SMEurope Keynote Summary: Wolfgang Stahle

Keynote Speech: Wolfgang Stahle, President, Akamai Technologies Europe

Despite the recent failures of American-based B2C content providers, Wolfgang Stahle assured the Streaming Media Europe audience that B2B companies incorporating streaming can actually derive significant profits.

In Stahle's speech entitled, "Benefits and Challenges of Interactive Streaming Media," he encouraged sites to integrate the technology now, thereby reducing time-to-market, increasing stickiness, and ultimately, driving profits. Stahle claimed that interactivity with streaming fosters a competitive advantage, differentiates the product offering, and increases click-through rates.

Stahle sited mountainzone.com as an example of an ecommerce site deriving direct benefits since its integration of streaming content. He reports over 200,000 registered users averaging 47 minutes of view time. Of potentially greater interest to retail sites, Stahle claimed that over 75% of the registered users input legitimate addresses to receive direct marketing.

Streaming press releases was another example used by Stahle to reinforce the value of integrating streaming into B2B content. HP had recently web cast a product launch demo to reach distant analysts and reporters. He claimed that HP received 25% more press coverage as a result.

Although Akamai clearly has everything to gain by wider adoption of the medium, Stahle's suggestions were careful, meaningful integration strategies for companies to consider.

Before streaming media technology became synonymous with entertainment, many companies were focused on more realistic implementations for advertisers and business applications. After listening to Stahle's keynote, it became apparent that this vision has come full circle.