Joyce Schwarz writes about the brave new world of media ushered in with the PSP.

Welcome to Videopolis -- a world created by a personal and professional pastiche of digital images, mobile pix, video clips logs, blogs, vblogs (video blogs) and vortals (video-enabled portals); fast-forwarding us into an always-on, demand-driven broadband; creating an IPTV Vscape (videoscape) 24 nerve-jangling, mind-soothing, cell-shocking interactive hours of the day and night; a vista that spans far beyond, below, above and surrounding traditional electronic broadcasting of radio and television. Behold an infinite menu of media -- metatagged, linked, catalogued, indexed, searchable and most importantly ready2go, store, forward and of course share.

Rise of next-gen media

Enter the next-era of communication, where your role as a marketer is to ensure pro-sumers (consumers who not only consume media but also produce it) can localize, personalize and customize multiple info-streams dynamically. And by the way, wouldn’t it be great if your brand could, would and should underwrite, sponsor, defray cost or offer it all for free?  

PSPcasting -- a tipping point?

This column started as a story about March’s new-new-thing PSPcasting -- retrofitting the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) to store, play and forward video clips in addition to its other key functions such as gaming and movie-viewing. Sony designed the PSP to play MP4 video files (as well as MP3 music files) providing a ready platform for video-2-go. Even before the launch on Thursday, March 24 you could find several programs online enabling you to convert and download video into the PSP.

The following morning on Friday the 25th I started to see and hear about this new phenomenon called PSPcasting, enabling first geeks and then a larger body of early adapters and creative users to download video feeds directly into their PSPs. To do so they follow an online recipe posted and reposted in blog after blog and then promoted in mainstream media articles. The system uses online video conversion and management programs PSP Video 9 and Videora, and online distribution solutions BitTorrent and RSS. For the recipe click here or better still, ask your local techie or teen.

Beyond PODcasting

Last fall the new-new thing was podcasting -- enabling an iPOD to broadcast programming (search engadget.com for an easy how-to). Back then Doc Searls (one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Senior Editor, Linux Journal) forecast: “podcasting will shift much of our time away from an old medium where we wait for what we might want to hear to a new medium where we choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and how we want to give everybody else the option to listen to it as well.” 

Less than six months later, major brands like Microsoft and Warner Brothers are advertising on podcasts, firms like General Motors and Nike are podcasting their own programming and Podcastads.com promises to help you reach the trendsetters. A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that more than 29 percent of the 22 million American adults with iPods or MP3 players have downloaded "podcasts" from the web.

Armed with that information and the plethora of online and offline references to PSPcasting, I delved into how customized narrowcasting like this was affecting the marketplace. It was only natural that I began to wonder why PSP didn’t come bundled with ads or at least sponsored or branded content bundled with it.

Handheld SmartAdds

A quick surf around the web and I spotted the term “SmartAdds,” a new ad channel bundling with Gizmondo, a mobile entertainment device just launching in Britain and Europe and due to hit the states this fall. “As close as you can come to your target audience without getting slapped” is the motto of SmartAdds according to their promo page. They go on to promise that Gizmondo will come with a “revolution in targeted advertising.” To explain this claim, they ask you to “imagine the emotional power of TV combined with the accountability of direct marketing, the accuracy of direct mail and the mobile interactivity of SMS (short message system -- known as text messaging in the United States.)

Beam to the pocket

SmartAdds urges marketers to "handpick the perfect target audience for your product and then beam your message straight into their pockets.” It promises to deliver at precisely the right time of day. Online demos from such prestigious brands as Nike and Sprite underscore the ability to “entice them with high impact video and music.“ Gizmondo’s built-in phone and GPS positioning coupled with a deal with provider Vodafone enables Gizmondo to offer advertisers an opportunity to lead users to the nearest point of sale. Once there, a built-in bar-code reader on the device closes the deal by scanning the bar code straight from the Gizmondo in their hands. So that’s why they call it a SmartAdd.

Background research provided information that Gizmondo conducted a trial with more than 20 major advertisers (no names mentioned besides the demo brands who appear to have been part of that effort). A quick check with bloggers showed they were open to the new delivery system because of the "manifesto" of Gizmondo to deliver only if the user opts-in and even then only deliver one SmartAdd per day plus some promised freebies (not detailed). This reminds me of when Karim Sanjabi, EVP, Creative & Technology, Carat Interactive, pointed out during Digital Hollywood that entertainment can be called different things depending on how consumers receive it. “If we give an experience away, it’s considered an ad, but if we charge for the same experience it’s considered a product.”

Word on the street is mixed about Gizmondo’s reception. One report notes that the number of players sold is in the thousands compared to the millions of PSPs hitting the streets here. But Gizmondo is not only making the players but also opening stores to sell them. The opening of the first one in London was star-studded including none other than Sting in attendance and American comedian Tom Green as host.

Coca-Cola's Special PSP

Will PSP be inspired by Gizmondo’s SmartAdds to venture into its own ad channel? Who knows? As reported earlier, several new ad networks and models are already in the works for videogame ads and product placement services. The biggest hint on the Sony sponsorship model comes from Japan where Coca-Cola has teamed with Sony Computer Entertainment Japan for a new “Coke Style” campaign that lasts until May 31. Visitors to the site are encouraged to enter a sweepstakes to win, among other things, a Coca-Cola Special Edition PSP featuring a Coke-themed edition of “Everybody’s Golf” that replaces clubs with Coke bottles.

Sources say only 1,300 units are being produced -- so enter immediately or watch for a new eBay collectable auction soon. A quick glance showed that even top-tier blogs like Gizmodo (no relation to Gizmondo) were receptive -- even kidding about why Sony doesn’t make the PSP in red. In the land of always-on and on-demand, my advice to my clients is to edge into offering “exclusives” to cut through the clutter of free and capture brand recognition.

Tomorrow: Citizen's Media's affect on advertising