The world of video content insights with Steve Mushkin

Steven Mushkin, CEO and founder of Latitude Research and creator of the video intelligence platform, Lumiere, joined our podcast recently. His company and technology provide strategic and tactical guidance for major media and technology companies domestically and internationally, with subject area expertise in advertising, diagnostics and effectiveness, brand communications, content strategy, and digital innovation. Clients include Amazon, Disney, Google, Microsoft, NBCU, Paramount, Roku, and Spring Hill.

Steve's current area of focus is on the growing intersection of visual media and new technologies and the resulting possibilities for innovative entertainment and information experiences. Below is an overview of our interview with Steve. 

Michael: What's the most significant thing you're going to tell us today?
Steve: I'm going to tell you all sorts of significant things about the increasing importance of video and our work in the media landscape, as I think everybody is aware of by now, and probably taking that a little farther about the interesting new types of experiences in video, particularly video experiences that are being enabled by, of course, digital environments generally and also by AI. And I'm going to give you a nice little statistic if you like that.

… every minute, approximately 25,050 hours of YouTube videos are being watched, and that's only YouTube, obviously there's other platforms. But when you think about what's happening in the world with 15,303,200 hours of YouTube videos being watched, interacted with, etc., every minute of the day in total aggregate around the world, it tells you the extent and reach and power of this medium.

It's mind-boggling, isn't it? So, and if you multiply minutes, you know, multiply the minutes out, then you're obviously getting millions and millions of hours per day. So that's one of the reasons we're in this is that it's central to all sorts of marketing content and people's web experiences, of course, so I'm looking forward to this conversation. 

Michael: So it's definitely an important topic, especially as consumers are consuming more and more. As you've just said, um, can you tell us a little bit more why you feel this is a really central valid discussion that we should be having right now and topic around video in particular?

Steve: That's right. Yes. So, as I just said, it's in many ways the primary medium at this point. And, you know, I think what's gone on is really sort of positive and fascinating at the same time.  The web has given us access to more information, of course, but in particular, more printed information than has been accessible at any time in history. And my kids who are now in their twenties, you know, you hear talk about kids not reading.

And certainly, their primary mode of consuming lots of content is through video on the one hand and on the other hand, they've probably read more. I grew up in a reading culture. They've probably read more words, if you want to take it literally, than either my wife or I or many in our generation have; they've just read them in a different medium. So, on the one hand, there's been this really fantastic in many ways explosion of printed material and  - simultaneously starting in the early two-thousands -  of films and video content.

And those two are both walking hand in hand quite nicely. And obviously, we're getting towards the metaverse in the not too distant future and immersive experiences that will combine both of those media among others. But to the video point, I think what's appealing, if you will, is that it's fairly easy for almost anybody to create content, to create high-quality content, to distribute it to as many people who find it interesting, and to do so in increasingly technologically savvy ways, including the relationship between new forms of AI and video content itself and the kinds of things that enable, which we'll get into later, I'm sure.

Michael: So if we just take a step back for a moment, when we think of video now, we think of sitting down watching something on our phone or TV. We had glimpses of what it could be with 2D TV, movies, etc. But what do you feel like, what is video, and where is it moving to? What are the possibilities that you're seeing?

Steve: Yeah, good. That's a great question. I think I would put it into two categories. The first is various forms of interactivity with video, which is where we have been going for the past decade. And certainly, part of what our software is about, our application. So those types of interactivity range from different people, whether they know each other or not, being able to leave feedback on a video, which is the simplest form but also do things like experiments - like Netflix's Bandersnatch, where you're affecting the timeline or the line of the story, so to speak, communicating with other people in the video. And, of course, going beyond that to various kinds of interaction with data, with data-enriched video, and/or with actual commerce, right, in video commerce.

So those are all different forms and different levels of interactivity with the video, all of which can be applied to either pure classic content in the form of information or entertainment or to persuasive and branded content of various kinds. So that's category one, category two I would say is immersive video and the actual sort of sensory experience of it. And that includes, of course, what we're about to see with metaverse-like experiences. The most obvious being something like Apple Vision Pro, right, which isn't here yet but will be soon and is fascinating in various ways because it will enable the ability to be more immersed in what they call spatial video or spatial computing.

And very in my mind, significant and hopefully desirable ways we'll see. So there's that, that immersive aspect and in the case of Apple doing it in a way that you're not completely cut off from the “real world” if you don't want to be. So there's that form of immersion, and there's also, of course, if you want to define video more broadly, right, video in which there is an actual 2D/1D kind of experience that's even more powerful or, or I should say different, not necessarily more powerful but different than the one that's envisioned pro, which is kind of metaverse, sort of almost game-like experiences that we've seen examples of.

And you'll see, I think, my last point and the answer to that might be that I think we'll see some interesting merging of the qualities of game-like video or game video and video games with quote classic 19th and 20th-century moving images. And so the qualities that games have and the qualities that classic moving images have will be merged and are being merged already in interesting ways that make for very dynamic, engaging, and more importantly, in some cases, at least potentially persuasive storytelling and other things.

Please listen in for the rest of our fascinating interview with Steve.