This press release just in from the BBC.com – should make for some great content:

BBC.com, the international version of the BBC website reaching 50m users a month* has secured Intel as the exclusive global brand partner for its Digital Giants special report. Throughout the season audiences will be able to watch a high profile series of interviews with 11 of the world’s most prolific minds in digital media as they share their vision of the future.

The Digital Giants series will run on BBC.com’s technology pages www.bbc.com/digitalgiants with 3 minute video interviews with:

- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
- Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
- Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify
- Sam Pitroda, advisor to the Indian Government
- Victor Koo, founder of Youku
- Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft
- Evgeny Morozov, Georgetown University
- Martha Lane Fox, web entrepreneur
- Ge Wang, Stanford University professor
- Joe Rospars, Director of Barack Obama’s digital strategy campaign
- Philip Emeagwali – Nigerian born internet scientist

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Here’s my latest article from Feb’s AdMedia magazine:

There’s no question that building a brand is a far more diverse affair than it once was. Gone are the days when a big budget, an award winning TVC and a big wad of airtime was enough to build a brand. Locally TVNZ has its On-demand service and TV3 also runs catch-up programming. Both networks also share content with other portals and news sites, who also run short-form video content from a range of sources. Josh Borthwick asks what does this mean to the future of online brand advertising in New Zealand?

Almost every major brand has (at some point) invested and produced compelling video for an internet world. The delivery for this has in the past been viral email, then Youtube and now, more often than not, via publisher websites.

According to Mark Copplestone (GM Digital & Interactive Sales) of TVNZ, “Compelling online video offers an opportunity to get back to the fundamental building blocks of advertising campaigns – reach and frequency. TVNZ’s strategy is to have our content on all screens. We don’t see our programming always being strictly on-air or online but rather through multiple outputs. You may still view our content through a screen similar to a TV, but the delivery maybe very different in the back-end. Conversely you may watch some of our content through much smaller devices like the iphone.”

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The IAB NZ figures released today show another positive year of growth for online in some very challenging times. 2009 saw increased spends and new brand entrants online. Online advertising probably overtook magazines last year in NZ and for the first time overtook TV in the UK. For our part Adhub grew 46% in advertising revenue between May – September 2009.

IAB NZ members can see the full IAB / PWC report by getting in touch with alisa.higgins@iab.org.nz