Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

March 12, 2008

When consumers are watching free, short-form Internet video does that necessarily mean that there could exist a viable marketing channel to support viewing of traditional television content online? Some don't think so, while there are others that think positively about the idea.

eMarketer seems to think that most of the evidence available suggests that online video content is simply supplementing traditional television content and viewing habits rather than replacing them in any way.

Recent numbers from comScore and others indicate that audiences are fragmenting. However, they have been fragmenting ever since the introduction of cable TV in the early seventies, at least in the U.S. that is.

According to a study conducted by Nielsen Media Research, on average, people may be watching less of the broadcast TV channels in favor of cable, time-shifted content and Internet-based content, but overall TV usage has still increased nevertheless.

The distribution of viewer content must be addressed separately from the means of accessing that specific content. Convergence is definitely occurring in content distribution, which will eventually be through Internet protocol for the most part.

But eMarketer says the personal computer and the Internet still won't replace the TV as an access device, least not in the short term. What's more likely instead is that more Internet content will be viewed on the TV in the future. The comfortable lounge room and flat-screen (much larger-size) TV is (will) be the best place to watch premium video, according to some people.

Today, the vast majority of Internet video content is short-form and bite-sized. However, it's not the new television medium per se. Not only is the content different, but the way people view it is different: lean-forward compared with lean-back...

The CTAM (Cable & Telecommunications Association of Marketers) says that broadband video currently makes up about only 2.7 percent of the overall video watching in the U.S. every week. The exact amount varies depending on specific demographics, but many respondents in a CTAM survey watched an average of between 27.2 to 31.9 hours of TV per week and less than about an hour of Internet video.

Overall, broadband video users watch slightly less of TV-only content and prime-time content than the national population. There's also the question of illegal video and TV content online. If a person in a survey says “I watched three hours of TV content online” and it was all illegally-downloaded copyrighted material, does this translate into a viable future online TV model?

On average, traditional television and video content will be distributed to a host of different access devices, including personal computers, TVs, mobile phones and other devices. As Burst Media has noted, viewers often watch TV and use the Internet at the same time, so the two media are not necessarily in competition with each other in some cases.

Most people watch TV outside of work hours, but Internet video is accessed both at work and home. Just because Web video usage is increasing, and in aggregate may be growing strongly compared to TV usage, on average, it's not necessarily the aggregate figures that make for the best comparison with TV.

However, as the overall population ages, lifestyles and media usage patterns do change. Correlations between teen usage and future usage can be grossly exaggerated at times. There's no question that greater and cheaper Internet bandwidth is allowing viewers access to more and more video content than ever before, and the same goes for other content online.

On average, consumers are demanding greater control of the Web video content they watch. The traditional TV advertising model as we know it today will most assuredly change. However, the term convergence is more about the real distribution of content rather than access or usage itself.

A strong argument could be made that 14 to 18-year-old teenagers who watch more Internet video than those ages 30 and older are forming viewing habits today that will mean a lot more changes, coupled with some newly identified needs for Internet advertisers as a whole.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Source: eMarketer