By Amelia Brodka
Student Writer
“Innovation happens when entrepreneurs look at new ways to do old things, solve new problems, or mix and match new and old technologies or multiple data sets,” said Renee LaBran (pictured) at the March 8 M{2e} event, “Winners and Losers in a Changing Media Ecosystem.”
LaBran, a partner with the venture capital firm Rustic Canyon/Fontis Partners, came to speak as a part of USC Annenberg's Media, Economics and Entrepreneurship M{2e} initiative designed to spark innovation in media industries by increasing understanding of how economics impacts communication and journalism. Journalism professor Gabriel Kahn moderated the discussion.
As an investor with a background in advertising sales and strategic planning for the LA Times, LaBran's presentation provided a different perspective on media development.
LaBran began with a historical approach to explain the current role of the news and media. She outlined the transformation of the media platform that began in the 1990s with the introduction of the Internet.
The combination of phone companies and dial-up Internet, Yahoo!, and newspapers were the dominant “pipes, portals and media channels” that composed the media platform of that decade,LaBran said.
“It was an interesting time because everyone was trying to get into media, whether it was AOL, Microsoft, or Citysearch,” she said. “They all came to the LA Times because what they wanted was access to content such as news or listings. We were kind of the center of the universe; it was a great time to be in a newspaper.”
So what happened to the days where everyone scrambled for newspapers for reliable information? New content distribution platforms emerged as the “pipes” switched to broadband and “portals” began to rely heavily on the convenience of the Google search engine. Prior consumers of newspaper content gained access to unlimited websites.
As more consumers became drawn to Web-based content distributors, advertisers followed suit and began to pump their capital into Web advertising. The most significant shift was the development of new hardware and technology. Mobile Internet access and new formats such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad “completely transformed how we interact with media,” LaBran said.
This increased interactivity, coupled with the rise of social media websites, allowed “the art of listening, learning and sharing” to take place between the consumers and the content distributors. This created an effective one-on-one marketing strategy that allowed for the consumer to receive personalized content, perpetuating consumer dedication.
This emphasis on the packaging of content meant that “money comes back to aggregators, not creators of content,” LaBran said. For example, the creators of Apple’s iPhone and iPad apps make a fraction off of the app’s popularity, whereas Apple, the distributor, “aggregates the eyeballs” and the resulting revenue.
However, LaBran said the “real winners” are the distributors that double as content creators.
“Controlling the distribution channel is always profitable but hard to stay dominant over time,” said LaBran, adding that this is where the need to innovate comes in.
Labran concluded by addressing where innovation is today and how it can be applied to the business of media. By dissecting successful examples such as Groupon, Netflix and Kindle, LaBran demonstrated that innovation is merely in the presentation. Coupons, movie rentals and books have been always been around, but “the intersection of old ideas and new technologies” is the way to be successful in today’s media landscape.
