Mocollywood: On Adult Content, Mobile TV, And Simplicity
There were big ambitions for this event but a small turnout, for this week’s Mocollywood mobile entertainment conference in London.
Quite a lot of chat about adult content to a fairly empty room … It appears to be one of the few genres generating revenues and audiences on mobile. Richard Gale, marketing director for Playboy TV: “One of our biggest questions remains, how do you replicate the success we’ve had in Italy?” He says although mobile is less popular than TV and Internet, it’s growing at the fastest rate. People on average consume six to seven minutes of video when it is streamed on mobile; two minutes when it is on-demand. Tim Clausen, director of wireless for Private Media, says it offers content in 35 countries through 80 operators and has doubled its revenues in the last two years.
Adult content owners are breaking new ground in terms of business models. Gale from Playboy TV again: “We’ve just started a cross-platform billing service for users across TV, Internet and mobile based on a 4-digit PIN. [Users pay a flat rate for a piece of content and can consume it on any device.] We’re going on gut instinct and taking a risk since we’ve had to make assumptions on usage for pricing.”
Gale at Playboy TV: “The mobile value chain has to be one of the most screwed up I’ve seen in my life. Everyone wants a piece of the penny…Operators are greedy.”
Content owners crave more simplicity and scale in the European market for selling digital content rights across Internet, mobile and potentially other platforms. Chris Marcich, SVP and MD for the MPAA: “We would like to see a pan-European clearing house for digital rights, but cross-border negotiating will make that difficult…It’s conceivable to negotiate with producers for all-in rights but mobile is just too small.” Thompson at Sony Ericsson: “We need to create an environment where content providers can play by the same rules that they understand today.”
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