Monday, January 29, 2007

IPTV - The Personal Factor

I just finished reading an International Herald Tribune article regarding IPTV that compelled me to put down a few more thoughts on the converging media channels. This article, along with Bill Gates interview on this morning’s Today show on NBC both paint a consistent picture of IP-based interactive television coming sooner than we may all think. But are we ready? Companies like mine work feverishly to resolve the conflict between a businesses need for commerce and a user’s need for privacy. Personalization, if done correctly can deliver a great user experience and strong enterprise profits. If done incorrectly it could set initiatives such as IPTV and mobile marketing back a few years.

But who will do it correctly? Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live Search are much further ahead in being able to deliver an advertising model that supports interactivity than the broadcast and cable networks. It remains to be seen if they can get the personalization factor right, so as to not be viewed as invading viewer privacy. They will also need to address the issues of professional content generation. This is the area where the networks have a huge lead. Personally, I think the winner will be a merged television/Portal organization – the only way to overcome the chicken & egg dilemma.

But as the song goes, “Money makes the world go ‘round.” Both broadcast TV and the Web are ad-supported content channels. No ads – no professional content. My money’s on the best ad engine and ad sales network that does personalization right. Doing it wrong could be incredibly damaging to the entire industry. So while money may, indeed, make the world go around, if personalized, interactive advertising ever makes me feel “uncomfortable” in my living room, I’m blocking that channel.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The PC in the Living Room

ABC News had a very interesting article out today entitled Making Peace with the PC. I strongly recommend that organizations within the content generation and delivery channels read it a couple of times through. Effectively the combination of PCs, media center PCs and software from companies like HP and Microsoft, and the Internet combine to form the most powerful interactive media channel to date. Yes, I know this is not new, but what is so exciting is the confluence of all these great other technologies that will soon make this common place and truly personalized and interactive.

Anyone watching television these days cannot miss Cisco’s dancing kid in the green shirt ad. Their Human Network campaign shows user-generated content on all three screens – living room, laptop and phone. Home routers and mobile are a strategic focus for Cisco and with their Linksys brand, their relationships with many of the set-top box and cable companies, and a growing distribution channel in the mobile and converged spaces they are a serious force to drive home entertainment/work connectivity to new adoption levels.

Connectivity is the key to this equation. If your “TV” is now connected to the Web and you are watching content on demand, and if you could communicate your preferences, screen size and location back to the video server mother-ship at Comcast, ABC or YouTube, think about what that does to the current broadcast TV advertising model. Holy cow! Television networks could go beyond the current local/national ad mix and deliver ads specifically tailored to me and my neighborhood, not the typical program demographic or regional cable office. Effectively it could drive a search-like advertising model into the living room.

The technology exists today to make this all happen. Adoption rates are unpredictable and a lot of human, infrastructure and process change is required before this will show up in every living room across America (or the world). But the train has left the station and in some shape or form will be arriving in your town in the not too distant future.

Whether or not you think this is a good thing or a bad thing – it is a BIG thing - and one that has tremendous implications for the content and media distribution channels. From my perspective, this is the ultimate reality TV show to watch as the decade comes to a close.