Category Archives: Digital Economy

Jump-cut videos vs Slow TV

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In last week’s blog on the attention economy, I alluded to the trade-off that exists between our desire for more stimulus, and the need to consume more (sponsored) content to feed that hunger. Given the increasing demands on our available attention span, and the rate at which we are having to consume just to keep up, it feels like we are all developing a form of ADD – too much to choose from, too little time to focus on anything.

Christian Marclay – “The Clock” – image sourced from Time Out

Personally, I place a lot of the blame on music videos. Initially, this format merely reduced our attention span to the length of a 3-minute pop song. (Paradoxically, there was also a style known as the “long form music video”, which stretched those 3 minutes into a 10-20 minute extended narrative). Then, in recent years, the video format has been distilled to a series of jump cuts – no single shot lasts more than a few frames, and the back-n-forth between shots often has no narrative cohesion other than serving the technique of the jump-cut itself. I sometimes wonder if the reason for so many jump-cuts is because too few of today’s pop stars can really dance, forcing the director to distract our (minimal) attention from the poor moves. (Note: pop stars who can’t dance should take a leaf out of The Fall’s playbook, and call in the professionals, like Michael Clark…)

I have previously made a brief mention of Slow TV, which made a return to Australian channel SBS this summer in the form of trans-continental railway journeys, a UK barge trip (can it get any slower?) and a length-ways tour of New Zealand. These individual programs can screen for up to 18 hours, a perfect antidote to the ADD-inducing experience of jump-cut music videos and social media notifications.

Concurrently in Melbourne, two installation works are on display that, in their very separate ways also challenge the apparent obsession with rapid sensory overload in many of today’s video content.

The first is “The Clock”, by Christian Marclay – a sequence of finely edited clips sourced from a multitude of films and TV programmes that together act as a real-time 24 hour clock. The work also manages to reveal a beguiling (dare I say seamless?) narrative from such disparate and unrelated scenes that you really do begin to wonder how the story will end…. The fact that some of the scenes are quite mundane (and whose main function is to indicate the passage of time), while others are iconic cinematic moments, only adds to our real-time/real-life experience of the ebb and flow of the seconds, minutes and hours.

The second is almost the complete opposite. “Cataract”, by Daniel Von Sturmer comprises 81 screens, each showing looped sequences of somewhat banal events. Although each video event is no more than a few seconds, and none of the loops are synchronised with each other, it does not feel like a series of jump-cut edits. This is partly because the events, despite their brevity, are all engaging in their own way; and partly because even though we know it is a loop, we somehow expect something different to happen each time (maybe because our brain is wired to find a narrative even when none exists?).

According to the gallery’s description of “Cataract”, “the world is full of happenings, but it is only through selective attention that meaning is found”. Quite appropriate for the attention economy and jump-cut culture – meaning is where we choose to see it, but if we are not paying the appropriate amount of attention or if we are not viewing through a critical lens, we risk missing it altogether.

Next week: The Future of Fintech

 

Blipverts vs the Attention Economy

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There’s a scene in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film, “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, where David Bowie’s character sits watching a bank of TV screens, each tuned to a different station. At the same time he is channel surfing – either because his alien powers allow him to absorb multiple, simultaneous inputs, or because his experience of ennui on Earth leads him to seek more and more stimulus. Obviously a metaphor for the attention economy, long before such a term existed.

Watching the alien watching us… Image sourced from Flicker

At the time in the UK, we only had three TV channels to choose from, so the notion of 12 or more seemed exotic, even other worldly. And of those three channels, only one carried advertising. Much the same situation existed in British radio, with only one or two commercial networks, alongside the dominant BBC. So we had relatively little exposure to adverts, brand sponsorship or paid content in our broadcast media. (Mind you, this was still the era when tobacco companies could plaster their logos all over sporting events…)

For all its limitations, there were several virtues to this model. First, advertising airtime was at a premium (thanks to the broadcast content ratios), and ad spend was concentrated – so adverts really had to grab your attention. (Is it any wonder that so many successful film directors cut their teeth on commercials?) Second, this built-in monopoly often meant bigger TV production budgets, more variety of content and better quality programming on free-to-air networks than we typically see today with the over-reliance on so-called reality TV. Third, with less viewing choice, there was a greater shared experience among audiences – and more communal connection because we could talk about similar things.

Then along came cable and satellite networks, bringing more choice (and more advertising), but not necessarily better quality content. In fact, with TV advertising budgets spread more thinly, it’s not surprising that programming suffered. Networks had to compete for our attention, and they funded this by bombarding us with more ads and more paid content. (And this is before we even get to the internet age and time-shift, streaming and multicast platforms…)

Despite the increased viewing choices, broadcasting became narrow-casting – smaller and more fractured viewership, with programming appealing to niche audiences. Meanwhile, in the mid-80s (and soon after the launch of MTV), “Max Headroom” is credited with coining the term “blipvert”, meaning a very, very short (almost subliminal) television commercial. Although designed as a narrative device in the Max Headroom story, the blipvert can be seen as either a test of creativity (how to get your message across in minimal time); or a subversive propaganda technique (nefarious elements trying to sabotage your thinking through subtle suggestion and infiltration).

Which is essentially where we are in the attention economy. Audiences are increasingly disparate, and the battle for eyeballs (and minds) is being fought out across multiple devices, multiple screens, and multiple formats. In our search for more stimulation, and unless we are willing to pay for premium services and/or an ad-free experience, we are having to endure more ads that pop-up during our YouTube viewing, Spotify streaming or internet browsing. As a result, brands are trying to grab our attention, at increasing frequency, and for shorter, yet more rapid and intensive periods. (Even Words With Friends is offering in-game tokens in return for watching sponsored content.)

Some consumers are responding with ad-blockers, or by dropping their use of social media altogether; or they want payment for their valuable time. I think we are generally over the notion of giving away our personal data in return for some “free” services – the price in terms of intrusions upon our privacy is no longer worth paying. So, brands are having to try harder to capture our attention, and they need to personalize their message to make it seem relevant and worthy of our time – provided we are willing to let them know enough about our preferences, location, demographics, etc. so that they can serve up relevant and engaging content to each and every “audience of one”. And brands also want proof that the ads they have paid for have been seen by the people they intended to reach.

This delicate trade-off (between privacy, personalisation and payment) is one reason why the attention economy is seen as a prime use case for Blockchain and cryptocurrency: consumers can retain anonymity, while still sharing selected personal information (which they own and control) with whom they wish, when they wish, for as long as they wish, and they can even get paid to access relevant content; brands can receive confirmation that the personalised content they have paid for has been consumed by the people they intended to see it; and distributed ledgers can maintain a record of account and send/receive payments via smart contracts and digital wallets when and where the relevant transactions have taken place.

Next week: Jump-cut videos vs Slow TV

 

 

 

 

Intersekt Festival 2018

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This year’s Intersekt Festival, held in Melbourne last month, was put together in quite challenging circumstances, given some of the recent events within key industry body FinTech Australia, the primary event host. It was a credit to all involved.

Not surprisingly, given some of the regulatory and industry changes underway in Australia, the key themes included: Open Banking and access to data: Trust in the banking and financial services sector (thanks to the Royal Commission, and the APRA report on the CBA); Data Privacy; Payments and the NPP; Comprehensive Credit Reporting and predatory lending practices; and Equity Crowdfunding. And of course, a little bit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and Security Tokens.

There was a lot of discussion on “Trust”, especially in the age of Uber and Airbnb – how have these marketplaces managed to earn so much public and consumer trust in such a relatively short time? Yet as consumers, we obsess about Open Banking vs Data Privacy,  while banks themselves appear to be more infatuated with their Net Promoter Score…. whereas “Trust” is clearly a huge issue. In the case of the banks and the fall out from the Royal Commission, there was a discussion about whether our key financial institutions have come close to losing their social license to operate.

Meanwhile, with the prospect of self-sovereign digital identity becoming a practical reality (fuelled by blockchain, decentralisation and trust-less protocols and standards), there is a demand for cross-functional  (and cross-border) solutions for KYC/AML processing and identity management. But a lack of mutual regulatory recognition or harmonization (as opposed to “mere” industry standards) plus a diversity of business models confounds regulatory harmony, often within a single jurisdiction, let alone across multiple markets.

When it comes to payments and the NPP, it’s clear that regulation lags technology. For example, despite the existence of a (complex and somewhat uncertain) licensing regime for purchased payment facilities, APRA has only licensed one such PPF – PayPal. As former ASIC Chairman, Greg Medcraft once observed, by the time the NPP is fully operational, Blockchain will have gotten there long beforehand. And given the preponderance of stored value cards, digital wallets, peer-to-peer crypto exchanges, and multiple overseas and cross-border mobile payment apps, the respective regulatory roles of RBA, APRA, AUSTRAC, ATO and ASIC need to be clearly defined and set out.

On the topic of data protection and “big data”, there was a lot of discussion about getting the balance right between privacy and innovation. One the one hand, industry incumbents should not be allowed to use their market dominance to resist open banking and stifle the emergence of neo-banks; but on the other, there is a need to shelter the forthcoming consumer data right (CDR) from potential abuse like predatory lending (e.g., not simply define the CDR standards by reference to existing banking products and services) – mainly because the CDR is designed to empower consumers (not embolden the industry), and it is designed to be sector neutral (i.e., equally applicable to utilities, ISPs, telcos, insurance firms).

Other topics included SME lending, where new, tech-driven providers are not only originating new loans, but also refinancing existing businesses as the big 4 banks are seen to withdraw from this market; home loans (where technology is driving new loan origination, funding and distribution models); social impact (“FinTech for good”); equity crowdfunding (and the role of STOs); insurance (creating a decentralised market place) and Superannuation (which prompted perhaps the most contentious panel discussion – more on that to come!).

If there were any criticisms of the conference, based on local and overseas delegates I spoke to, they related to the length (was there enough content to sustain nearly 3 days?); the need for clearer roles and participation by the major and regional banks; the absence of investors (despite a speed-dating matching event….); and a desire to see a broader range of speakers and panelists (too many of the “usual suspects”?).

Next week: The Future of Super

 

 

 

Startup Vic’s FinTech Pitch Night

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This month’s Startup VIC pitch night on FinTech was a curtain raiser for the annual Intersekt conference. Sponsored by Square and FinTech Australia, it was hosted at the Victorian Innovation Hub, and MC’d by Finch’s Shahirah Gardner and Melissa Mack, Head of Community at MoneyPlace and a Director of FinTech Australia.

As usual, the startups are mentioned here in the order they pitched:

i=Change

i=Change allows retailers and brands to “give back” to the causes their customers care about. Offering a “plug’n’play” solution for their clients, i=Change claims to have 60 brands on board already. It’s fair to say the target audience is fashion-conscience women, with an emphasis on charities, campaigns and causes that are primarily supporting the lives of women and children. Which is all good. But would it be churlish to suggest that many of the brands and products (and their associated imagery) might not be accessible to women in many of the countries where these projects operate? So, there is a potential disconnect between products and causes….

Nevertheless, as well as the feel-good factor for consumers, i=Change also claims to be reducing the retailers’ problem of abandoned online shopping carts, as the prospect of being able to donate to one of the selected causes leads to greater sales conversion and completion.

i=Change applies a fixed transaction fee on top of the customer donation, with a 30% tax rebate available to participating brands. After 5 years, i=Change is generating $8k per month in transaction fees, and is currently seeking a capital raise of $1m.

The judges were keen to understand the level of transparency under which i=Change operates, and whether in-store options are available (not just on-line retail).

For me, I can’t help thinking that this is an attempt to salve the conscience of certain parts of the fashion industry. I would also be interested to understand how much screening there is of both retailers and causes, against CSR measures or other relevant criteria.

Lucidity

Under the product brands of tradeDOX and xpertDOX, Lucidity is digitizing trade finance operations, particularly for import/export commodities transactions.

Offering a pay-per-transaction model, a subscription service, or a custom solution, Lucidity is still pre-revenue, having raised $50k in seed funding. Claiming to be streamlining and automating much of the paper document and manual processes still in use in much of the trade finance industry, it was not clear what technology they are using, nor the average transaction size they are processing. I also couldn’t help thinking that Blockchain solutions for supply chain, logistics and export/import financing will likely render Lucidity redundant.

CoinBot

CoinBot is an algo trading solution for cryptocurrencies that tokenizes individual trading strategies designed by the platform users, and fuelled by native SIT coins (Strategy Instance Tokens). The coins are used to pay for “prospecting” (i.e., scanning for unique trading signals), strategy (devising trading models) and exchange fees (to cover the cost of execution).

Currently seeking to raise $3m for 14% equity (plus SIT tokens), CoinBot supports strategy back-testing written to the Blockchain, and essentially allows users to avoid things like slippage by spreading the timing of instances over a defined trading period.

Personifi

Personifi is a data-driven marketplace for personal loans. It matches consumers with the most suitable lenders (across 30 brands on their platform).

What is supposed to make Personifi different to traditional brokers, lenders and comparison sites is the level of personalised advice, and its credit decision criteria.

With accreditation for the new open banking data regime and the new comprehensive credit reporting system. Personifi can offer improved interest rate options. It has to be noted that some of the loan providers on their platform may once have been considered “lenders of last resort” – not pay-day lenders, but certainly providers who service borrowers who have been turned down by banks and other primary lenders. So, the quality of the loan origination and the standards for lending will no doubt be critical to success.

Previously known as compeer.com.au, Personifi continues to test the broker market, and is bringing more transparency on its fees and loan T&C’s. Current revenue model is based on a 2% commission for referrals. Having pivoted from P2P lending, Personifi is targeting millennials who lack either a long or a strong credit history.

On the night, i=Change took out both the Judges’ prize, and the People’s choice.

A few observations about these pitch nights. First, I miss the audience Q&A that used to be an integral part of proceedings – if part of Startup VIC’s remit (and I am a long-standing, paid-up member) is to foster better founders, there is a missed learning opportunity for prospective and current founders if there are no questions from the audience. Second, I wish they could fix the PA problems – I had thought this had been sorted by using this new(ish), state of the art venue? Finally, it seems the pitch rules have changed, as one of tonight’s teams managed to sneak in a live product demo during their pitch – I just hope that every contestant was afforded the same opportunity, and if this is going to become a regular feature, then the organisers need to be more observant of the time limits…

Next week: Intersekt Festival 2018