Archive for the ‘opinion’ tag
Dear Cable Company, It's Internet TV knocking and it wants your ad revenue.
Here is a series of recommendations, rants, and observations about why MSOs (the cable companies) will be sad in 2011, unless they innovate and invest.
Entertainment = Consumption + Interaction:
Internet-enabled TV will bring about some radical changes. Nielsen’s Three Screen Report indicates that consumption of the moving image is increasing across all three screens: traditional TV, internet, and mobile. The interactivity of this “data” will surely change. Entertainment now equals both watching and interaction: checking out additional content online, playing games, or participating in ads as entertainment. 3D and gesture-based interactions will also redefine this blurring of the line between passive and active viewing over the next few years.
Ditch the “dumb” set-top:
Content models that rely on “captive audience” set-top box capture of viewing habits are outmoded as delivery systems, and deliver poor analytics and reporting compared with the information we can glean from a data-only model. If content owners rely on this information, why does the old model remain unchecked? The set-top box is largely a passive unit that doesn’t include an interface, platform, or APIs for allowing advertisers to interact directly with their target audience in real-time like the Web does. We have seen some recent (and awesome) successes with new methods of delivery: Hulu, Netflix, MLB, and on-demand efforts. However we are in an infancy of thinking about the possibilities of satellite, cable, and their antiquated set-tops, and how broadcast can recapture some of the money that migrated to online advertising.
This is an opportunity for direct access to consumers in their living rooms. The delivery method is there, there is already a large internet-enabled box in many living rooms: tuner, DVR, AppleTV, Slingbox, etc. MSOs already have the access to provide value-add applications to the experience, but what is preventing them from radically changing the intersection of TV, Internet, and advertising? They actually have had a better chance than anyone.
Develop a platform:
Imagine tying content delivery to analytics and advertising – a platform that delivers both choice and guidance to direct viewers to shows they like, and then targets accompanying ads based on more granular information and feedback. Visible World does last-mile ad insertion for parent company, Comcast, who acquired one of the big three: NBC. A small wrinkle in this still-disputed merger is Sen. Kohl, who is asking for a divestiture of NBC’s holdings in Hulu, arguing that it potentially violates anti-trust.
But this is an amazing opportunity for MSOs to radically change the model for consumers and advertisers by providing a platform for interaction. MSOs have a chance to drive people back to their subscriptions — otherwise we will see a switch to online viewing, where advertisers can get a lot more feedback for their digital dimes, and consumers can have more choice, and augment their experiences.
The TV could supersede the MSO-provided set-top box as a platform:
Internet-enabled TVs or TVs with companion internet-enabled boxes will supersede the current MSO interface and platform. Federated search across Internet/DVR/broadcast is far more useful and less clunky than a remote-driven interface. In addition, the ability to bring in dynamic web content — ads, additional content, or related information — should quickly reduce the three screens to just two.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diTpeYoqAhc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
When MSOs realize they are missing out on key advertising opportunities, we will see a rush to market with subscription- and licensed-content across the three screens. You would have thought that Hulu would have put the fear in them, but wait until Google TV takes their bite. Their recent partnerships with TV manufacturer, Sony, ensures that this will be widely distributed to Best Buy, Walmart, etc. beyond the market reach of Roku, Slingboxes, of the world.
Prepare to lose ad revenue:
NBC Universal’s (current) CEO Jeff Zucker and his oft-quoted ‘trading analog dollars for digital pennies’ was revised last year to ‘digital dimes’ from the man himself. That is good news, especially for the multitudes of investors that entered into internet video ventures last year. Out of that gold-rush of investment though, there hasn’t been significant pay-dirt for many. Clearly the answer lies in uniting broadcast to the Internet, bringing the interactivity the web provides, in addition to the type of analytics that are possible. I predict Google TV will make more of an impact than Apple TV did to unite those advertising schemes, although watch out, Apple’s clearly got some plans a brewin‘.
Google TV offers the opportunity to sell ad’s within the interface, and provide targeted advertising, on the TV. Show me what you got MSO’s.
In Conclusion:
It is a rapidly changing world, and people have clearly shown that the TV, cable-tuner, and DVR do not have all the features people want. The cable companies who own the infrastructure and delivery method of video and data are being left out of this equation. Google has side-stepped around cable companies and the licensing issues — wisely I might add — and added a layer with enhancements that will allow them get deep into people’s living rooms, to collect data and provide a smarter ad platform. Things are going to get really interesting….
In The Beginning, There Was Just One Web Browser…
In the beginning, there was just one web browser… and it was good. Mainly because there wasn’t another web browser to be “the bad one”.
Written for NeXTStep by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, WorldWideWeb was the first of many browsers to offer up their view of how web pages should be rendered for the end user. Although the world wide web is based on open standards that are interoperable by anyone, the browser community became a near monoculture during the mid to late 90s thanks to Microsoft’s inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. Even Mac OS X users were ensnared by Internet Explorer as it was not only the first browser for the then-new OS, but one of the very first 3rd-party applications as well.
Then, in 2003, Firefox (then called Phoenix) showed up on the scene. Although other web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Opera Software’s Opera had established user bases, it was Firefox that captured the hearts of the alpha geeks by way of its altruistic goal to create a good open source web browser. No longer was browser functionality beholden to the whims of its parent corporation. Now the end user was king.
Initially this freedom brought a flurry of innovation in browser design. Things like tabbed windows, download managers, and an interface add-on architecture were created or borrowed to make Firefox a more useful browser. Companies such as Apple saw value in the open source browser effort and joined or started open source projects of their own. Soon the idea of a modern browser became so powerful that even Microsoft updated Internet Explorer to include these improvements.
As the browser grew up, the Internet continued to diversify in use, and discovered along the way that one browser layout does not fit all. Although interface hacks gave Firefox specialized capabilities, people started to wonder whether or not it would make more sense to design a browser for a specific purpose from the interface up. Now came the rise of the specialized browser.
Google Chrome
Flock is probably the most well known of the specialized browser breed, which is to say that you’ve probably never heard of it unless you’re a geek or one of their unwitting testbed friends. Available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, Flock is built around interacting with social networking sites, webmail, blogs, and more. Friend lists for sites like Facebook are readily available in a browser sidebar. Posting a link on your blog is as easy as bringing up special text edit panel without leaving the site you’re on. Overall the goal is to abstract services from their respective websites to make them more tool-like.
Some specialized browsers are reductions rather than additions. Google turned a lot of heads when they released Chrome, a web browser with a uniquely minimal interface. While the “get the browser out of the way” interface was warmly embraced by alpha geeks, the hoovering of personal web activity by Google through Chrome was not.
Enter Iron. Since Chrome is run by Google as an open source project, enterprising programmers took the Chrome source code and removed all the components that transmitted personal data to the Google mothership. The browser retains the look and functionality of Chrome while respecting the user’s privacy.
The Ghostzilla Browser
Other specialized browsers serve more subversive purposes. Based on the Gecko rendering engine, the now discontinued Ghostzilla allowed sneaky office users a chance to peek at the Internet without raising the suspicions of their over-the-shoulder glancing managers. Rather than display content in a traditional browser window, Ghostzilla masked its purpose by running inside the window space of a traditional Office app such as Microsoft Word. Web pages were rendered in black and white and images were not loaded unless moused over. The entire browser space itself disappeared when the mouse was moved away, making covering your tracks as simple as a gesture.
The specialization of web browsers shows that the world wide web is evolving in a way that is healthy and intended. Although he could have used closed, secretive code to instruct web browsers on how to display web pages, Sir Tim Berners-Lee chose to employ an open human-readable language called HTML. This even playing field has fostered a level of communication that is unprecedented in human history. Let the good times download.