mikolas

TV 2.0

The New York Times has an article about online TV viewing in the United States. While the viewer numbers are surprisingly good, the problem is in the monetization: online TV viewer does not generate the same amount of dollars as traditional viewer. When compared with newspaper industry, the problems is the same.

However, I think broadcasting companies are in far better position to actually retain premium pricing for ads for the simple reason that as long as they control the distribution rights, they can simply move the traditional business model to the web - a TV viewer is a TV viewer regardless of the distribution channel. This means advertisers also can use their existing material and know how for producing ads for the new distribution channel - although there is always possibility for fine grained targeting instead of mass marketing.

NYT also has an article about cable companies finding each other for better targetability of advertising. When you combine that with passive profiling in the web and web TV viewing, there should be a lot of money to be made in the new ad solutions.

How this turns out in Europe remains to be seen, but the same trend should arrive here too. At least I hope so.