- Matt Bostwick, SVP, Franchise Development, MTV Music Group
 - Jeffrey B. Yapp, Executive VP, MTV Networks
 - Steve Youngwood, Executive VP, Digital Media, Nickelodeon
Viacom has emerged as one of the new media leaders combining television, 2D web and 3D virtual communities in one integrated system. Virtual Laguna Beach to Nickelodeon’s Nicktropolis, Viacom is helping define the next-generation media and advertising models. Virtual worlds allow media and entertainment innovators unprecedented new ways to engage consumers with the franchises they’ve enjoyed in front of their television screens.

Jeffrey Yapp – this is the first Virtual Worlds conference  - launch of virtual Laguna Beach – created a platform that allows audience to interact with the content – “Watch TV – Live TV” (all the ways they can participate and interact) and engage users on a deeper level – and that goes for Brand Engagement too.

People have come to expect more of TV and each improvement in technology is additive.  Media does not replace Media, it’s additive and increases engagement – and as the Media Pipe gets larger the Engagement Level goes up.   Jeffrey Yapp cites a study where people are fitting more and more media contact in their lives.

New platforms re-writes the rules of Advertising -

                Must Add Value to the User Experience

                99% are exposed to the Brand

                85% chose to interact within the brand in the following two months.

Matt Bostwick – 4D TV - My belief that passion and lifestyle with community creates depth of Engagement – and if you can get people passionately engaged revenue comes out of it and this belief led us to Virtual Worlds. A year ago our Virtual World site was getting 15 million hits a month – now it’s getting 250 million hits a month – this is going much, much faster than even we believed it would.

1+1 = 1000   We really believe that this is going to change the way people engage – when you mix TV with 3D Worlds you get a different medium that’s not really TV and not really 3D Worlds – it’s new – 4D TV.

TV is the starting point – not the ending point – we think the 4^th Dimension is People – even online chat rooms and web 2.0 sites seems old compared to our 4D world(s).  They might start as fans and end up as the show itself – the audience is the show and our job is to create a great stage and allow them to create their own story arc.

We think that the interaction within the Virtual World will circle back and go back on to the TV World and someday soon maybe the show will be the Virtual Show becomes the TV World.

New Announcements –

1.        Become a Storeowner or train for something

2.        See the virtual item and click through and buy the real one

3.        Buy a house in the virtual world in the show

4.        Launch LogoWorld this summer – build a starter island and invite our audience to come and build it’s own community and see where it goes.  Virtual Logo

The interface needs to simple and easy to use (too much complexity at the beginning is not good) and there needs to be privacy protection – security.

We estimate 3 million registered users by the end of the year and we have 600,000 users now.  What is in it for you?  The Ad Mo
del goes beyond “lets do some R&D together”.   But how do we go from getting people to see an AD vs. interacting with an Ad.

The 4^th Dimension is Social and WOM is the way that hearing about you has the highest creditability.

We call it 4D Branding.   Pepsi Study – Skill Levels that you could master – Skill Ladder.

Before we’d have just put a Pepsi machine in a 30 second spot and that would be the end of it but with 4D Branding 95% of the audience engaged and there were 11,000 cans of virtual Pepsi cans bought by Avatars with their own money.

With each new episode of the show we build another part of the Virtual World of Laguna Beach, etc.

Steve Youngwood -

What do audiences do online?

Games, Communication, Personalization and Video (when bandwidth pipeline gets wider), 3D Virtual Words bring all 4 elements together.

                It needs to be persistent and always on

                Social by nature

User Driven – most of the interactions driven by what the users want to do and the participants experience the effect of that, etc.

                There needs to be elements of the real world in the Virtual World

                There needs to be an element of Authority

                It needs to be easy to use.

We don’t think it has to be 3D – if the 3D gets in the way to the engagement style – it has to be weighed.

Not only Brand extending – but Brand Building works in 4D too.

Safe Environment

We want a Dual Subscription model similar to Cable TV

Is 4D the world of many hits or only one or two?  We don’t know the answer yet.  NeoPets, Netropetis,

                NeoPets - Youth oriented – very sticky.

                NICKtroplis – Playground that kids rule and has everything that a kid would want to do.