Here is another angle on the convergence of
TV and the Web. The digital marketing firm eConsultancy asks the question, Is
online video destined to look like television programming? They quote Brian
Stelter in The New York Times: "News Web
sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like
television." Brian also writes that online ads are booming,
if they’re attached to a video.
They report that traditional
television has been impacted by commercial fast-forwarding, but with online it
does not work quite the same way. And as much as people complain about pre-roll
ads, they are increasingly watch them instead of skipping through them.
Digital video earned $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009,
which is an increase of 38% from the same time period last year. By online
standards this may seem small as online search is estimated to be a $10 billion
market this year. However, this growth is good news for struggling media
companies. Especially since online views are not poaching traditional TV
viewers. During the daytime, online is popular, but at night viewers are
switching to television. I think people will switch to online videos as a
diversion while working on their computers but will prefer the bigger TV screen
for more devoted recreational viewing.
I have written elsewhere that traditional media cannot not simply
reproduce itself on new media (see Here is a Creative Blend of Mainstream Media and Social Media and The Misplaced Fear of the Mainstream Media) and this post agrees. It
points out that in the longterm, merely reproducing TV content online at a
quicker pace is not likely save the networks. They quote Todd Teresi, chief
revenue officer at Quantcast: "We need to get to solutions that are as
elegant as search. The power of the search marketplace is that Google does not
sit there and tell you what you should buy. Google gave people control. That
fundamentally is why that marketplace works so well."
I wonder if traditional TV will ever gives us the same control and the
online world? It could be a very powerful move. Will hardware be the driver or
content? (see TV Moving Closer to Mobile Phones and the Web).
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