APB PANELLISTS
6 NEWS & VIEWS
August 2018
What blockchain can bring to the broadcast and media industry
BY IAN MCKEE
The term “ blockchain ” raised eyebrows and interest in the media industry when it became the buzz in Cannes earlier this year . For the first time , key players in this emerging industry set up shops at the world ’ s most glamorous film market ; marrying entertainment and technology , opening doors of possibilities to new models of businesses , funding and processes .
When I was in Shanghai last month at the Film Festival , this conversation promptly surfaced as I met with film commissions and producers around the world while sharing about my business , Vuulr , a blockchain-powered marketplace and digital supply chain . There were a lot of interest about the relationship between blockchain and bitcoin , and of course a lot of curiosity about how it can actually help film and TV businesses with their challenges today .
Blockchain , simply put , is a distributed ledger of information , stored in every participating computer on the blockchain mesh — it does this in a way that every one can trust the version of the truth stored on the blockchain as it cannot be hacked or altered .
Blockchain application in broadcast and media
n Data management ( supply chain ) and transaction At Vuulr , we are building a global film and TV content digital supply chain and marketplace that is designed to make the process of searching for , evaluating and acquiring content easier , cheaper and in far less time than it currently takes .
Over US $ 240 billion per year is spent by broadcasters and over-the-top ( OTT ) services on acquiring fresh film and TV content globally . However , around 40 % of that value is lost due to the cost and friction of the transaction , driven primarily by offline , manual and outdated data management processes .
By using industry-accepted data formats for metadata , unique asset IDs and avails information on a blockchainpowered supply chain , buyers , distributors and originators all benefit from being able to transact digitally . This enables the Vuulr Marketplace , which sits on top of the supply chain , to directly connect content sellers with content buyers , allowing the entire process of discovery to delivery to be completed from the current three to six months to a matter of days .
n Disintermediation of rent-seeking middlemen and tokenisation of content for fundraising Blockchain is also great at enabling an almost frictionless cooperation between members of complex networks without central authorities and middlemen . In the financial world , this means removing clearing houses such as banks , and therefore saving the time and money incurred in between .
An alternative funding source is probably an application of blockchain that got many content producers excited in Cannes . With production costs escalating and traditional sources of funds shrinking , content producers are looking for new ways to bring in the money needed to ensure quality content . The token market opens up this possibility .
Imagine the ability to guarantee investors that their money is not only going to be fully trackable , but also going to arrive at its intended destination through a completely automated process . This can be made possible through blockchain ’ s immutable public ledger , and the use of smart contracts .
Some examples of companies that are focused on bridging these gaps in the media industry are listed below . Many of them seek to address more than one issue and are therefore clustered together .
Singular DTV : A content production and distribution platform . Its goal is to create broadcast-quality film and TV content and to reshape the entertainment industry into a fairer , more efficient and transparent business through blockchain technology .
Viuly : Viuly is a video sharing platform , where authors are paid for their content , and users are rewarded for watching free videos !
LiveTree : LiveTree started two years ago , with one clear mission — to give control back to creators and audiences . It built a crowdfunding platform that gave audiences the power to fund the projects they believe in . Today , it is using blockchain to re-imagine how film and TV content is funded , produced and delivered .
CryptoFlix : A platform dedicated to creating a fair ecosystem for the streaming of high-quality films for anyone who is willing to pay for it globally , based on viewing time and streaming quality .
n End-mile delivery , media storage and VoD streaming The need to upkeep varying end-mile delivery processes , maintain large servers for media storage and ensure bandwidth for video-on-demand ( VoD ) streaming has always been an expensive cost to the media industry . While storing large media files is not an effective and natural feature of blockchain , engineers around the world have sought to find solutions to create distributed content delivery networks that can help relieve some of these issues .
Videocoin : Developing a decentralised video encoding , storage and content distribution network ( CDN ) powered by blockchain .
Marlin Protocol : A decentralised CDN solution that enables storage and delivery of content at a low cost , by utilis-
❝ We believe that the coming blockchainenabled revolution will come faster and be bigger than the Internetenabled revolution that we are in the midst of now .❞
ing the spare bandwidth and hard-drive space of users in exchange for tokens .
n Digital media / advertising business With the migration of the audience ’ s attention from “ analogue TV ” to “ digital ”, so has the media budgets of the big brands moved . The value of media budget allocated to “ digital advertising ” has skyrocketed . However , the digital media industry has just recently come under pressure :
1 . Ad blocking : A growing problem for the industry , where users install technology to their browsers that blocks the delivery of ads .
2 . Viewability : The industry does not have any proper standard that officially states what a “ view ” is . For example , one platform counts viewing of a video for three seconds as a view , whereas another mention that it is “ around ” 30 seconds . Advertisers are unhappy with being charged “ unfairly ” by platforms such as Facebook and Google .
3 . Brand health : This is an issue that arises due to programmatic ad buying , where ads and inventory are resold multiple times through intermediaries , which eventually causes the ad to end up being placed next to unsavoury or questionable content .
With the huge budgets at stake for solving these problems , some wellfunded — via Initial Coin Offerings ( ICOs ) — startups have developed blockchainbased solutions :
MadHive : Audience-driven advertising and data solutions for OTT and AdvancedTV . The MAD Network is a set of decentralised applications designed to seamlessly connect every stakeholder within the complex adtech value chain .
Louis Boswell CEO CASBAA
APB PANELLISTS
Graham Stephens CTO Media City Development , Malaysia
Verasity : Within the Verasity ecosystem , video content creators , viewers , advertisers and brands interact directly with one another . There is no need for intermediaries that exist in traditional media ecosystems .
Basic Attention Token : Basic Attention Token radically improves the efficiency of digital advertising by creating a new token that can be exchanged between publishers , advertisers and users — the net result they envisage is that users control which ads they get presented with , and advertisers can pay users to watch their ads .
ICOs have allowed some of the smartest minds to get their ideas funded via the crypto community , and the race is on to develop and deliver working versions of their visions . These will start to appear in the next few years . Not all will work , not all will be commercially viable — but the ones that do will bring huge revolution and disruption to the existing players in each segment of the industry .
We believe that the coming blockchain-enabled revolution will come faster and be bigger than the Internet-enabled revolution that we are in the midst of now .
Times of transition often mean times of opportunity . At Vuulr , we are excited about the huge opportunities that blockchain brings . Through our solution , we hope to help stakeholders across the film and TV content business to be able to release more value from their content and , by reducing the friction in the industry , to create and retain more value out of their content .
Ian McKee is founder and CEO of Vuulr .
Goh Kim Soon Senior Vice-President Broadcast Engineering Mediacorp
Shad Hashmi
Vice-President , Digital Development , Global Markets & Operations , BBC Worldwide Asia