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.
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