‘Three years to targeted TV ads’ predicted, we ask: will TV still exist by then?

In a demonstration of the backward thinking of television industry executives, ‘Abe Peled, chairman and chief executive of NDS, the News Corp-controlled supplier of pay-TV smart cards and conditional access software, said hybrid settop boxes that combine broadcast and broadband technology could allow TV to offer advertisers the targeted audiences that online platforms already have available,’ the Financial Times reports.

Peled expects these ‘settop boxes’ to be available for the European and US markets in about three to five years. At 77 we feel the urge to comment that the same service will probably be available online within three to five months, and – apart from aforementioned demonstration – we cannot see any value in this for marketers. Take into account that online videos can easily be viewed on TV already, albeit with a slightly worse quality.

The only thing that boxes connected to the TV can offer as an added service right now is the registration of the appreciation of a certain show by certain demographic groups. It will be only a matter of (little) time before we will see personalized channels and menus for all online video users. What is more, appreciation metrics that were given by separate users are publicly available and allow for targeted marketing by themselves.

The launch of Hulu might well be turning the world of online video upside down, or at least it is changing gears – up, way up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Video Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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