Web X.0

Anti-Dilugon

AdJab reports today:

ABC wants to kill DVR ad-skipping
ABC executives have held discussions with the people providing consumers with DVRs about a potential future feature for the devices that would disable the ad-skipping.

This reminds me of an amusing part of Israel's history, and as unbelievable as it sounds - it is a true story...

In the 70's the only TV station in Israel started broadcasting a handful of programs in color. Very few people would benefit from this because color TV sets were not very affordable at the time. This led to an outcry of people complaining that it was unfair that some people can see programs in color while most others couldn't.

And that led to a wonderful government law commissioning a cutting edge technology, available exclusively in Israel at the time, called the 'Mehikon' (variation on 'eraser' in Hebrew). The law required that every new color TV set imported to Israel be installed with a special electronic board (the 'Mehikon') that 'erases' the color from programs that happen to be broadcast in color(!!) So even if you got yourself a nice shiny new color TV set, it was crippled by law back into a black & white only box.

Of course it took very little time for a bunch of Israeli entrepreneurs to develop the 'Anti Mehikon' - another electronic board that was added into those color-turned-into-b&w TV's which bypassed the circuitry of the Mehikon and got back the color to the TV set.

I know this story seems like a piece of particularly wild science fiction, and I hope that in 30 (hopefully less) years initiatives such as the one ABC is cooking will seem just as unbelievable.

However, if they do make this happen and cripple DVR's to prevent ad skipping, I predict a red hot market for 'Anti-Dilugon' (Hebrew for 'Anti-skipping') chips which will de-cripple the DVRs back to what they should be.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." --Mark Twain.

Another great post on this subject by John Murrell of SiliconValley.com.

Google video ads - lame or brilliant?

Google's announcement of the launching of video ads today got poo-pooed  by TechCrunch, Mashable and others.

What's neat about Google's products, and the way they announce them, is that no one ever knows whether the product is:
a) A 20% pet-project developed by a couple of engineers in their spare time over a couple of beers, or -
b) Part of Sergey & Larry's master plan for world domination for which they're hiring 1000's of engineers and spending a shitload of $$'s on capex.

There's no confusion as to the significance of Vista or Live.com or adCenter for Microsoft, for example. But with Google's product you just never know and that is quite amazing when you come to think of it.

My take on Google's video ads? - If it is option A (20% pet-project of a couple of engineers), feel free to ignore all of the following.

However, if it is option B (part of the world domination master plan), then I think this is actually a pretty smart move. Not that I think the current implementation will work very well - I actually don't. As Mike Arrington pointed out, the incentive for the user to click on the video ad is questionable, there are no conversion opportunities, etc.

As I pointed out in my last post, the chicken&egg problem of any marketplace makes it very tough for insurgents to break through an existing leading marketplace and become a viable one themselves. So if Google's long term master plan is to become for TV networks what AdSense has become for online publishers, it will find it nearly impossible to do regardless of how great their technology for aggregating and serving video ads is.
The TV networks simply have all the ad inventory and the advertiser relationships and there would be no reason to use a great technology that's absent of real advertising $$'s behind it.

But that game completely changes if Google were to come to the TV networks (or TiVo & Co, which will surely get into the ad game sooner or later) with a war chest of tens of thousands of advertisers, and billions of $$'s in unspent budget. That solves the chicken&egg problem, and would enable Google to quite easily become the dominant ad platform for digital TV (not to mention taking over all advertising for the exploding online microchunked TV in the form of YouTube, iTunes and of course Google Video).

So using Google's existing asset (AdSense) to leverage them into the real target marketplace is a smart way to do it, regardless of how lame the current implementation on textual websites may seem. Microsoft has proved over the years how well criss-cross product leveraging works for creating monopolies in markets it didn't even play in, and Google seem to have taken notes. They did it in the past by leveraging their huge search user base to create a huge advertiser base (AdWords), which they later leveraged to become a huge ad network (AdSense), which they now seem to be leveraging to create a huge video advertiser base, which they will probably later leverage to become the dominant TV ad marketplace.

But then again, this may just be an engineer's pet-project... ;-)

Contextual TV ads

One thing I keep wondering about TV ads is - why don't advertisers contextualize ads to the look & feel of the program they are showed in? How is it that the kings of interruption advertising are being so kind, considerate and even helpful to all us DVR'ers?....

Here's what I'm talking about:
The second the ads start, we're all over the remote control fast forwarding them as quickly as we can. The trick, as any DVR'er knows, is to hit the 'play' button at the right time - just as the show resumes. With some experience it's easy to get it right most of the time.

Which is why I wonder - Hitting the 'play' button is usually a matter of catching the look & feel of the show. So why don't advertisers try to match the look & feel of their ads to that of the show? For example, The Apprentice is all about buildings, bridges and NYC scenery in general. It's especially NYC intensive around the commercial breaks, making that the look & feel that millions of people are waiting for with their finger on the 'play' button.

An ad showing how great the new Toyota is for desert driving or on snow is simply a gift from heaven to all those DVR viewers who are FF'ing the ads. However, show that same Toyota driving in NYC streets, and you got yourself millions of people hitting the 'play' button frantically as soon as that ad starts.

Same goes for Lost (ocean or island look & feel), 24 (digital clocks and split screens), Desperate Housewives (California suburban look & feel), Simpsons (animated ads), etc.

I've yet to see an ad that's intentionally contextual. Weird... But hey - big thanks to all you advertisers, agencies and networks for being so considerate!

 

Cracking the Lost programming formula

Cracking the formula that ABC is using to schedule LOST episodes is a bigger challenge than cracking the Enigma.

Finally the solution is here. This site is simply awesome - has all the information you (a LOST viewer) needs and literally none that's redundant. Hats off to this site's designer for keeping the design so clean and effective.

ABC should definitely look into acquiring this company, as it provides an invaluable service to its viewers.

http://www.islostarepeat.com/

Search vs TV

Search Engine Guide posted an article about how Ask may emerge as a significant search player, just like FOX did in the TV market:

The FOX Network does pretty well for themselves, despite sitting on the outside as the number four network player. That's the line of thinking that the folks behind Ask.com are using when it comes to their long term plan for growth.

I've heard this comparison quite a few times recently. But aren't search and broadcast TV fundamentally different?

When watching TV, especially since getting a DVR, I am picking interesting shows, not networks. I'm not even sure I can match the right network to each show I see on a regular basis. So in TV it's the shows (or - content) that matter, not the channel.

With search however, the specific content hardly matters anymore - the 4 major search engines provide similar results and similar features. Heck - they all crawl and index the exact same pages, so how much differentiation can be expected? Therefore, when choosing a search engine it's the habit the plays the biggest role. Which means that in search it's the channel that matters, not the content.

If you want to change the search game, you have to leapfrog the content and make it really matter. Relevancy and features are almost insignificant.

Just re-found Lost

Whoa!! - Just finished seeing today's episode of Lost. I was a click of a button away from un-TiVo'ing it a couple of weeks ago (I didn't like the whole we're-walking-the-island -aimlessly-while-taking-3-weeks-between-episodes thing). Happy I eventually stuck with it!