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Feature
Story -
• •
102Amazon's
Movie Data Base, Creates Local Movie Ticket
Sales
•
• February 24, 2005 /
Movie Data Base pioneer, Amazon.com has been
linking the computer screen to the silver screen
for years, say people at Amazon. "Now it's time to
make a little money in the process, so . . . both
Internet giants, Amazon and Google commenced
ventures this week, directing Web surfers into
movie
theaters.
• • Amazon.com
Inc. and Google Inc.'s Internet Movie Database
separately said they would start selling movie
tickets through their respective websites. That
would accelerate the trend of transforming familiar
websites into full-featured online services that
allow people to search the Internet, buy stuff,
plot a trip or plan a night
out.
• • Online sales
are a small portion of overall box-office receipts,
which tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. said
hit a record $9.4 billion last year. The online
market is stunted, analysts said, because Internet
ticketing services strike exclusive deals with
cinema owners, forcing consumers to hopscotch
across the Web to find tickets for their
neighborhood
multiplex.
• • In fact,
Internet Movie Database partnered with Fandango
Inc. and Google with Fandango's smaller rival,
MovieTickets.com Inc. -- and neither service sells
tickets to theaters represented by the
other.
• • "Over time,
you're going to have to have some kind of
consolidation or joint marketing agreements," said
Larry Gerbrandt, media and entertainment analyst at
Los Angeles-based AlixPartners. "The whole idea is
to make it easier to buy a ticket, not
harder."
• • With its new
service, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google lets
users not only buy tickets but also search for
actors, movie titles or such general keywords as
"great action sequence," then returns movie reviews
that fit the
bill.
• • Typing "Movie:
Tom Hanks on island talking to volleyball" delivers
reviews for "Cast Away." For films in theaters,
Google Movies also returns local show times and,
with a few clicks, lets surfers use
MovieTickets.com to purchase tickets from such
theaters as
AMC.
• • Google said it
wouldn't get a commission from movie ticket sales.
Instead, the company expects to generate more
searches for movie-related terms, which it hopes
will in turn encourage companies to buy more
movie-related
ads.
• • As for Amazon,
neither its Internet Movie Database unit nor
Fandango would say whether the company would get a
cut of the ticket sales. But the partnership means
that Amazon will reach customers during more of a
film's life; the online retailer will sell people
tickets to see a movie in theaters, then months
later will sell them the
DVD.
• • No one seems
to know how much of the movie box office has been
captured by Web-based sales. The leading companies
that report box-office receipts don't track online
sales. Technology consulting firm Jupiter Research
estimated that consumers spent $560 million on
movie tickets online last year, which would be
about 6% of overall box-office
sales.
• • People tend to
go to the Web to snap up tickets for hot new
releases that are expected to sell out quickly. For
example, Fandango calculated that it sold 13% of
all opening-weekend tickets for "Fahrenheit 9/11"
and 8% of all opening-weekend tickets for "The Lord
of the Rings: The Return of the
King."
• • But heading to
the movies is often a last-minute decision, which
means consumers are less likely to use the Web for
buying movie tickets than they are to buy seats for
sporting events or music concerts, Jupiter Research
analyst David Card
said.
• • And the
industry is stunting its own growth by making big
players choose sides, he said. For example, Yahoo
Inc. uses Fandango and sells tickets to its stable
of theaters, while America Online Inc.'s Moviefone
uses MovieTickets.com and its
theaters.
• • "There's no
question it's got to be inhibited by the fact that
you have to go to three places to be able to buy
tickets for every theater in your neighborhood,"
Card said.
///
Center
Page / Profile
TIMELINE:
"Images"
NEEDED
- A new face for the largest
on-line
store in the World - Amazon.com . . . a small
screen -- Big Picture
-----
In keeping with our "Images"
theme, we have selected Amazon head, Jeff Bezos, as
a December 2004, Person of the Week. His foresight
and ability to make the right changes at the time,
adds up to big dollars. This Christmas, Amazon will
loadstone it's holiday season clickers to retail
sites owned by other
merchants
-----Long
before the innovative Jeff Bezos started selling
.com movies, CDs, toys and consumer electronics,
tools, sporting goods, jewelry, he was selling just
books on the premise that Amazon.com in 1995 as an
online bookseller, that sells titled stories as
long and winding as the name of the river the
online bookstore was named
after.
-----Since 1995, Jeff has
taught the world how to shop online, and what a
browser should look like, and what it should do . .
. sell. Now he's betting that the big money on the
Web these days lies in selling "Clicks" directed to
buyers and sellers, that basically need Amazon to
do what it does best, guide the consumer directly
to the
seller.
-----So when Amazon shoppers
search for Oak furniture, the results might include
a link to Dorothy's Country Oak's online shopping
site. Browsing for an automobile could get you
connected to a Mercedes online shopping
site.
-----Jeff is predicting . .
. there's money to be made in not making
sales. In fact, this virtual store is rapidly
resembling a virtual mall. Its rent is the
commission other retailers pay to have traffic
steered their
way.
-----"We wanted to position
ourselves as the place to start for shopping," said
Diego Piacentini, Amazon's senior vice president of
worldwide retail and marketing. "The strategy is to
keep connecting people with
products."
-----Amazon, is really using
the devices they perfected and made an impact on
the Clicker. They are now selling everything under
the sun without having to actually buy, store, sell
and ship those products.
-----Influenced
heavily by the booming online market for
search-related ads, Amazon last year started
running Google and
Overture's targeted sponsor ads. That is,
when a customers searches Google for well know
branded products, an Amazon affiliate is mixed in,
or above the branded item.
-----Amazon
gets paid only if the Google user clicks on the
sponsored link. And if customers visits vratv.com
and then decide to buy the same DVD item from
Amazon's instead, it gets paid three times, once by
vratv.com for the referral and again by both the
customer and a commission paid by vratv.com for
making the sales, usually amounting to
50%.
-----If for some reason or
another, they are reluctant from buying the item
from Amazon, Amazon gives the customer a lot of
reasons to buy the same item from somebody else
besides
Amazon.
-----Clicking the "ready to
buy" box, in blue on the right side of the page,
recently took customers to
dorothyscountryoak.com because the
Santa Maria, e-tailer offered the lowest price.
Amazon's offering appeared second. Although it was
learned later, the customer did buy a DVD from
Amazon, on the
dorothyscountryoak.com Web site,
and they got the commission.
-----Most of Amazon's online
competitors are happy to take Amazon's referrals.
"Amazon's the one that opened my eyes to the rules
guided by affiliation," says Mark Soval of TVI. "I,
like other admirers of Jeff, feel he has now the
true desire to be the contact man for all
retailers, helping them sell any and all products
known to mankind, either new or used. It didn't
take him long to realize, that stocking every
product you want to sell, is very hard to do and
the economics aren't there, especially if the river
gets a little overburdened, during holiday
season."
Back
Issues are now available from 1956 to present
date.
///
Center
Page / Biography
TIMELINE:
Jeffrey Preston Bezos
is the son of Miguel "Mike" Bezos , and Jacklyn
Gise Bezos. Jeff has a younger brother and
sister.
Jeff Bezos gives his
grandfather, a retired Atomic Energy Commission
manager, credit for guiding his thoughts to higher
ambitious and intriguing adventures.
-----
Bezos worked on science and
engineering projects that eventually piled up in
his parents' garage. His passion for building
things was proved when he built his own Infinity
Cube, a cube made up of motorized mirrors which
allow the user to stare into in an infinite
world.
-----When
his mother said its $20 cost was too expensive, he
bought the pieces cheaply and built it himself.
This story is documented in "Turning On Bright
Minds: A Parent Looks at Gifted Education in
Texas." Incidentally, the book, published locally
in the Houston area in 1977, is not available on
Amazon.com. Bezos spent many summers on his
grandfather's ranch in Cotulla, Texas, where he
exercised his hands-on engineering abilities by
fixing windmills and doing other such chores
-----
By age 16, he could fix
windmills, use an arc welder and castrate cattle.
In his late grade school years, Bezos became
fascinated with the Infinity Cube, which uses a set
of motorized mirrors to let the user stare into
"infinity."
-----In
1986 -- graduated from Miami's Palmetto High
School. He was elected class president and
valedictorian,
-----In
1988, after graduating from Princeton, majoring in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Bezos
joined FITEL, a high-tech start-up company in New
York.
-----
In 1988, Bezos joined
Bankers Trust Company, New York, leading the
development of computer systems that helped manage
$250+ billion in assets and becoming their youngest
vice president in February,
1990.
-----From 1990 to 1994,
Bezos helped build one of the most technically
sophisticated and successful quantitative hedge
funds on Wall Street for D.E. Shaw & Co., New
York.
-----1992 Highlights: he
helped build one of the most technically
sophisticated quantitative hedge funds on Wall
Street, moving from self-proclaimed "in-house geek"
to money manager, Bezos became their youngest
senior vice
president.
----- In 1994, realizing the
Internet was growing at 2,300 percent annually, he
and wife MacKenzie moved to Seattle and began an
online business out of their rented suburban house.
He founded Amazon.com, an Internet retailer of
books, music, videos and
more.
----- July 1995 --
Amazon.com is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
His team spent a year developing database programs
and creating the Web site. Amazon.com opened its
virtual doors for business in July 1995.
------Since May 1997 each of
Amazon.com's 1,600 employees gets stock options
that vest over a five-year period; some are now
millionaires. Scaling internal systems to meet
rapid growth and low overhead by using centralized
distribution.
----- By the end of 1998,
more than 4.5 million people from 160 countries had
shopped at Amazon.com, making it the leading online
shopping site. In 1998, sales topped $500 million.
Amazon.com has become a model for Internet
companies by putting market share ahead of profits
and making acquisitions funded by meteoric market
capitalization. Founder Jeff Bezos and his family
own about 34% of the firm.
-----1999
- He was chosen as Person of the Year by TIMES
Magazine.
-----2000
to 2003 - The first steps in Amazon's new strategy
for their third-party Associate seller program, is
installed and readied for 2004. Inspired by
EBay Inc.'s sprawling marketplace,
Amazon lets more than 800,000 sellers sell Amazon
goods on third party websites in exchange for a cut
of all sales. Most are individuals looking to
unload used books or CDs. Others are established
bricks-and-mortar retailers like Office
Depot Inc. and Foot Locker
Inc. eager to tap into Amazon's base of 44
million active customers.
-----2004
- Amazon won't say what portion of its expected
$6.7 billion to $6.9 billion in revenue this year
will come from third-party sales. But the program
is growing: 28% of Amazon's third-quarter unit
sales were from such sellers, up from 22% the same
period last year. Amazon's gross margin of 23.5%,
is just a little below Wal-Mart Stores
Inc.'s 23.8% and less than a third of
EBay's whopping 80.8%. Amazon still guarantees
orders placed through its merchant partners and
lets users post reviews of each seller to maintain
customers' trust.
///
ByLines:
Editors Note
Internet
commerce.
-----"Obsess about
customers, not the competitors", is the motto of
Bezos' present obsession -- Amazon.com . The
company known today as the most visible symbol of
consumer electronic commerce started when he
discovered the exponential growth of the Internet.
He and his wife Mackenzie (a novelist) moved to
Seattle and started Amazon.com from their rented
suburban
house.
-----Before
"opening" its doors for business on the Internet,
Bezos and his team spent a year developing database
programs and creating the Web site, which sells
books, music and videos on the Internet. Although
the profitability of the company is next to nil -
all the extra cash is used for marketing and for
buying other companies - the accomplishments of
Amazon.com are
tremendous:
-----*
It beat Sears in market capitalization value (the
number of outstanding stock shares multiplied by
stock price), with $17 billion in
1998.
-----* It went public in May
1997, and is traded on the NASDAQ as AMZN. Its many
employees have stock options and are now
millionaires.
-----* It is to date, Amazon
is the leading online shopping site, with sales
expected to exceed $6.7 billion in revenue in 2004.
About 25% will come from
third-party sales of $1.92
billion.
-----* More than 800,000
third party affiliate Web sites are linked to
Amazon.com, to sell goods listed.
Why did Jeff Bezos decide to
name his company
Amazon.com?
----- Bezos and his
team spent a year creating their Web site and
developing the database programs that they knew
they would need. They hired a marketing firm to
test several names for the new online company with
consumers. Amazon was picked because words starting
with "A" show up on search-engine lists
first.
What can you do when you
visit
Amazon.com?
-----Amazon.com tries to
offer the broadest possible selections while being
customer-friendly and easy to navigate. Search
engines make it possible to find books by author,
title, subject or keyword and music by artist, CD
title or song title. Reviews are provided and
readers and listeners are allowed to comment on
books and music as
well.
-----Every time a customer
buys a book, Amazon.com's computer uses the
information to recommend similar books. Bezos says,
"The goal here is not rampant consumerism. The idea
is to use technology to capture information about
consumers and their interests and match individuals
with other products they might like, including
items they don't even know exist." (USA Today)
-----Bezos
is known as a fan of science fiction (his Labrador
is named after an obscure Star Trek character);
witty; gregarious; keenly interested in anything
that can be revolutionized by computers; and known
to have an explosively loud laugh. He definitely
has a lot to laugh and smile
about.
TVI
Magazine ONLINE / IS YOUR INDUSTRY WEB SITE Ready
for the future?
-----
TVI
Magazine introduces here a new marketing forum for
the international television industry: a dynamic
online service on its Web site. TVI Magazine will
now effectively serve the new marketing needs of
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Web site can be hyperlinked with the company's own
URL. TVI Magazine can also link the ads to a
special Web page for the advertiser and then link
that page to the advertiser's
URL.
-----
To
ensure that visitors find their way to promotion
information and product updates, TVI Magazine is
listing TVI Magazine Online on more than 250 of the
world's most popular search engines and electronic
directories.
-----
Online
ad space can be purchased in monthly increments
(with a one-month minimum). At renewal time,
advertisers can change their ad and/or move it to
another space if one is available. The TVI Magazine
Web site will indicate the total number of hits on
the home page per month and per day, enabling
advertisers to monitor their reach and billings
regularly.
-----
TVI
Magazine has two key pages for ad placement: the
index page (home page) and the main page (main page
of articles). Less expensive ad space is available
on article pages. Advertisers can provide the
artwork and/or logo, either by submitting the file
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-----
Most
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-----It
just goes to show you, says Troy about the TV and
Film industry -- "NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS
PERMANENT" . . . so follow the
money -
- and
take some advice from a dinner-time chat with
"Stonehead" --
Disappointments Are Great! Follow
the Money . . . the Internet and the Smart- Daaf
Boys.
///
///
ByLines:
Editors Note
Internet
commerce.
-----"Obsess about
customers, not the competitors", is the motto of
Bezos ' present obsession -- Amazon.com . The
company known today as the most visible symbol of
consumer electronic commerce started when he
discovered the exponential growth of the Internet.
He and his wife Mackenzie (a novelist) moved to
Seattle and started Amazon.com from their rented
suburban
house.
-----Before
"opening" its doors for business on the Internet,
Bezos and his team spent a year developing database
programs and creating the web site, which sells
books, music and videos on the Internet. Although
the profitability of the company is next to nil -
all the extra cash is used for marketing and for
buying other companies - the accomplishments of
Amazon.com are tremendous:
-----"It
just goes to show you, says", Josie Cory --
"NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS PERMANENT" . . .
so follow the
money -
- and
take some advice from a dinner-time chat with
"Stonehead" --
Disappointments Are Great! Follow
the Money . . . the Internet and the Smart- Daaf
Boys.
///
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Submitted
Josie
Cory
Publisher/Editor
TVI Magazine
TVI
Magazine, tviNews.net, Associated Press, Reuters,
BBC, LA Times, NY Times, VRA's D-Diaries, Press
Releases, They Said It Tracking Model, and
SmartSearch were used in compiling and ascertaining
this Yes90 news report.
©2004-2006. Copyright. All
rights reserved by: TVI Publications, VRA TelePlay
Pictures and Big Six Media Entertainments. Tel/Fax:
323 462.1099.
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