Industry Perspectives: Internet TV Ready for Prime Time?
The author is SVP and CMO of Onstream Media, an online service provider of IPTV, web communications, and digital media services. StreamingMedia.com welcomes submissions to Industry Perspectives, a department in which industry insiders offer their commentary and analysis of the issues and trends facing the world of online video. Contact editorEric Schumacher-Rasmussen for more information.
Sales and marketing is about communicating a message or value proposition to a potential customer in a manner that motivates the individual to purchase a product or service. While there are various mediums used for delivering sales and marketing messages—verbal rhetoric, the written word, images, TV, banner ads, online video animation, etc.—traditional video broadcasting (TV, cable, and satellite) largely reigns supreme. The multitude of 30-second, multi-million dollar Super Bowl commercials is a testament to this fact. Its ability to captivate an audience with dynamic content is second to none. This is one of the primary reasons why traditional broadcasting has transcended the offline world and made its way on to the internet. internet TV (also known as IPTV) is the newest online killer application, and it has the potential to one day compete with traditional video broadcasting for sales and marketing dollars.
We are just now in internet TV’s infancy, and already it has taken on many faces. Many believe internet TV it is simply the playing of television broadcasting over the web. While this is most certainly a very important aspect of internet TV, it by no means stops there. Its multitude of other uses make it very relevant to the worlds of entertainment, TV broadcasting, sales and marketing, online education, and many other applications.br>
Today, the ubiquitous and flexible platform of internet TV is used for webcasting, webinars, web conferencing, entertainment media distribution (movies, etc.), internet advertising, and anything else involving audio/video streaming over the internet.
Traditional Video Broadcasting Today
One of the main advantages to traditional video programming is the viewer’s ability to quickly search for and locate desired programs using on-screen channel guides or by scrolling through the various channel listings. In terms of competing for sales and marketing dollars, traditional TV/cable/satellite is a proven medium with projectable results. Audience measurement companies like Nielsen help make this possible. Additionally, when we turn on the television, we are presented with automatic content, based on the default channel the TV is set to. From there we can then peruse through other content. Since all of these programs run irrespective of the number of actual viewers watching, the ads primed to run during these programs get their due air time.
However, with the rise of internet TV we are starting to understand some of traditional TV’s disadvantages. Even with the advent of digital video recording (DVR) systems, traditional video broadcasting does not enable user-uploaded content. The platform is also highly regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and others.
Internet Television Today
The upside to internet TV is enormous. Its largely unregulated landscape makes innovation restricted only by the imaginations of would-be innovators. Moreover, the industry is already skyrocketing with technology providers clamoring for ways to make the medium more intelligent to best compete for sales, marketing and entertainment dollars that are now spent on traditional video programming.