THE HELICOPTER WORLD OF MONETISATION

The occasion: The London Business School Summit on Technology and Media 25/02/11
The speaker: Dr. Bobby Rao, ex Vodafone Marketing Director, now founding partner in Hermes Venture Partners.

We’ve all had that moment. One of sheer unbridled hatred of the cleverest boy in the school. Who gets all the prizes; who gets all the girls. That’s Bobby. The coolest and most suave presenter I’ve seen.

1. We are living in the midst of a game where we are all asking “where’s the ball?” Because there’s been a collision of three markets: the internet; media; consumer electronics - between them worth $3 trillion.  And the legs of each has been kicked away.
   
2. Historically media has thrived on scarcity – now through digitisation, high speed Broadband and the low price of storage, scarcity is over.
   
3. You can fight scarcity by focusing on live events. Or you can go for quality (iPad and iPhone). Or you can monetise the new usage occasions there are.
   
4. But recognise this is a new personal market meaning advertisers must really understand individual people. So who has got the best information? That’s why Facebook is valued at c. $70 billion.
   
5. Yes that’s what Bobby used to see what was going on in Egypt via live video in Tahrir Square as it happened. BBC didn’t have a chance against what they now call “pro-sumers” (producers and consumers.)
   
6. To monetise all this  we must charge people in the right way and the right amount. It’s not about how many eyeballs any more it’s about whose eyeballs and what’s going on behind those eyeballs.
   
7. Yet marketers - an “avoid-failure”, in-transit-between-jobs bunch - are conservative and lagging behind the changes that have happened already.
   
8. And of course we are living in the middle of a valuation bubble (what was later described by James Bromley CEO of Mail Online as descending from the “peak of inflated expectation” phase into the “trough of disillusionment”).
   
9. But be aware that this $3 billion game will not be played on the small market Euro stage (let alone the tiny market UK stage.) It’ll be played out between Asia and the USA.
   
10. It’s about customer knowledge, customer experience and a scale of population big enough to pay for the weaponry the big guys need. It’s a good time to be a customer and a spectator watching them - Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Omnicom and WPP. But remember - no one knows where the ball is yet.

Thank you LBS.

I’m off to look for that ball.