Animas Weblog

These two posts from Battelle (advertising is content) and Godin (what happens to radio) intersect with a tangent from this post of mine about Google competing for the TV ad market. I refer to the fact that “IPTV will come along at some point and scramble every paradigm about TV programming, advertising, consumption, control, and everything else”. I still maintain the bit about the scrambling, but as I’ve read some good sources about this over the past couple weeks, I’ve realized that part of that statement may be wrong, technically. Take the following from a clarification by Shelly Palmer about the precise definition of IPTV:

IPTV is not television over the Internet. It is television over Internet protocol. It is an alternative method of distribution — a transport mechanism, nothing more. The systems are not open to the public anymore than a cable set-top box from Comcast is open to the public. IPTV systems are walled gardens that will be used by operators to achieve optimum bandwidth efficiencies while enabling them (either cable or telcos) to provide television-like services, on-demand content, broadband connections, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP telephone service) over a private, inherently interactive, two-way network. Neither Verizon, Comcast, or any other serious IPTV provider will use the public Internet to deliver their services.

IPTV refers to using IP technology to distribute broadcast programming, with the added benefit of two-way communication to support more interactive entertainment, according to Palmer. Numerous comments differ with this definition, so I suppose there are different working definitions of “IPTV” and it’s not possible to use the term without dragging one connotation or another into the discussion. IP protocol as a means of distributing broadcast content is not what I was referring to, so I’ll stay clear of the IPTV term. I was referring to the departure from a strictly broadcast distribution system for TV programming (and advertising). Palmer also says the following:

Are we likely to see a public television product that mimics the current television experience utilizing the public Internet? We might, but it’s highly doubtful. Television provides a pretty good television experience and for broadcast business models, it is extremely efficient…. IPTV is not a threat to television, nor is it a threat to any existing advertising models.

Palmer’s assumption is that linear broadcast television as a business model and media consumption model is safe and sound. Perhaps IPTV itself, given a narrow enough definition, isn’t a threat to broadcast television. Irrespective of the technology used for distribution, I think consumers will drive a change in the linear and broadcast nature of TV. Let me start with some thoughts about the viewer demand for the long tail of content. These are a few excerpts strung together from an outstanding Bob Cringely post in 2005:

There is an audience, however small, for just about every show ever made. What we need to do is to find a way to make the cost of keeping those shows available less than the benefit derived from people seeing them…The broadcast distribution network isn’t efficient for small audiences…[but,] the Internet could be an ideal medium for serving small audiences…We need a way of rewarding the content creators when someone enjoys their work.

Broadcast might work for news, first run programming, and any kind of media that is likely to be consumed by a large percentage of viewers at the same time: this is the head. The Cringely quotation above is a perfect description of increasing the granularity of both content and viewership in order to match up the long tail of both. In the tail, more viewers can see exactly what they want to see (more obscure choices of content), and more obscure content (re-runs, specialty shows) can be viewed by satisfied viewers rather than going to waste. Best of all–and most interesting to me–in the long tail of viewers and programming, the targeting of TV ads can be increased dramatically because marketers don’t have to paint with broad strokes as they do in a broadcast context. Advertising in the tail of TV media will be extremely fragmented vs. the status quo, but marketers who have embraced the tail in other media will be able to increase their efficiency in the TV medium as well.

This is precisely the kind of environment that I believe Google is targeting for their TV ad platform. Google will want to leverage their track record as a trusted ad distributor in other fragmented ad markets. Google will attempt to lock up as much TV ad distribution as possible so that it can provide great reach for marketers weaned from broadcast media buys and unable to cope with the fragmentation of the new TV ad market.

One big unknown is how advertising will be incorporated into TV content as TV becomes less linear as a part of becoming narrow-cast. I want to talk more about that later, but in light of Battelle’s statement (I agree) that advertising is content, what of Google’s recent claim that they’re not in the content business? If ads are content, and Google is in the business of serving ads, and Google is working on more video ads, then isn’t Google in the business of serving video content? over IP.

Next up, technological barriers to long tail TV content, how user-generated video and YouTube/Google Video fit in, and some activity around technologies that might power P2P video distribution to start making some of this a reality.