How to Cross Promote: The Interactive Solution

Insider Profile: Stephen Strong, Global Director of Interactive, Alberto Culver

Stephen Strong, global director of Interactive, Alberto Culver, oversees interactive marketing strategies for brands such as TRESemme, Nexxus, VO5 and Noxzema. He has been with Alberto Culver for a year and a half.

Prior to that, Strong was the director of interactive for Draftfcb’s Chicago office for eight years. He has more than 15 years interactive marketing experience working with brands that include Kraft, Sears, SC Johnson and Motorola.

At the upcoming Digital Media Measurement & Pricing Summit, Strong will address developing a strategic approach for campaign success, identifying key performance indicators and delivering ROI.

DMB’s Barbara Gengler spoke to Strong about his interactive approach to ad campaigns.

How did you integrate Alberto Culver’s branded content from website to paid media and social media?
We talked about what to use as a spark to have an engaging experience with consumers to support our campaign. The struggle is what’s the big idea to do online? How to create original content to put online?

At Alberto Culver, there are similar challenges to do social media more than product banners on the Internet. There are also sweepstakes and sponsorships to put the message out there. We looked at the marketing pushes last year and started with them and where can we take that to the present marketing events to get that message out there.

We are a big sponsor of the Fall 2010 season of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which took place from Feb. 11-18 in New York City, and for a little more money we had a video crew on stage capturing the video so we could put it in online.

Alongside the sponsorship, TRESemme launched TRESemme TRESpass, an exclusive group on Facebook that gives women instant, VIP access to the latest looks. The site features video on how to get the hair seen on the runway and tips on upcoming fall hair trends.

This year we are ramping up the media across distribution channels and testing out ways to push the content out and on to our Facebook page.

How did you expand its reach and effectiveness? What were the results?
For social media we aren’t so interested in the cost efficiency, since it is so low cost to maintain/upload our videos. But we are looking at consumer engagement (which videos get the most views, which gather the most fan comments/”likes”) to help determine what type of content they are most interested in. We would use this information to guide the type of video content we produce for the next program.

Paid media gets the best results and within paid media you get the most efficient views. We are testing out different ways to push it out there from a media standpoint.

On top of that, raising awareness and brand site/Facebook, people are coming there to look at that site on their own accord. We are providing content people are interested in and using the same content to re-establish with users how you serve it up.

Could you talk about identifying relevant Key Performance Indicators?
For online media/video distribution, we mainly look at cost efficiency, (cost per view), which will tell us which media channels are able to capture the most eyeballs at the lowest cost.

We would then pair that with message effectiveness (ComScore, Dynamic Logic, etc.) which tells us how consumers were affected after viewing the videos (association with TRESemme, increased purchase intent, etc.)

We would combine these learnings to identify the best sites/video networks to use for the next program. Also we did get a lot of comments about the content on the web pages and what brand advantages are connected.

How could they increase the effectiveness of digital ad spend?
From my point of view, I hate banner advertising, it’s a huge mistake with the focus on banner ads. I think I would challenge public relations agencies, media agencies to a no banner media campaign.

This should not be where the industry is going as banner advertising has always been terrible. Take that content elsewhere.

We want to put the content together and distribute it ourselves on Facebook, to the media sites, with some control over it. We’ve started looking at the media programs, most of them, and found this is what we want, and we ask them are you in or out?

We’re coming back with a better strategy and the media sites are open to this type of program. You have to get involved with the media content the agencies are creating.

Basically from my point of view, 80 percent of what I hear during a panel discussion is irrelevant. Most of the upcoming session will be from a strategic approach, a case study, examples of how to do it with no events. This is a type of approach you could use.

Virtualizing a Future in Green IT

By Moria Byrne

As the IBM senior-certified IT architect for IBM Global Business Services, John Lamb works as part of an influential group of architectural engineers changing how IT departments approach energy usage.

An information technology leader who has worked on IT systems for the New York Stock Exchange and other industry leaders, Lamb implements new money and energy-saving techniques as part of IBM’s Project Big Green project. The project will redirect USD $1 billion per year to increase energy efficiency of IBM products and services. As part of a team of technology engineers building data centers for a South African mobile phone company, Lamb helped the company provide energy and services to the local community without expending energy resources.

As part of the IBM Global Business Service team and author of more 50 white papers and two other books on technology, Lamb shares his technical expertise on energy-saving techniques with businesses in the U.S. as well as IT businesses with in his latest book, The Greening of IT: How companies can make a difference for the environment. Lamb explains how cloud computing, more efficient cooling systems, increased use of energy metrics, incentives and better hardware are all changing the role of IT operators from energy users to energy watchdogs. His book is intended for both CEOs and technical engineers by providing both the why (savings and increased productivity) and the how (a technology guide of how to apply energy savings techniques) of energy-saving IT techniques. Lamb recently spoke with DMB’s Moria Byrne.

What are the major trends in IT Green Technology right now?
There is a growing awareness about energy consumption in the IT business community. Also, the economic downturn has forced companies to look for ways to reduce costs.

Fortunately, even in this bad economy, electricity is doing well, which means IT will continue to grow. For example, Google has 450,000 servers and keeps growing. What this means is that the company needs to keep building upon a tremendous database.

Does cloud computing play an important role in IT energy conservation? Absolutely! Ten years from now, everything will be done through cloud computing. It is a way to optimize a data center.

IBM consulting expects the number of server shipments to grow by six times and the number of server databases by 69 times. Information technology keeps growing. It reflects how data centers keep growing. In South Africa, we are working with a mobile phone company with a tremendous customer service database. A lot of the information is regulation customer information, etc. The company has 2 Pedbites of information; that’s 10,000 GB! This is a tremendous amount of data. Overall, IBM is building more than 70,000 GB of new information a day.

Were you able to save a lot of energy by using cloud computing for the South African mobile phone company?
IBM moved all 10 database servers into a private cloud where the energy is shared. IBM worked with a company to make their system of 1,000 data servers more efficient. It was hard to keep track of 1,000 servers and going around to keep up the power supply. Now, their power is all in one server. Companies can save a lot by consolidating data servers.

It’s important to create a network, to consolidate and centralize data centers. Cloud computing makes a global network possible. Currently, IBM has 10 virtual servers. Energy costs were greatly reduced by cloud computing. Yet, consolidating data center isn’t enough; companies must moderate metric systems by new standards.

And cloud computing is your way of virtualizing data centers?
Before laptops and the like, which was 40 years ago, every department had their own terminal. It turns out if you wanted to share energy from one center to another, you couldn’t. We decided to go back to the future and make computer systems highly available, uninterrupted service with high-end supplies of energy. This way when the power goes out, the computers keep running. Now, the power is all in one data server.

You save a lot of energy. It’s like taking 10 houses and turning them into an apartment building in which residents are sharing the same heating system. With cloud computing, we don’t have to think about the servers running out of power.

Virtual just means you don’t have separate servers but systems sharing (like a printer) a bigger storage device. For instance, if you have two stand-alone servers with 10-percent capacity and one is using at 5-percent capacity and [another one is] using at 10-percent capacity, it’s better for the two systems to work together. As one is underused and the other is used to its capacity, you still have 5 percent energy capacity to spare.

Do you think that IT departments will be responsible in 10 years for keeping their energy consumption in check?
Absolutely. IT departments will be responsible for their own energy bills. Currently, there is no repercussions when an IT department wants an additional server. There isn’t a good chargeback system in place.

IT departments would have a certain number of GB of storage per month or fiscal quarter.  If a department decides that they need 100 GB more, they will be charged for the additional GB out of their departmental budget. IT departments take responsibility for their electric bills and consider energy needs carefully before increasing GB storage.

Do you think government incentives are going to become increasingly important in pushing IT companies to use energy more efficiently?
I think there will be an increase over time in the number of government rebates available. More government-sponsored incentive programs to push companies to change would make a difference. The government of California put pressure on BGE. Now, the company receives rebates for reducing energy costs in California.

In 1977 or 1978, there was a big energy crisis. IBM was concerned about cutting servers. Then, energy suddenly got cheaper again. Things are going to get bad if you don’t give people incentives. Would they make the same energy choices without it? I’d like to think so. I think things are changing, I think this is a permanent change.

How are you changing IBM applications for maximum energy efficiency?
It’s not just about saving energy by using more efficient hardware and better infrastructure, it’s about the applications, too. You can do 50 percent of your work in 50 percent of the space. If you optimize your applications, you can save up to half your energy.

Both Google and Amazon use private clouds to store their information. Clouds allow large companies to make their information available and transferrable to staff in India or Beijing as readily as someone in NYC.

Do you think all companies will be using cloud computing in the future?
Yes. Ten years from now, every company will be using cloud computing. Most large companies will use private clouds to consolidate different data centers. This way, the company information is protected and only available to specific employees. Smaller businesses will use public clouds or not have a data center at all.

How can the Internet support these new clouds?
High-bandwidth is on the rise in major international cities and cloud computing internationally will be more easily accessible. Already, I have seen strong bandwidth in international cities such as Bangalore, India, where IBM currently has 70,000 employees.

And as bandwidth grows within companies, the need for more space will also continue to grow within data centers. Companies will increasingly be able to house information where ever they choose. For example, IBM has data center operators in Brazil that manage the data centers physically housed in Chicago.

Do you see any other countries other than the U.S. leading the way in Green IT?
China is on its way to becoming the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, yet it remains one of the most polluted countries on earth. India is also on a green IT boom.

To diagnose how to have energy used in data centers download the following online software tool from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Moria Byrne is a freelance journalist and editor. Her work has been featured in: Baltimore Business Journal, Maryland Daily Record, The Jewish Times and The Narragansett Times.

Virtual Worlds Go Mainstream For Businesses

By Ron Callari

Viximo, a 2-year-old start-up company, is fast becoming a leader in the burgeoning virtual goods industry. For those who are new to this commercial space, virtual goods are digital products that are gifted, bartered or paid-for items online or via mobile phones. Videos, icons, e-cards, personalized avatars - items that allow people to better express themselves, add gravitas to their online persona, or increase their enjoyment of a game - make up the products that are now known as virtual goods.

Considered an unlimited opportunity for thousands of Web publishers, Viximo distinguishes itself from its competition in how it addresses the market. It claims it is the first and currently the only virtual goods provider that brings together everything a publisher needs for virtual goods in one complete, easy to implement, customizable solution.

Viximo is one of the only companies that offers both a system for selling virtual goods and the goods themselves. This then permits clients to either upload directly into their own virtual gift stores or customize at will.

In addition to partners such as Fotolog and Zorpia, Viximo just added BlackPlanet.com, SmartDate.com and FanIQ.com into its virtual goods platform. These deals extend Viximo’s reach to 60 million users, a new milestone for the company.

The increased interest in virtual goods is apparent by how quickly it has scaled. U.S. consumers spent $1 billion on such items in 2009, according to Inside Network, a market research company focused on Facebook and social gaming sites. Daniel Strang, the newly appointed CEO of Viximo, says he “sees these types of purchases as a potential substitute for dying revenue streams (such as subscriptions) in the publishing world.”

Brian Balfour, founder and vice president of product marketing for Viximo, speaks with DMB about how companies can capitalize on the virtual goods market.

What is the current status and future of the virtual goods market and how does it break down percentages between social networking, online gaming and online dating sites?
The current size of the virtual goods market in 2009 was about $1 billion in North America, and about $7 billion world wide. While North America still represents only one-seventh of the global market, it is the fastest growing - quadrupled in 2009 - and the youngest. There is still a lot of room to grow in North America and we expect it to double in 2010. I am unsure of exact percentages, but the majority of virtual goods purchases are taking place on social networks, which includes social gaming - probably around 50 percent. The next biggest area is more traditional gaming and virtual worlds, with online dating being the smallest piece at the moment.

What do traditional brands use virtual goods for? (e.g.  Kohl’s, American Apparel, Sears, K-Swiss, Eberjey)
There are a couple opportunities for brands to get involved in virtual goods.

The first way is a sponsorship model. Users are highly engaged with virtual goods and spread them virally to their friends, so it’s a great place for brands to embed themselves. Brands can pay to have branded virtual goods offered to the users in various social networks and games. It basically acts as a very engaging form of promotion that performs much better then banner advertising does on social communities.

The second way is a licensed model. Certain brands that have a luxury appeal to them have an opportunity to sell virtual goods around their brand to users for actual money.

Does Viximo supply Second Life with virtual goods? According to the blogosphere that site has lost popularity over the years? Why?
Viximo does not supply virtual goods to Second Life. We primarily work with social networks, online dating and casual gaming sites. These areas are where most of the growth happened in 2009 and will continue to happen in 2010. I think the fact that the public has lost interest in Second Life is a good thing for the virtual goods industry. Typically people originally associated virtual goods with something very geeky and non mainstream like Second Life or other 3D worlds. The fact is that they represent a smaller portion than other areas like Social Networking. Virtual goods is a mainstream thing and as users become exposed to it more often, it will become more socially acceptable and we will continue to see the industry as a whole grow.

What types of sites are “hot” right now? And why?
The three verticals [that we] mentioned are where we will see most of the growth in 2010. There are still thousands of these sites worldwide that have yet to institute virtual goods. But looking forward beyond 2010 there is a question of how virtual goods will expand into the broader social Web and content arena. It will happen, but just how we don’t know yet. Other areas of potential opportunity in North America would be consoles (xBox, Wii, etc).

Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been published on AlterNet, CounterPunch and the Sacramento News & Review. He is currently a social media blogger for InventorSpot.com and the author of two graphic novels.

Web Startup 101: Get a Business Plan

By Sheila Shayon

Dave Lavinsky, co-founder of Growthink and president of Growthink Publishing, is a serial entrepreneur, with several successful ventures to his credit such as Emerge Juice and Nutrition Systems - a wellness products developer and distributor; Shoutmouth - a niche music-focused social networking site; Z Reporter LLC - owner of more than 3,000 niche-focused information websites; and TopPayingKeywords - a Search Engine Marketing & Optimization research data firm.

Growthink, a company he founded with Jay Turo, CEO, specializes in strategy consulting, investment banking and market research services. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Seattle, San Francisco and New York, Growthink has caught the attention of mainstream media including CNN.com, Businessweek.com, CNN Money, and made Top 50 and Top 100 Lists in Annual ‘Inc. 5000′ Business Surveys.

Calling themselves “idealistic capitalists,” they believe that the best ideas, products and services delivered to the market the best possible way make the most money. Their clients include entrepreneurs, startups, small businesses, venture capital and private equity firms, middle market organizations and Fortune 500 companies. In the last decade, Growthink has completed more than 2,000 engagements with such clients as: Deutsche Bank, Hooters, Paramount Parks, Porsche Design and The Salvation Army.

What gives your company a strategic edge in today’s marketplace?
Our team is comprised of entrepreneurs - we’ve all started and grown businesses, we are experienced, calculated risk-takers, who’ve had failures and successes. We’ve all had hands-on learning - strategic and tactical, and understand the why, what and how of creating and growing a business.

What are the main qualities you look for in a working relationship with a client?
First, we bet on the jockey, not on the horse. It’s not always about a track record - just look at Google, Apple, You Tube. The entrepreneurs behind those businesses didn’t have success stories - yet, but they had vision, passion and strong levels of commitment.

Second, we look at the market size and check there’s enough revenue potential for this idea, and that there’s a real need for the product or service.

What’s the biggest learning experience you’ve had in the last year?
We worked with an organization from soup to nuts - growing it to 100 people in 18 months. Everything was going well until the funding vaporized. You can never have too much money. With enough capital you will never fail - but you need multiple forms and sources of it. If your competition has 3X the capital you do - can you compete?

And the biggest success?
Growing a small company from a handful of employees to several thousand internationally. There was real ‘market pain,’ customers asking for a solution. We jumped in and learned the business first-hand from the inside. We were not distracted from our focus, kept to a specific vision, followed the business plan - but checked it every month to see if the goals were being met and if modifications were needed.

Has the pace/timeframe for raising capital changed significantly in the last few years?
Yes. The traditional VC timeline has elongated - it takes longer to raise money today than it did in 2000, or even five years ago. But, in the first half of 2009, there were 140,000 angel investor-funded deals of emerging companies. Raising capital is simple, but requires creativity and multiple sources - debt, equity, banks and often credit cards.

Growthink’s most used service is business plan consulting. Why is this the case?
A business plan documents your vision on paper; it’s the strategy of your business. But is it also the best marketing strategy? Does it have the right human resources perspective? Does it include the right people and functions to hire for operations? Who are your customers? Your competitors?

99 percent of a business plan must be answered on page one - how are you uniquely qualified? What is your advantage? And because business plans are marketing documents, you must have the bells and whistles - the graphics - and not be bland.

Is there a greater need than ever when starting a business to clearly know your competition?
Yes. There’s more competition than ever before as it’s so easy to start a business today. You have to find a competitive niche - is there a market need here, a customer need, can I solve it better than anybody else? You must do your research.

Any predictions of who or what to watch for in 2010?
I think we’ll see multiple vertical successes, in the social, non-profit arena, with tech companies - and with surprise entrepreneurs like Kevin Plank and Under Armour, which is now a $700 million company that took on Nike, Reebok and Adidas.

What defines an entrepreneurial ’skill set’?

1. Creativity
2. Leadership
3. Passion

An unswerving commitment to make it happen - and we’re going to do it!

(Disclosure: Growthink helped DMB write its business plan)

Sheila Shayon is president/founder of Third Eye Media, third-eyemedia.com, multimedia production with core competencies in broadband production, creative design and execution, and social media. Shayon has several decades of multimedia experience working for companies like Time Warner Cable and Home Box Office.

Directing Dollars: New Ad Measurement Tool Delivers Real-Time, Cross-Platform Metrics

By Ken Liebeskind

Visual IQ, a Boston-area market intelligence firm, has developed a software platform that tracks data from all forms of advertising in an integrated manner to help companies manage their ad spend.

“We translate data on the return of ad spend by looking at the marketing you have in terms of product groups, customers, channels and geography,” says Manu Mathew, Visual IQ’s CEO. “We put all the data categories in one bucket and translate it into actionable intelligence.”

The one bucket concept is extremely important, because most ad measurement systems are unable to measure disparate forms of advertising and express them in one clear metric. “Not a lot of vendors can crunch through the data effectively to provide insight on an hourly or daily basis,” Mathew says. “There are point solutions that do search or display but none look at it from a perspective that optimizes touch points from the audience side. We provide data that will help advertisers determine the most effective combination of channels to engage the audience that leads to conversion.”

Visual IQ creates its own set of metrics that cover a variety of advertising channels, including email, display, cable TV, social media, blogs, mobile and SEO. It generates the data from a variety of sources — Atlas and DoubleClick for online ads; Google for search engine marketing; Webtrends and Omniture for site analysis; SMS data for mobile advertising; and GRP data for TV, print and radio ads.

“The goal is to analyze multiple marketing touch points across media channels to give marketers a more accurate understanding of how various channels affect the conversion or desired activity,” Mathew says.

When asked how the company unites the measurement of online and offline channels, Mathew says, “We’re media agnostic. It starts with the advertiser. If they’re using display, search, email or mobile we can look at any channel in equal standing. How the info gets analyzed depends on the different metrics in play for the advertiser.”

Among Visual IQ’s clients are major brands including Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Radio Shack, Pfizer and EchoStar.
Susan Aldrich, a Patricia Seybold Group analyst who has covered Visual IQ, says that advertisers have difficulty determining ad spend. “They often run reports that don’t compare with each other, so they can’t optimize their spend, even within online channels,” she says. “The arrival of market optimization software from Visual IQ is valuable because it collects the data in a warehouse and applies analytics to it. They’re able to merge Google search engine data with postcard response data.”

Hill Holliday has used Visual IQ data to plan advertising for one of its clients, Liberty Mutual. “We’ve worked on multiple aspects of the business, from traditional advertising to online media and search engine marketing,” says Adam Cahill, Hill Holliday’s senior vice president of digital media. “Visual IQ builds analytic dashboards to show the effectiveness of media display advertising and brings a view of them together to see how one influences the other.”

Cahill notes how important it is to look at different forms of media together. “When you look at them independent of each other you make bad decisions,” he says. “The best example is that people look at search engine marketing and think it’s effective but display ads may have spurred them to do a search. It’s important to know full attribution, but if you look at them in silos you think search is the core benefit. Visual IQ helps you see how all forms of media work together.”

When asked how Visual IQ enabled him to view the data together, Cahill says, “From the display media side you look at ad serving data and from the search engine side you look at DoubleClick and Dart data and for website analytics you might look at data from Omniture. Visual IQ marries those sources together to present a unified dashboard of what happens at the user level.”

The data influences his client’s ad spend immediately and in the future. “When you have the data in real time, you can optimize campaigns in market at the moment. At the end of a campaign you can pull data that will influence the next campaign you plan,” Cahill says.

Ken Liebeskind is a freelance reporter and copywriter who specializes in digital advertising.

From YouTube to Your PDA: The Future of Online Video

By Lee Simmons

As president and CEO of video hosting services provider Fliqz.com, Benjamin Wayne has learned a simple truth about the potential of video technology: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Or, to be more succinct, the more video technology changes, the more it must continue to meet the staid goals of the marketing world. “The goals of marketing remain the same,” he says. “We evaluate traditional marketing spend against traditional marketing goals.”

Since 2005, Fliqz has carved itself a respectable niche in providing plug-and-play video services that are infinitely customizable to a client’s brand and website capabilities. Unlike services such as YouTube, where the YouTube brand stands out and search engine optimization (SEO) is impractical, Fliqz’s video players come custom-built with a client’s logo, uploading, encoding, storage, streaming and management, all for a monthly fee.

It’s just the kind of service that answers the question on the lips of many vice presidents of marketing, Wayne says: “How do we use video for the first time?”

“In 2005, it was hard to convince investors that video was important,” he says. “We looked at sites like Shutterfly, as digital camera technology was improving, and realized that video was also becoming a high-asset value.”

In its early days, the company looked at catering to blogging and self-publishing companies. At the same time, Wayne and his team noticed that marketing departments were studying how they could adopt video. So, Fliqz sharpened its strategy to target two main arenas - consumer destination sites and media companies that distribute video - in an effort to meet that marketing need.

Business-to-business publisher Design World is among the Fliqz clients who have seen a near-instantaneous return on their investment in the video tools. The company, which targets design engineers, had initially used YouTube to upload the thousands of user-generated and proprietary videos it hosted on its site.

However, says Marshall Matheson, Design World’s senior vice president of new media, the company wanted its own identity on the videos, not to mention a way to measure viewer click throughs. “We make our money off of advertising, so the more eyeballs we get on our site, the better,” he says.

Fliqz created a custom video player for the company and then submitted 1,000 videos to Google. The result was above what Matheson had predicted. “Within two days we were instantly indexed on Google,” he says. “The general trend line was that within a month we saw approximately 30 percent more traffic.”

For companies like Design World, video has become a crucial part of generating online traffic. For its part, Design World uses pre-roll technology for its advertising, runs e-newsletters around the videos, and includes ads strategically placed near the video player on the site itself. All have proven a boon to traffic.

Future of online video consumption
In September 2009, Fliqz completed 11 quarters of quarter-over-quarter growth. To date, the company’s video tools are used on 35,000 websites. Still, Wayne sees the online video sector just beginning to see its full potential. “We’re in a very small market today,” he says.

Viral videos and email in particular have become top-tier tools in generating online traffic for the company’s marketing clients. Viral produces roughly 40 percent of the traffic for Fliqz clients, while email is increasingly used to disseminate new videos.

“Email is getting a new life around video,” Wayne says. “Many companies are doubling and tripling their click-through rate through email.”

As far as which technology will win the day, Wayne favors pre-rolls to in-streams. For Fliqz clients, pre-roll technology has been the most effective unit in driving click throughs, he says. In-streams, on the other hand, have shown less impressive click-through rates. Meanwhile, the cost per in-stream continues to go down, an indication that the technology may be treading water. Wayne cites one major player as evidence that in-streams are not quite the revenue generator people had hoped for.

“ComScore now [puts] Hulu at 583 million streams a month, which would be a $70 million business at a $10 CPM,” he says. “People will argue that perhaps Hulu will serve multiple ads and get better than a $10 CPM, but it’s still small (money) in my opinion.”

The sheer number of technology offerings makes online video a little more than daunting to the first-time buyer. Video is being used for tactical purposes, like SEO and conversion, Wayne says. It is also moving outside of major media. Industries that have never produced content, such as many law firms, are going to have trouble getting up to speed. Conversely, community sites that already produce video content will find it easier going.

However, while Wayne agrees that the plethora of techno offerings can strain distribution, he doesn’t necessarily see video technology changing the core focus of any one industry. “Suddenly, tools for desktop publishing got really good, but they didn’t change the publishing industry,” Wayne says. “Still, as applications become more complex, the user experience degenerates.”

Another challenge more closely related to Fliqz is its chosen market. The company simply cannot control market maturation, Wayne offers, yet the marketing budget continues to be the largest area of spend in the corporate world.

But Wayne tempers the challenges ahead by extolling the technology’s potential, particularly regarding mobile applications. With cell phones and PDAs fast becoming the device of choice, companies like his are well positioned to take video technology to its logical next level.

Lee Simmons is a writer based in Austin, Texas.

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