revenue from content, it's not surprising that this generated plenty of interest.

Mike Butcher kicked things off by asking, "I've had a look but I can't see how ITV are charging 1.50 pounds to view exclusive content on the site from the Survivor reality TV show. Can anyone on the list see it? Is it a drop dialer? I'd be interested to hear views about getting consumers to pay for video/broadcast content online (other than porn of course)."

Glen Collins replied, "If you want to view exclusive content you need a pass code which you get via dialling a premium rate line @ £1.50 a min (avg. duration 1 minute)"

Paul O'Donoghue added, "If you click on the icon for exclusive footage, you are asked to dial a premium rate number for a pass number to access the clips 20 times the clips are not brilliant from a content point of view - they don't really give you anything special - but the quality is very impressive and download time is good."

Ken Cowley, whose company was involved in the project, emailed, "For general information, we had to use 'per minute' to give pass codes as the maximum UK drop charge is 50 pence, which was not the price point desired by Carlton.

Obviously this will be an interesting, but not comprehensive test, of consumer acceptance. ...I've been to many conferences on all this and the only conclusion I've reached is that there is no conclusion. We're going to have to suck it and see. Expect to see more of it however as telcos and ISPs seek to recoup bandwidth costs (streaming is much hungrier than the sporadic use of web browsing), web site owners generally look for income, and media groups like Carlton start making 'convergence' happen."

Some people were sceptical about whether the public would pay, Lee Rickler wrote, "Are people really that sad that they can't live without paying 1.50 for info on a TV prog? I don't blame the company if they can get away with fleecing the punters but sheesshh!!"

Commenting on the process of getting the pass code to access the premium content, Mike Hales emailed, "I was going to comment but I'm laughing too hard. Talk about putting as many hurdles in front of people as possible and the programme's first set of viewing figures didn't exactly set the world on fire. Good business model on paper I'm sure, but madness in terms of actually getting people to use it."

The show still has several weeks left to run, but we'll watch with a lot of interest to see how the public react to charges for this type of content. Looking to the US there have been few examples were this has worked, WWF being one of the notable successes.

Porn Leads The Way

It's often said that the only industry that's making money online is pornography. It certainly is a big business, and often highly innovative...ehem...so I'm led to believe. Online credit card transactions were driven in the early days by porn sites, looking for revenue streams, a great deal of successful pay-per-view content could be considered pornographic and many marketing techniques have come from this industry.

With a view on the smut peddlers, Matt Bacon asked, "Seriously, I'm quite interested in knowing what the porn industry's take on 3G wireless and broadband 'interactive' content propositions actually _is_. Since I can't really work out how to make the business case for content on either platform stack up in the legit world, and since the porn industry has been a highly-successful early adopter of new content platforms in the past, I'd genuinely like to know which uses of technology/interactive direction(s) look like they'll make money. Anyone know where to find out (excepting hours of smut-surfing)? Does _anyone_ write about/analyse this sort of thing in a serious way?"

Jay Gooby suggested, "Reuters & The Industry Standard at least! Cre@te magazine did a feature on design in the porn industry a while back too!"

Alex Dale added, "Well, the porn industry must be the source of most premium call rate revenue in the UK. Just add pictures / interactivity to the services advertised at the back of the Daily Star ... This covers current (2G) activities like WAP prostitute directories(!)"

Not strictly about porn, but covering revenue streams from content, John Braithwaite wrote, "Content can be one of the most powerful tools to gain access to consumers and increase online presence (whether Internet, mobile or other). We see this every day when we perform research and landscaping for our clients, people do search for content and are prepared to pay if it's unique and desirable (the first part being the most difficult to achieve). Even without having unique content - by making it easily accessible, usable and desirable, it can definitely be 'paid-for' in one way or another.

With 3G there are definite revenue streams available through micro-payments etc. Did you know that thousands of people still call Teamtalk on a premium rate telephone number for the latest 'exclusives'? With mobiles people are in the 'pay' mentality (again small payments, but with volume, the revenue is there!) - they pay for calling, voicemail, line rental etc. Sure, people on the net have been getting used to 'free' information - but doors are starting to be shut (or disappear due to demise) and as this happens, payment will start to become a part of using the 'net."

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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