Online video going mainstream

The latest news to feed into your digital strategy – Online video is poised for explosive expansion in viewing.

Recent figures on digital media consumption in the United States (from investment bank Bear Stearns) say over 70% of internet users now stream video, watching an average of 7 minutes a day.

Based on my own non-scientific research of talking to my 20 year old son, his peers at university and the friends I have still in their twenties and early thirties I can see a real shift in behaviour where the viewing of US TV programmes/movies is often on PC rather than TV.

For me and probably most of my generation the real shift is unlikely to take a grip until we have a simple solution for getting our content from the internet to our big screen TVs. See my recent blog about Placeshifting.

Meanwhile back to the Bear Stearns report, and while video advertising spend is projected to reach $4.3 billion by 2012, they say that nearly 90% of internet users in the United States will be watching video online by then (that’s just four years from now).

According to comScore, the number of online video viewers in the United States rose by 15% over the last year to over 140 million. YouTube was the top site, attracting over half of them.

The number of streams viewed has grown even faster, by 40% over the last year, to over ten billion streams. Nearly a third of them were from YouTube, way ahead of any other site, growing by over 200%.

Video advertising spend has been growing accordingly and is projected to reach $4.3 billion in the United States by the end of 2011.

The Bear Stearns analysts conclude that internet video already has vast reach and is growing. Video advertising is acceptable to the majority of viewers and provides engagement that offers compelling value to advertisers. The viewer base is maturing and there is still much room for growth in monetisation.

So, have you given enough thought to the question of if/how online video fits in your digital strategy?

Predicting the future, a complete waste of time

I was asked to play the role of futurologist for a CVL newsletter this month, so I reached for inspiration on style of predictions; I went straight to the wise words of my favourite author on the subject, Scott Adams. He writes in the The Dilbert Future!, “There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as ‘nutty methods’. Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as ‘a complete waste of time’.”

Shift happens!

So with all that said here is what I think will happen in the next ten years?

Bill’s Prediction No.1 – we’ll be hiding from the data deluge

We’ve been riding the broadband wave for at least 6 years and will continue to do so for several years in our pursuit of ‘always on’ high speed access. The telecoms world has been obsessed with how many households and users have broadband access and how fast that access is, but we will get bored of these figures when we have something else more interesting to talk about.

Fixed line access speeds will improve and the emerging mobile broadband technologies mean we will have enough bandwidth for all our needs wherever we are – but with all this fast access at our fingertips in 10 years what we will really want is to be ‘sometimes off’.

Broadband speeds of 10Mb will be the norm even on the move, but more of us will be seeking out blind spots to hide from the constant deluge of data.

Bill’s Prediction No.2 – where did I put my invisible communication device?

Currently, fashionable trends seem to take about twenty to thirty years before they appear again – just look at how many kids today are wearing skinny jeans, going to open air rock concerts and think that Paul Weller, Chopper bicycles and Blake’s 7 are cool. We could see 1998 technology becoming fashionable again in 2018. What does that mean? It means you and I will be using the latest micro-sized devices and the kids of the day will be showing off their brick-sized mobile phones.

Everyone will have mobile phones and most of us will have a selection to choose from, depending on our mood and what we are doing that day. There’ll even be options to build your phone into your clothes, and some early adopters will be integrating their communications devices into their own bodies to create a cyborg solution.

Bill’s Prediction No.3 – the telly will always be on

Our pattern of TV viewing is on the verge of a major shift – and shift is the key word here – from the ‘sit back and receive’ style we grew up with to a mode in which we enjoy more control over what we watch and when we watch it. As the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) becomes more commonplace in our living rooms more of us are watching ‘timeshift TV’, i.e. watching our favourite programmes when it suits us rather than as scheduled. Within 10 years we will benefit from the ability to enjoy ‘placeshift TV’, i.e. take our TV schedule with us when we travel so those favourite programmes are available on a TV, PC or mobile device wherever we are.

Bill’s Prediction No.4 – shopping only for experiences

As the technology improves, and as we get more and more comfortable with the security and reliability of the ordering and delivery processes, we will do all our ordering online. The actual shopping experience will be much more interesting as stores become showrooms and more retailers focus on creating ‘experience stores’ like this extreme sports store in Florida.

Bill’s Prediction No.5 – these, and all other predictions, will turn out to be entirely untrue

The one thing that is certain with predictions is that they will not be right. History is littered with awsome predictive errors including some made by the most prestigious of scientists Try this for British technological foresight at its finest:

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

We are watching TV but are we paying attention?

This thinkpiece is prompted by a great article in The Guardian the gist of this feature is that we are still watching lots of TV and we are actually still watching lots of adverts. I found this hard to believe but BARB’s figures show that we’re watching some 11 minutes more commercial TV a day than 15 years ago. More commercial telly, more ads; last year we watched an average 2.25 billion ads a day, an all-time high.

Now I had to do a double-take because I watch TV far more selectively nowadays and in fact because I usually watch via Sky+ and I timeshift my TV viewing this means I hardly watch any TV ads at all. The potential impact of such technology does get a mention in the article but is rather dismissed which I do find a bit dangerous, and only defensible if the stats back it up – which BARBs figures appear to do. So I then went down to the comments posted, which included a lot similar to mine about fast forwarding through recorded ads…

I’ll now be looking for more evidence both sides of this argument!

And I’ve discovered a new source of research, commentary and opinion to help me on my way. One of the coolest resources I’ve found recently to contribute in this debate is NewTV – check it out and learn from the debate about the many and rich ways video is being created, delivered and viewed.

What this all suggests is that with so much of the talk throughout the broadcast and internet industry focused on the continuing big rise in video viewing online. especially with stuff like Hulu and Kangaroo continuing to get column inches and blog attention to keep the focus high. I think the real debate should be about the fact that we are in a phase of trying to get an industry to rethink TV.

The big challenge in all this of course is that advertising is needed to fund a redefined industry, and as the industry isn’t actually redefined yet the jury is still out on how advertising should work. So my eyes are open and my ears are alert for the evidence of a new industry funded by new advertising!

The future of TV, via Broadband

A recent article in the NY Times, In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What is Prime Time? does a nice job of highlighting the changing landscape of broadcast network TV.

This and another recently in The Independent Online Television: Channel Surfing raise the question many in the industry are starting to ask with little in the way of clear-cut answers:

How will broadband video impact TV broadcasters?

The many developments in broadband video distribution (Kangaroo, iPlayer, 4OD, ITV Catch Up, Joost etc) and the impact of timeshifting (Sky+, Tivo etc), and soon placeshifting (Sling) are raising questions about how the billions spent on TV advertising will be impacted now and in the near future.

A few thoughts on the impacts:

Watching via broadband the video viewers become on-demand consumers and are more empowered than ever, the key is to take advantage not to resist. Broadband is a great way to catch up on episodes missed, conveniently sample programs, build interactivity, involve viewers as viral promoters, etc. More exposure will translate into more broadcast consumption. Of course as broadband viewing audience size builds ad revenues will follow. Broadcast programming is and always will be the most watched, best valued of video entertainment but with broadband opening up all kinds of new revenue opportunities, there are reasons to be cheerful.

However, the glass is really only half full for broadcasters. Broadband will erode the traditional broadcast advertising revenues and it’s unrealistic to think that broadband revenues will ever catch up. Since only a limited amount of ads can be included in online broadcasts, even the higher CPMs received per ad seem unlikeley to deliver the revenue per episode per viewer as the on-air model does. All the interactivity and engagement in the world will never offset this shortfall. As more programs move online and viewers can eventually watch these right on their TVs, the shift from on-air to online consumption will only accelerate, causing permanent erosion to the traditional broadcast business model.

Timeshift TV is so easy now, when will Placeshift TV be easy?

I’ve been working on digital strategy from a number of different perspectives over the last few years – I’ve worked with Telco’s and Media co’s trying to move us closer to a vision of the Digital Home – and at various stages it’s felt like big pieces of the digital strategy puzzle are falling into place.

First it was reaching mass adoption of Broadband, taken for granted now but it felt like a long jouney.

Then the war of Music Downloading, a series of tough battles leaving few standing and most not where they wanted to be, that established a download/on-demand expectation for entertainment consumers.

Along the way much posturing and occasional stuttering progress in the transition from DVD to download, and that feels like another journey that will,be long and painful.

But at the same time the way we watch TV programmes is going through perhaps the most exciting changes. We now take for granted multi-channel TV with a choice of services – the choice of which will extend even further in the UK with Sky introducing services via the ariel and Freeview being joined or superceded by Freesat. Not to mention the fact that BT are making progress with their Vision service, and unfortunately Virgin Media seem to be taking three steps back for every step the others take forward.

In addition to all that we have Timeshifting and Placeshifting – two concepts that sound like they belong in a dodgy Sci-Fi movie but actually are happening in more and more households right now. Timeshifting is easy enough now with the introduction of PVRs like Sky+ mean that we are increasingly making our own decisions about when we want to watch our favourite programmes rather than being dictated to by the programmers schedule (also of course many of us fast forwarding through the ads) which is causing much disruption in the industry. The next step is Placeshifting, and I’ve decided I need to rise to this particular challenge in my TV viewing this year. We have multi-channel TV at home (no need to go into whose service it is because that’s not the point here) and we are lucky enough to spend a few weekends and some of the summer in an apartment we own in Southern France – I want to Placeshift my TV choices from the UK to my place in France. It’s early days but already I know it’s technically possible (I can install a Slingbox at home aand recieve the programming via Broadband on my PC in France) but how and when is it going to become easy and convenient? I want to watch it on a decent sized TV screen and that means I will need Fast Broadband (something I can’t rely on currently) and I will need to port what i recieve from Slingbox across to the TV (not exactly a convenient and easy user experience). So my challenge for 2008 is, will this become possible with a decent user experience and without a technical training course for the average punter?

I will be keeping my eyes on it!

2008 to be the year of online TV

In 2007 there has been a dramatic increase in usage of internet for television, at the same time viewing has declined for the terrestrial TV channels - figures from Nielsen Online suggest that almost 21 million people in Britain visited a television, video or movie-related web site in September 2007, a 28% increase on the previous year.

In the UK the TV broadcasters have seen their share of television viewing slide – Channel 4 has seen its share of viewing fall by almost 12% over the year, while Five has fallen by nearly 10%, BBC One and Two are also down by 3%, while ITV dropped nearly 2%. This is no more than a percentage point in the share of each channel, but collectively the trend is clear. Viewing of other channels has increased correspondingly by nearly 9%, partly as result of more people having access to multichannel digital television.

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, speaking at their global forum in San Jose, suggested that by 2011, between 15 to 20% of internet traffic will be video delivered to the television. He dismissed plans by broadcasters to offer their programmes online, saying he could record any show he wants and watch it on his personal vide recorder.

Valerio Zingarelli, the recently appointed CEO of new entrant, Babelgum says, “the intense competition can only lead to greater innovation and a substantial increase in service quality for viewers, and we’re certainly expecting more new entrants to arrive in 2008. Whilst traditional television platforms such as cable and broadcast TV still serve a large audience, those viewers unwilling to wear the straight-jacket linear TV offerings put them in are seeking new ways of accessing content tailored to their specific taste, whether it be sport, news or entertainment. Broadcasters worried about web television should realise internet TV is not trying to replace traditional TV, but is merely giving increasingly savvy viewers greater control and choice. It is this greater control, and choice, which will see internet TV take its place as a conventional platform alongside broadcast TV in 2008 and beyond.”

Meanwhile research from Nokia predicts that in five years up to a quarter of the entertainment enjoyed by people will have been created, edited and shared within their social circle rather than being produced by traditional media companies. Their study, entitled A Glimpse of the Next Episode, carried out by The Future Laboratory, surveyed over 9,000 consumers aged between 16-35.

Mark Selby, vice president of multimedia at Nokia said, “from our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call ‘Circular’. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups — a form of collaborative social media.”

All these indicators point to a continued shift away from TV, and this could be accelerated by another trend – place shifting is remotely accessing personal media from another location over the internet, and is destined to become a standard feature of personal computers and set-top boxes.

A new report on this emerging market is called – Bending the rules of time and space: Trends and analysis for place shifted media, and will be published by The Diffusion Group in the first week of 2008 to coincide with the CES in Las Vegas.

Colin Dixon, senior consultant at The Diffusion Group, suggests that even if place shifting proves to be a compelling application, it will not be capable of acting as a stand-alone revenue driver or support an independent hardware platform, but with place shifting embedded in devices from set-top boxes to digital media adaptors and games consoles, it will have a significant impact on how people interact with digital media.

So all in all it seems like 2008 will be a big year for TV via the internet – but one thing hasn’t changed – we are still at the mercy of our internet connection and the bandwidth available incoming to our PC. We all know what an awful viewing experience that can create, so for me in the foreseeable future it will be downloads only! Whilst downloading video content requires a little planning ahead, at least it ensures better viewing quality than streaming.

I just realised I’ve been pushing similar views about digital entertainment for about 4 years now, here is an interview from 2005 when I was working with BT on a proposition for movie downloads to exploit the emergence of broadband access as a mass market – that work was later subsumed into BT Vision led by Dan Marks.