Every week (and especially this past week at NAB), I get questions from BIM clients and partners about next steps in our mobile strategy, which is a fantastic occurrence given that it shows that our station partners and our clients are looking ahead to the inevitable growth in the mobile space.

BIM is aggressively rolling in new mobile options into our platform, and evaluating build/buy options with various partners in the areas of mobile video, better SMS/MMS solutions, iPhone apps, etc., which we plan to include as part of our 2010-2011 product roadmap. Especially now that the TitanTV acquisition is completed (as of 8 weeks ago), we are moving to increase mobile options for our clients - as well as our myriad other product platform/roadmap initiatives which include CMS, video CMS, and YouNews/social media development.

However, some additional key points that all BIM clients should be aware of at the time of this blog posting:

• All BIM client sites already have a built-in mobile/WAP version of your site – that is auto-generated by the CMS. These are offered for free to all of our clients. An example of this type of site would be at www.komonews.com/mobile and www.wkbw.com/mobile (if you’re viewing this from a mobile device, we do have the technology in place to auto-direct you to the mobile version of the site even if you type in just the main URL).

These sites are sponsorable, and it should be fairly easy to have a station AE sell a branded display ad on a monthly sponsorship basis to a local advertiser. To date, the vast majority of station clients have not taken advantage of this local sales opportunity.

• BIM client sites were some of the first to have video in h.264 format – compatible across most mobile platforms (including iPad). In fact, when the iPad launched several weeks ago, we tested compatibility and found we had nearly perfect functionality.

• TitanTV has recently launched the mobile version of your programming guides – making your programming schedules easily viewable on any user’s mobile device. These guides are also sponsorable, giving your AEs another revenue-generating opportunity.

BIM looks forward to executing on these existing and other mobile opportunities for our clients in the near future.

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About Timur Yarnall, CEO Broadcast Interactive Media

It’s no doubt that Google is an amazing company that has transformed both media and technology and the overall world in which we live. I’m a huge, unabashed fan of Google – and BIM has been a beta test partner for many recent Google product launches.

But the recent announcement from Google that YouTube is launching YouTube Direct leaves me puzzled and with the general feeling that this is a dud. Here’s why:

• A site/publisher interested in the functionality of YouTube Direct could have done virtually everything described in the press release before this – take user-uploaded videos from YouTube and embed them on the publisher’s site for free. There’s nothing new here but an API (application programming interface) that most sites will have trouble using.

• Google provides no content moderation or screening – so any local site publisher with a strong brand risks having pornography or obscenity show up on the site at worst, or the cost of having an in-house staff member screen the content at best.

• YouTube Direct comes with no promotional support or contesting engine (something that our YouNews™ team here at BIM has found is critical to driving submissions, which is why we do national contests such as Halloween Hijinks and Holiday Lights at least 4 times per year).

• Google provides no sales training to local stations and site publishers on how they should actually be selling and positioning user-generated content and video in their local sales efforts. Selling user-generated content is not an intuitive exercise for local sales staff that have been selling the benefits of professionally produced content for years.

• YouTube Direct is not integrated into an existing content management system, meaning that local staff will need to work within multiple interfaces rather than having all content (station content, third party professional content such as AP, and user-generated content) show up in the same interface.

The one thing I *do* appreciate about YouTube Direct is that it does continue to validate the space and the premise on which YouNews was launched – that there is a need and a market for well-managed user-generated content -- and the fact that Google is paying attention to it (albeit with a flawed strategy) is exciting.

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About Timur Yarnall, CEO Broadcast Interactive Media

During difficult economic times, it’s human nature (perhaps even a knee-jerk reaction) for any business owner or leader to immediately look at ways to cut expense and increase revenue. At least, that’s the thought I used to keep myself from throwing my laptop out of my office window when I read about the Wisconsin legislature’s budget bill that recently passed. Happily, though, I did keep my laptop intact and have perhaps even drawn enough valuable lessons from government decision-making to keep Broadcast Interactive and our clients from making the same mistakes.

Here in Wisconsin (where Broadcast Interactive is currently headquartered), the governor and legislature saw fit to increase the personal income tax (a clear negative, in my view) while also offering a business-tax credit to companies for each new hire made in the state (a positive step at first glance).

However, the timing of these tax laws is infuriating to me both as an individual and as a CEO – the personal tax increase is retroactive to January 1, 2009 (raising revenue for the state in 2009) whereas the business tax credit for new hires is only for hires made after January 1, 2010 (cutting expense for the state in 2009 while supposedly helping an economic recovery in 2010). What these legislators have now done is given individuals a surprise and immediate hit to their personal budgets while giving business owners every incentive to refrain from hiring for the remainder of the 2009 year. As a CEO, why should I hire anyone in 2009 when I can wait 5 months knowing that I get a 10% tax credit on their salary starting in January?

Fortunately, Broadcast Interactive is in a position where we’re growing so rapidly that I can’t afford not to hire new staff today (we’ve made 3 new hires in the past 2 weeks and will need to make 5 more before year-end). It is infuriating, however, to know that the state legislature will reward employers who delay hiring and effectively punish those that go ahead with growth plans.

This type of short-sighted cost-cutting and revenue-raising is exactly what needs to be avoided in a recession. For business leaders such as those that run BIM’s client sites, this means that cost-cuts alone *without* smart investments won’t get the job done. Cost-cutting is important, no doubt, but smart investments such as:

• Hiring one of the many solid digital sales people that are now available on the job market at a fraction of what they’d have cost 12 months ago.

• Moving away from expensive Windows-based technologies that cost a fortune in license fees and leave your firm with an inflexible solution.

• Increasing the amount of stock options and employee ownership in your firms so that employees have a vested interest in building the company along with management.

These are all good examples of ways to contain costs while providing for a near-term return on investment.

Here at Broadcast Interactive, we’ve tried to follow these principals and have managed the company in a conservative manner while keeping an eye to growth – BIM has no debt, we have grown EBITDA and revenue in each of the past 5 years, and we are hiring staff to the tune of 20% headcount growth this year, while still keep relative costs down due to our location in Madison.

Now if I could only get my state government to reward BIM for such behavior rather than punishing us.

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About Timur Yarnall, CEO Broadcast Interactive Media

Over the past few weeks, YouNews™ has been getting tremendous usage in Seattle and Portland as the severe weather hitting the area gave the KOMO and KATU news teams a chance to let their viewers “do the reporting from their own backyard.” The News and Web teams at both stations did a tremendous job promoting YouNews on-air and running the submissions as part of the news coverage as they came in.

The results were incredible in terms of traffic and submissions, with thousands of video and photo postings coming in over a 36 hour window during the weekend. A great example KATU YouNews report video is one like this:

http://www.katu.com/younews/37304054.html?vid=a

Given the shifting demographics in television viewing, I think it’s interesting to note that this “YouNewser” is a teenager who obviously is excited to see her posting on TV and on the KATU website. I can’t think of a better way to reach out to the younger demographics in our audiences than encouraging them to participate in the news cast through social media applications such as YouNews.

Also, YouNews submissions even caused a scientific study at Washington State University to begin, as described in this newspaper article in the Kitsap Sun:

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/dec/30/mysterious-worms-weave-web-of-intrigue/

(Note: the Kitsap Sun is not a YouNews affiliate, so they were covering the submissions purely as local news)

Original YouNews posts:

http://www.komonews.com/younews/36837654.html

http://www.komonews.com/younews/36761024.html

For me personally, the biggest charge I get out of being an entrepreneur is seeing things like this happen. The impact of social media on local news has only just started to resonate, and I’m thrilled that YouNews will be at the center of allowing the general population to participate in their local news coverage.

Which web traffic ratings system do you trust – your own or the other guy’s?

Recently, a client asked me how to differentiate between the data they collect on their own web sites and the data on free services like Alexa or Compete.com. Here is my response:

When you directly install a system such as WebTrends on your site or use the reporting tool that is built-into the Broadcast Interactive/Clickability system, these systems are directly measuring traffic on your sites by installing tags on your pages that send calls directly to their tracking servers. So, these types of systems tend to be very accurate and (along with comScore rankings which also require tags to be installed on your sites) are generally trusted in the market. Same with Google Analytics.

However, even these systems will vary in their results by 10-15% typically, based on what they define as a ‘full page load’ versus a ‘partial page load’, etc…., given that often times a user will click and navigate away from a page before it fully loads. They will also quite literally vary based where the tags are placed on the site (top or bottom of the page). So, a certain amount of variation is normal and healthy.

Services like Compete.com and Alexa.com are free services that don’t have the benefit of directly installing tags on your sites – instead they use a number of indirect methods of measuring traffic and user engagement. This might include tracking ISP records, dropping cookies on user-machines that have downloaded their toolbar (such as Alexa does) to track user behavior, etc…. kind of like a free version of Nielsen for the web.

In general, then, I’d say you should trust and rely on your direct measurement reports (ie, WebTrends or Broadcast Interactive/Clickability reports), but that you can use Compete or the Alexa toolbar to track relative performance of other sites in your markets.

If you catch a competitor stating that their site gets more traffic than yours based solely on Compete.com records, you should ask that they back it up by releasing their WebTrends, comScore, or Google Analytics reports. This is especially true if you feel that Compete.com is under-ranking your site relative to the numbers you see in WebTrends.

To summarize: trust your installed and fee-based ratings numbers over the free ratings services but use the free services for quick comparisons.