I arrived early and had a chance to walk around the campus for a while. As I was looking for the group someone showed me to Martha Russell’s office. While we were waiting, I had a chance to hear about her work in technology transfer and partnerships with firms in Silicon Valley.
After the group arrived we walked up to a presentation room in Media X. On our way we passed cubes and desks with what looked like students hard at work on various things. While it was fairly quiet, the plethora of paper, posters and books strewn across desks gave me the impression of a fast paced think tank. Finally, it was off to the presentation where Dr. Russell highlighted the collaborative nature of Media X with industry.
Two things in particular interested me about her presentation. The first was her example of how new media is impacting how we consume media. The ratings grew almost exponentially from the time when CBS aired the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin aired followed by NBC’s Saturday Night Live skit and posting of the SNL skit to YouTube. Dr. Russell’s point was that the viral nature of platforms like YouTube had an unprecedented impact on other events like the Palin/Biden debate and the SNL parody of that debate Neither of those events might have garnered the attention they did had it not been for the viral nature of social media. I thought this was a powerful and engaging case study on social media.
The second was her discussion on how to measure the impact and value of social media. CPM has been a standard in the industry for broadcasters and content owners assign value and price to advertising space. But CPM is no longer a sufficient measure in a world dominated by postings on such platforms as YouTube, Facebook and blogs. How will firms measure direct value and shared value? And who shares in that value when one can make the case that YouTube, albeit not a sanctioned forum for IP protected content, was directly or indirectly responsible for increased viewership of a particular content?
