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Digital Media Conference Highlights 6/25/09

I attended the Digital Media Conference in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia last week (June 25, 2009) and wanted to share a few sound bites and highlights – in no particular order.

Overall the conference was well attended from start to finish.  The panelists were generally top executives from many large and well-respected companies, along with a good number of smaller company CEOs.  The mood was interesting.  In general, the panelists were very enthusiastic about the current state of digital media as well as its prospects.  The audience, however, was less convinced.  Unlike last year, where I was greeted every few minutes by entrepreneurs wanting to pitch their latest company, there seemed to be more “service providers” in the audience this year, and fewer entrepreneurs.

• The breakthrough moment for mobile marketing has not yet arrived.  It is still 1-2 years away.  Gary Arlen, Arlen Communications
• The breakthrough moment for mobile marketing has arrived.  All of the panelists on Gary’s panel (Mobileposse CEO, Millenial Media SVP, Acuity Mobile CEO, Distributive Networks CEO)
• The breakthrough moment for mobile marketing has not arrived (90% of the audience watching the panel
  

Does the iphone dominate (an interesting question posed by AOL President of Products and Technologies, Ted Cahall)

• iPhone has only 1.5% of phone sales
• iPhone ahs 23% of the domestic market by unit volume
• iPhone has 60% of all smartphone internet traffic
• of 7.5B mobile ads served, 2B are on the iPhone
• iPhone 3GS sold 1M units in 3 days.  First iPhone 2G took 74 days to sell 1M units
• Conclusion:  Apple learned from the IBM PC.  Applications drive hardware sales
  

For the Millenial generation, Internet usage at 14 hours per week exceeds TV viewing which is at 10.5 hours per week.  Bill Bradford, Chief Product Officer, Fox Digital Media

Facebook is about feeds, but no longer about self-expression.  MySpace could own this area, or someone else will.  Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO Living Social

MySpace should buy Twitter (or deeply integrate with it) to become relevant again.  Ali Partovi, CEO iLike  (when a 200 person audience was asked what they use, 1 person said MySpace, 70% of the audience said Facebook.)

If your advertising and monetization strategy is struggling online, it will be much worse in a social media environment.  Rob Driscoll, Partner with Davis Wright

Android is the strongest platform competitor to the iPhone.  David Leibowitz Managing Partner CH Potomac

3G is not working for video.  The user experience sucks.  Marc DeBevoise, SVP Starz Digital Media

Premium content has to be paid for (like Sponge Bob) but we give away lots of branded content for free on the desktop and the mobile phone to drive people to TV, where we make good money.  Allen Duan, VP MTV

Nothing is free at National Geographic.  We have proprietary content.  We don’t have a single line item for advertising revenue in our mobile P&L.  I like Nokia more than Apple – more growth in emerging markets where we are very strong.  Paul Levine, SVP National Geographic

15% of our revenue is games and music.  The walled gardens are still there.  They are shifting from carriers to Rim, Apple and others.  Made for mobile is dead.  If its on the web, its mobile.  We don’t like subscriptions.  We are 100% ad-supported.  Anurag Harsh, VP CBS.