NEW YORK--According to former Vice President Al Gore, the importance of sustainability doesn't just apply to the environment. It also is key to the future of advertising.
"It really comes out of the environment, but in my opinion the key theme of this century really is sustainability," Gore said. "This theme of environmental sustainability has become a part of our culture, it's a part of our discourse, and I'm very optimistic that it will soon be a part of our policy."
Addressing the crowd of advertisers and online-media types at the Digital Content NewFront event put on by Digitas on Wednesday, Gore was speaking not as a "recovering politician" or a green-tech evangelist, but as the co-founder of Current Media, the experimental cable news channel that relies heavily on user-created content for both editorial and advertisements.
It's about time for our old views of advertising to die, he said.
"In the 20th century, the advertising model was based on the same principles that the Industrial Revolution was based on: scale," Gore said. "It was big, it was blunt, very expensive, and very intrusive, and audiences have now begun to resist that old advertising model even as the environment in which it is presented changes a great deal. The new model is very different because the media landscape is completely different."
More than half of the advertisements on Current are called "VCAMs," or "viewer-created advertising messages," Gore said. These are videos selected out of user submissions for brands interested in advertising on Current; the winner is paid by the advertiser, though it costs significantly less than the production budget of a traditional TV ad, and the winner receives an additional payment if the advertiser wants to use it outside of Current.
It's a model not unlike the wildly successful T-shirt company Threadless, which gets thousands of design submissions and gives a cash prize to the ones that it subsequently prints and sells.
Gore showed off a series of VCAMs proudly, as though they were home videos of his kids: One of them, created by two 24-year-olds, was a Mountain Dew ad about aspiring to be a professional hide-and-seek player. Another, created by a 29-year-old, was a T-Mobile ad showing people excitedly attempting to get picked for a "fave five" as though it were a dodgeball team. Gore mentioned another that was created by a 17-year-old who subsequently received a $50,000 check when the advertiser wanted to use it outside of Current.
There are problems, obviously, which some of the audience members brought up in questions. There are plenty of brands that wouldn't get aspiring filmmakers quite as jazzed as the car and gadget companies whose ads Gore showed off. And while the Flip-camera-toting young adults responsible for Current's VCAMs have the pluck and the free time to run around making commercials, it's easy to theorize that it would be tougher for a network with an older audience to pull it off.
Then there's the fact that while Current has been way ahead of the curve on some digital trends--displaying live Twitter messages onscreen, for example--it's still not a huge media powerhouse. The company canceled its scheduled initial public offering earlier this year, citing the bleak economic climate.
Gore, however, had an example of successful "sustainable advertising" beyond Current. What we can look at, he said, is his old job: politics.
"The most powerful new brand that we've all seen unveiled over the last two years is (Barack Obama)," Gore said, showing a slide of the "O" sunrise logo that became so well known during Obama's successful presidential campaign. "And what is it about this brand that made it so incredibly successful? It was all about empowerment, it was all about involving people to help deliver the message. It was very tuned into the new technologies and how people use them."
Just as the Obama campaign made efficient use of inexpensive marketing and publicity tools on the Web, Gore believes that the digital age has made it possible for high-quality ads to be ubiquitous, rather than just at the one time of the year when people get really pumped about what commercials will be on TV.
"During the Super Bowl, people leave during the game rather than the ads. They want to see the ads because they know something extra has gone into Super Bowl ads," Gore said. "(But) it's not sustainable to have that kind of ad budget and that kind of focused creativity that you find on those ads completely ubiquitous throughout the television year."
At the end of his talk, the former vice president was left speechless when one audience member asked him if he believed that the problem of carbon emissions could be solved by 2029 through the use of technology coming from UFOs.
"No," he said after a long pause. "I do not."
Bill Gates releases mosquitoes into the TED audience on Wednesday.
(Credit: James Duncan Davidson for TED)Bill Gates released mosquitoes into the audience, Naturally 7 recreated the sound of musical instruments with their voices, and Al Gore admonished the coal industry for its "clean" image campaign.
All in all, it was just another day at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, a premiere and exclusive gathering of visionaries and luminaries that is taking place this week in Long Beach, Calif.
Wednesday started on a sobering note with Juan Enriquez, a philosopher and researcher, who explored how the U.S. economy is floundering but encouraged people to "dance through the flames" and focus on the long term. Enriquez also talked about fascinating discoveries in the areas of biotechnology and robotics. His prediction: the planet is headed toward a day when "homo evolutis" will dominate--a time when humans will have direct control over the development of people and other species.
Author and analyst P.W. Singer discussed his new book, Wired for War, which examines how the military is moving toward an increasingly unmanned force through robots and drones. He theorized about 2016, when perhaps half of the military will be unmanned and ruminated on what that means for warfare, ethics, and emotional detachment.
Later, artist and robotics expert David Hanson showed a series of robots that are meant to emulate human behavior and facial expressions.
Microsoft co-founder Gates, who last appeared at TED in 1992, outlined his hopes for better teachers and reducing mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria. He is concerned that the current economic crisis will mean reduced funding for poorer countries. And as a gimmicky (though still effective) way of illustrating that everyone should all think about this problem, he released some mosquitoes on stage.
I've seen reports that he unleashed a "swarm" of them. But from where I was sitting about 20 rows back, I could barely see more than a dozen or so, if that. It was hard to tell exactly how many he released, but no one seemed fazed by it. He promised they weren't infected, although the Windows/bugs connection was not lost on anyone.
Former Vice President Al Gore spoke about the reduced thickness in Arctic ice and how the melting of land-based ice is releasing gases such as methane into the atmosphere. He also outlined the effect of carbon dioxide on weather patterns around the world and took the coal industry to task for its "clean" image campaign.
A brief presentation with industrial designer Yves Behar showcased a collaborative project that resulted in the "Mission One" electric motorcycle. It didn't get much of a test drive on the stage, but Behar said the motorcycle is capable of twice the range of other electric competitors and can reach 150 mph at top speed--not to mention going from 0 to 100 mph in 5.9 seconds. His appearance was meant to showcase how ideas are generated at TED: it was at TED 2008 that he met his fellow collaborator and developed their concept.
Perhaps the most memorable presentation involved Naturally 7, a group of seven British musicians who practice something they call "vocal play." It's hard to describe their act other than saying each of them used their voices in unison to recreate a different musical instrument from drums to brass instruments to guitars. They made beat-boxing look like child's play. Their "Wall of Sound" song earned a standing ovation. (Click herefor a related video.)
On another musical note, there are about 1,300 TED attendees from 51 countries, and one in particular--whom we'll call "Ross"--was brought to the stage at one point by the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, the engaging Ben Zander.
"Ross" volunteered since his birthday is coming up, and Zander proceeded to get the entire audience to rethink how they sing "Happy Birthday." It was energetic and inspired. I doubt "Ross" will get a better present this year. It was also a chance to acknowledge that TED 2009 marks the event's 25th anniversary.
Among the other featured speakers Wednesday were Web creator Tim Berners-Lee and blogger Seth Godin.
Check TED.com in the next day or so for a compelling interview between Gates and TED curator Chris Anderson.
Daniel Sieberg reports on computers and technology for CBS News.
SAN FRANCISCO--The fact that you now can explore the ocean through Google Earth isn't going to make Google much money directly. But the move is nonetheless smart.
Google generated early-stage goodwill from being the best answer to the online search problem. But the company is large and getting larger, especially as it shows a better ability to withstand the recession than rivals, and that goodwill won't last forever.
Google showed off new ocean views at its Google Earth 5.0 launch event.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Google Earth, though, gives the company a new way to bring its brand to the world, notably with students for whom the software will help supplant atlases and encyclopedias. And in the long run, as Google Earth and Maps--either as standalone software or used through a browser--will likely become a widely used virtual window on the real world. Google will control the technology and commercialization of that portal.
Will the visibility of the ocean depths on Google Earth make money directly? Not likely. But it adds incrementally to the overall utility of the software, which in the long run keeps it relevant.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt introduces Google Earth 5.0. Click photo for a slideshow of Monday's event.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)"The near-term opportunity is in local search," for example people looking for restaurants or hotels, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps, in an interview.
Google has begun experimenting with advertisements on Google Maps and Google Earth, added Peter Birch, product manager of Google Earth, at the launch event. Since people often need to discover information about a place before going there, Google Earth and Maps could prove a lucrative endeavor. It may take years to get there, and it'll cost Google dearly in server hardware and network bandwidth, but Google has shown patience in subsidizing long-term projects.
Though Hanke wouldn't reveal the expense of Google's geographic services, some of the economics are in the company's favor. Just as Google's search engine takes advantage of innumerable information that others put on the Internet, Google Earth is a platform that houses information supplied by outsiders that Google doesn't have to pay. It's the Internet's user-generated content story, but this time it's data that can be overlaid on a map of the Earth.
And in the case of the ocean work, there are prestigious users generating high-quality content. Many ocean researchers gathered at the Google Earth 5.0 launch, and several showed there's pent-up demand for a way to conveniently display their data somewhere. And it's not just to share sea surface temperature data with fellow Ph.D.s, but also to try to educate the public.
Ken Peterson, communications director for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, was excited about his layer in Google Earth that shows the location of various types of fish--along with ratings for people about whether they should eat those varieties or substitute others. Barbara Block of Stanford University and Patrick Halpin of Duke University were eager to show the tracks of shark travels recorded by radio transmission to satellites. Ross Swick of the University of Colorado-Boulder showed a Google Earth animation of the gradually shrinking Arctic ice cap over the last 29 years. And Philip Renaud of the Living Oceans Foundation has supplied underwater video of the Red Sea as part of the foundation's mission to chronicle the state of coral reefs.
Hanke envisions much broader information, though, including consumer-oriented material such as the best dive spots and kite-surfing areas. Ultimately, he wants "every single location" on Earth, land or sea, to have information.
Projects like Google Earth give Google cachet with influential people such as Al Gore.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)"We're trying to encourage our users to annotate all the places in the world. Part of what we're doing is seeding that ecosystem of spatial information," Hanke said. "That creates an opportunity for Google to provide location services on phones, mobile devices, in cars in the future, to guide people to the best places. Being a valued guide, the go-to source of information about the best places to go--that will be a powerful and valuable thing for Google."
Think of it as a second Internet in a way, only instead of using abstract names to locate information, you can use actual locations to locate information. Some refer to the idea as the "geographic Web."
The clearest illustration of the indirect benefits Google Earth can bring is the fact that the company could persuade former Vice President Al Gore, whose climate change documentary won him an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize, to bear the Google Earth standard. In effect, he provided an eco-halo that can offset the more down-to-earth capitalistic realities of Google's operation.
Google seems to share the altruistic, educational motivations of many researchers. But it's also got business in mind with Google Earth.
"We try to create products people love to use," Birch said. "We create value, then think of appropriate ways of monetization."
• Click here for more stories, and images, on Google Earth 5.0.
Let's face it: Video search blows. It's easy to use YouTube's search box to find straightforward Internet video memes like cats playing pianos, skateboard tricks, or Rick Astley remixes; try for anything more intricate and you might be out of luck. There are established companies in the space, like the U.K.-based Blinkx, but none of them has captured the market share that video search potentially could.
Enter VideoSurf, a company launching later on Wednesday at the TechCrunch50 conference that's been getting a choice spot in the tech-blogger limelight thanks to a Los Angeles Times preview.
VideoSurf CEO Lior Delgo told the Times that instead of only being able to search text tags and descriptions, the company's search technology goes frame-by-frame to recognize specific people. Additionally, VideoSurf says it has already indexed multiple video sites, from hubs like YouTube and Hulu to the digital libraries of networks like Comedy Central and ESPN. The company has attracted investment funding from former Vice President Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the co-founders of Current Media; Hyatt is chairman of VideoSurf's board of directors.
But there's a caveat: nobody in the tech press has actually seen this company in action yet. Search Engine Land was very impressed by a demo, calling the company "genuinely radical," but doesn't appear to have done anything hands-on. The last shadowy video company that was this hyped was arguably Joost, which is still trying to stay afloat after failing to catch on. So don't count the chickens before they hatch, even if we're talking about a grainy cell phone camera video of chickens playing "Never Gonna Give You Up" on a piano.
- prev
- 1
- next
