British media conglomerate BBC is taking aggressive steps to better define its global presence, by expanding and enriching its digital assets with an array of original content, social networking sites and transactional capabilities, with its eyes on the prize of revenue-generating, content -driven destinations.
The company outlined its broad-sweeping plan at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.
The ambitious initiative began in part when executives at BBC learned that its Web site received roughly 10 million unique visitors per month from North America. This spurred evolution of the portal and new sites beyond largely news-oriented content and a single channel of linear (live) TV.
BBC North America’s early efforts focused on adding video content and persuading top execs at their parent company to let the site accept advertising, which began in November. The company had vast content holdings, but, to that point, had only used a subset to drive its digital media strategy.
“We want to use content any which way we can,” proclaimed Luke Bradley Jones, who’s responsible for the BBC’s digital media strategy in the region through its BBC North America unit. “We also want visitors top spend over 30 minutes per session and visit five or six times a month.”
With that lofty goal in mind, the company has made more than 6,000 hours of premium video content available through BBC.com. While the majority is original, users can access more via arrangements with Amazon Unbox and NetFlix. “We want o push as much BBC content as possible to online and to mobile users,” added Bradley Jones.
Ironically, however, it was the single linear TV channel originally available on the sites that slowed things up on the content and thus business front. “The focus on the linear channel prevented us from reaching hundreds of niche communities,” admitted the BBC exec.
But all that has changed, as BBC North America is harnessing more and more of its vast vaults of original content for linear and on-demand video for the enriched site and to help drive the creation of what Bradley Jones called “passion sites,” which are more focused than the massive BBC.com.
“We see passion sites as social networking sites with a purpose,” said Bradley Jones. The destinations help people seek and exchange important information on areas such as travel in an informative and interactive manner. They feature a rich mix of short- and long-form video, community communications features, and games in some cases – all with built-in transactional capabilities.
Referring to content viewing types of sit back (TV) and lean forward (Internet/PC), Bradley Jones said the passion sites are trying to create a “sit forward mix.”
In addition to its travel passion site, the company is planning a National Geographic-type site that will primarily feature video content from some 70-plus expeditions the BBC currently has under way worldwide, according to the executive.
Another site geared primarily to communications among young demographic groups already received half of its traffic from the United States, according to Bradley Jones.
But like all digital media online efforts, there’s always more to come. The BBC suggests customers stay tuned.
BBC www.bbc.com
