2008 OMMA Hollywood

Posted on March 25, 2008 
Filed Under OMMA Hollywood

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I was at the OMMA Hollywood event this last week. It was a small event for content developers, advertising companies and technology platform creators representing various emerging mediums. The show featured some of the newest tools in interactive advertising and media content development. Many products were interesting and promising, but I found them still work in progress and were not mature enough to represent a solid business model. Maria Izabella Domoslawska, Director of Researh at Exponential and one of the speakers at the event agrees. When it comes to commercializing online video platform there is going to be a sharp growth curve that we will see in the next 5 years.

However, I did come across some of the companies and personalities who are making significant impact as either content developers or as online talents. On-Air Talent Nzinga Blake - who has successful TV shows on various cable stations, including Direct TV, Dish Network, and Virgin Media in UK is collaborating with the Hollywood based content developer Xonger and launching new shows on Current.com.

I also came across various emerging innovative interactive advertising tools for online videos and mobile devices. VideoClix has an amazing online video advertising tool. Even though the product is in beta stage - the demo that Brent Stafford, the Vice President of VideoClix showed me was quite impressive. VideoClix tool provides a non intrusive, interactive advertising tool for advertisers. This tool allows viewers to point cursor over a specific product on the video and this generates a summary of the product/brand information on the side of the screen.

In another instance, I had an informal chat with the CEO of Foryourimagination- a relatively smaller company based out of New York. I liked the underdog position of this company among heavy hitters in the content development vertical. According to Paul Kontonis, his eight person company has successfully leveraged on a limited start-up capital to develop some of the niche content that is already creating buzz in the industry. Foryourimagination currently has shows like Bschooltalk.net and NextNYers.

Companies like Foryourimagination, along with other innovative participants at the convention show a lot of promise and provide a snapshot of what is on the horizon.

From strategic point of view, one thing is for sure and doesn’t change regardless of how cool some of these technologies are and that is - content is still the king! of course, along with other factors like how well and how soon people will embrace these new channels of content dissemination.

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