Some things I’ve learned about tablet computers

The shorter version:

Some things I’ve learned about tablet computers include:

• Penetration remains small but is growing
• iPads are the only tablet in town
• They have their own niche in the media landscape
• Tablet use is largely additive to other forms of media
• They aren’t mainstream yet – but could be

The longer version:

Some facts and data about tablet computers that I’ve sourced (from publicly accessible information) include

• 3.62m people in the UK now own a tablet computer, equivalent to 7.6% of the population and up from 2.8% in November 2010 (equivalent US figures put penetration at 11%)
• The iPad represents 73% of UK sales, and 97.2% of all US tablet traffic
• Tablets combine mobile’s portability and flexibility with computer’s power and screen real estate. However, they are most likely to be used in the living room, with 62% of iPad owners never or rarely take their devices out of home. Although they are owned by the individual, 7 in 10 owners share their device with others – most likely a partner or spouse
• With the exception of desktop computers – at least two thirds of US tablet owners said their usage of other devices (ranging across all four screens) was either the same or had actually increased
•  326m tablets are forecast to be sold worldwide in 2015 – more than five times the figure estimated for 2011 (63.6m)

Sources:

• Kantar Worldpanel ComTec, September 2011, sourced from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4496619e-db03-11e0-bbf4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1cZaluk7Q
• Pew Research Center, October 2011, sourced from http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/tablet?src=prc-headline
• Comscore Digital Omnivores, October 2011, sourced from http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/10/Smartphones_and_Tablets_Drive_Nearly_7_Percent_of_Total_U.S._Digital_Traffic
• Essential Research, sourced from http://www.slideshare.net/essentialresearch/stuart-connected-home-presentation-18-oct-2011
• Imano, May 2011, sourced from http://idea.imano.com/2011/06/uk-ipad-usage-infographic
• Cooper Murphy, August 2010, sourced from http://cmcopywriters.com/ipad-consumer-usage-study
• Nielsen, May 2011, Sourced from http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/connected-devices-how-we-use-tablets-in-the-u-s/
• Gartner, sourced from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/22/tablet-forecast-gartner-ipad

sk

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2800841720/

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Google’s Think Video event

Yesterday, I attended the Google/Youtube hosted event “Think Video”. It was an event primarily aimed at marketers (research seminars tend not to have goodie bags), but I found it an interesting – if not groundbreaking – session.

Below are some of the notes I scribbled down during the talks. I’ve linked or embedded the presentations, where they are available.

Quantitative overview of the market

After an introduction from Dara Nasr, Dan Cryan of Screen Digest gave the first talk with a speedy overview of the current state of the online video market, and where it is heading.

Some statistics and projections I noted include (note that I was having to write quickly to keep up with Dan, and so there may be some errors in the below)

• 90% of online views will be user-generated content in 2014 – about 2.5bn viewing hours
• In 2014, ad-supported revenues will be around £180m, transactional VOD £40m and download to own £10m.
• At this time, online TV will still only be 2% of the total TV market
• Currently, 67% of online video viewing is short form, since “work time is prime time”
• At the moment, 80% of the UK online video revenues are with the broadcasters. In the US, it is only 57% but Hulu represents the majority of the difference (Hulu looks like it is losing a lot of money at the moment, since 70% of its revenues goes to the broadcasters.

I found the most interesting part of the talk to be about distribution strategies, and whether to affiliate and syndicate or not. It would appear to be a good move, given the increases in reach that such a tactic produces. Quoting Comscore figures, Dan showed that in the US

• ABC has 4.7m monthly site users but 9.9m monthly video viewers
• Youtube has 98.2m visitors but 120m viewers
• Hulu has 8.4m visitors but 38.1m viewers

Within this distributed model, there are two main options. Hulu operates the “player as the platform” strategy, where it allows its player to be embedded on sites such as MSN and Yahoo!, enabling it to retain control over advertising sales revenue. The alternative – which Channel 4 and Five appear to be pursuing, is “content as the platform”, where they licence their content to other video sites to include in their players.

The power of social

Neil Perkin of Only Dead Fish followed this talk with his keynote on the importance of social and data in online video. The presentation can be seen below (RSS viewers may need to click through)

Some of the key points I took from the presentation were:

• Businesses should get their hands dirty – Neil has learned about the space by participating in it
• Cisco say that in 2013 90% of data will be video, while 70% of data will be created by individuals. For businesses to succeed, they need to derive value from data – of which metadata is the fastest growing category. I’m a big believer in this.
• However, businesses also need to understand social. Media brands are now less defined by the platform and more by their community (I think this is true, and we are increasingly seeing companies seeking to “own” a particular audience – whether the Guardian, Channel 4 or NME)
• Attention is no longer the only key metric – we also need to consider participation, content and interaction
• Distribution should be wide, with content scalable and portable. Slippy, not sticky
• Companies need to loosen their grip on the creation process and let the community interact in pre-production, actual production or post-production.
• Ultimately, convergence is about content flowing across channels.

Youtube’s development

The final presentation came from Bruce Daisley of Youtube, who coped admirably with technical issues that prevented his presentation being visible for the first five minutes of his talk. His presentation can be viewed via Google Documents here.

He mentioned how Youtube are looking to reinvent the experience for premium long-form content on their site. They want Youtube to be seen as a revenue opportunity by content owners, not a threat. He believes Youtube’s strengths come from 4 R’s.

• Reach – it’s not necessarily as big as TV, but it can help build audiences. He cited Britain’s Got Talent audience figures rising from 8m in episode 1 to 12m in episode 2, fuelled by SuBo fever (of course, this can’t be blamed solely on Youtube)
• Rights – he used Monty Python as an example of how content owners were licencing their material, and creating a viable business model
• Research – Youtube can be seen as a virtual research community (Bruce called it an online focus group), with different creatives compared in terms of views or ratings
• Revenue – whether through pre-rolls, in-video adverts or the front-page masthead video ad. He showed that searches for Avatar on Youtube actually peaked during the masthead campaign, and not when the film opened a few months later.These can also be integrated with Facebook, so that you can “like” an ad within Youtube.

He then quoted a range of research and statistics to highlight some of Youtube’s strengths

• Social – Two thirds of users say they’ve sent a clip onto someone else. 10% of video views are from embedded clips on social media websites
• Reach – a medium weight TV campaign of 160 GRPs aiming for 1+ cover among adults would reach 54% of the audience on TV. On Youtube it would reach 9% – 2% being incremental reach. This figure is higher among younger and more affluent audiences.
• Mobile – Although mobile and TV only represent 2% of total views, iPhone users will look at an average of 3-4 clips per day, and Android users will look at 10.
• Engagement – Ipsos have created an engagement metric across different media channels, accumulated from “around 50 metrics” (I’d be interested in hearing more about this). Of the channels shown, Youtube had the highest proportion within the high engagement band, and the least in the low (followed by BBC brands, then Channel 4, Five and ITV).

Youtube are now working with more content owners and broadcasters, with material ranging from films to the Indian Premier League. Bruce mentioned that the first company they negotiated with – the BBC – were very cautious and were arguing for removing comments, ratings and ability to embed, but gradually companies are warming to them.

He closed by talking about Youtube Bubble – a Youtube channel accumulating the best of advertising on the site. I would imagine the Evian babies dancing to Rapper’s Delight (with over 58m video views worldwide) heavily features.

Panel discussion

A Q&A session was chaired by Matt Brittin – the Managing Director of Google in the UK – who was very engaging (and puntastic). The speakers were joined by someone from Channel 4’s sales side (Ed someone, I believe) and Ben Chesters from Mediavest.

Some disjointed points I noted down during the session were:

• Channel 4 were wary about giving specific figures in viewing across different channels, but did say that the total reach was more important than what individual channels made, since they controlled the advertising across each.
• Ben Chesters mentioned that advertisers default to BARB for cover and frequency metrics, and that an incremental reach figure would be the killer feature needed for advertisers to trust online video
• The first TV ads were like display advertising but with a voiceover. Currently, online video adverts are mainly repurposed 30 second spots. Gradually, this should change.
• Neil Perkin talked about how transmedia storytelling across platforms should be emphasised. Content shouldn’t be copied onto different platforms, but should be unique to take advantage of different strengths.
• Neil Perkin also mentioned that a big challenge for online is that it lasts forever – it is not campaign based and you can’t control who sees your spot when and how.
• Channel 4 are trialing teaser 2-3 minute clips of forthcoming comedies to gauge reaction.
• Answering a question from the audience, Dan Cryan mentioned online video was seeing a renaissance of the soap opera – particularly in the United Stated where sponsored and branded content is increasingly prevalent
• And answering a question from Nick Burcher regarding the culling of Downfall mash-ups on Youtube by the studio despite the approval of both the director and the audience, Dan Cryan said “you would have to be a brave man to bet against the anarchy of distribution”. It may not always be timely or the best quality, but people will always find a way to watch what they want.
• A final question concerned the film market online. Dan Cryan mentioned the primary barrier was the windowing of films – films make most of their money on DVD within the first 12 months. During this time, they won’t be available to view on ad-funded sites, but will gradually transfer to parallel availability on pay per view or download to own sites – though this would be more likely to be situated on a TV than a computer.

From a personal standpoint, more focus on the metrics of success would have been welcomed, but as addressed in the Q&A, this is a very thorny issue.  I would also have liked to have seen more from Youtube on how they are breaking down the distinction between TV and online and innovating in advertising formats – this Wario advert is one of my favourites – but nonetheless it was an interesting afternoon, with some useful tidbits from each of the speakers.

sk

Moving TV content online complements; it doesn’t cannibalise

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/

My opinion is not as dogmatic as the title of this post might suggest, but on balance – for most shows, most of the time, at this point in time – the benefits of moving content online (both the original broadcast and additional material) outweigh the drawbacks.

1. Is there a link between the two platforms?

Firstly, to be able to complement or cannibalise, traffic for the two platforms needs to be dependent on one another.

This is plainly the case in the UK, where growth in online performance mirrors TV ratings.

Over the past year, according to Comscore, Channel4.com saw traffic spikes in January and June – when Celebrity Big Brother and Big Brother respectively were broadcast. ITV.com saw spikes in November and May. X-Factor and I’m a Celebrity… are shown in November, and the May schedules contain Britain’s Got Talent.

In addition, when asked, most people on TV websites are there for a specific reason. Some people are just browsing, or have been redirected from somewhere else, but mostly people are looking for information or content around a particular show, series or genre.

2. Won’t moving TV shows online reduce the audience that watch it on TV?

Maybe. Probably. But not certainly.

There are three main reasons for my belief that benefits of fragmentation outweigh drawbacks.

i. The Internet has a different core audience and user experience to TV. The overlap between TV and online is smaller than that between terrestrial and multichannel TV (particularly as digital switchover gets closer).

If one is worried about fragmentation, the proliferation of repeats on the same channel, the +1 channel and the digital family must surely be of greater concern.

ii. Watching TV online is about catching up; not replacement. By far the most popular reasons for watching TV shows online are that the original broadcast was missed, either because the viewer was away from the TV or because they were watching something else. Few choose online at the expense of TV.

The research that Thinkbox and the IAB carried out earlier in the year back this argument up, although their findings have to be caveated with the audience (16-54 heavy/medium Internet users with multichannel TV).

Similarly, research from the IMMI (link is a pdf that directs straight to the report) in the US indicates that few people start watching a TV series via catch-up. They initially watch via TV but move online at a later date – possibly because they missed the broadcast or because they happened to be online when they wanted to watch it.

(Click through to see a larger version of the chart)

iii. At this stage, the majority prefer watching content on TV.

The Thinkbox/IAB work found that 3 in 5 say that screen size limits their enjoyment of watching TV online. Until people figure out how to plug their Internet connection into their television, the experience isn’t going to be the same. And as TV moves ahead with high definition broadcasting, it will be interesting to see whether the online network providers can cope with matching that data quality.

Furthermore, simulcast still isn’t universal and for some shows the live experience is integral to the enjoyment of the programme.

In summary, people will continue to watch TV shows via TV if they can. But if they are unable to, moving the content online offers them a convenient opportunity to catch up at their leisure.

3. Do viewers care about additional content online?

My answer to this is an emphatic yes. One of the great things about the Internet is the low cost of experimentation, so sceptics can run mini-trials without any great outlay.

Initial wisdom suggested that this would only work for some shows. The Heroes 360 experience has been phenomenally successful, but the Heroes audience is primarily young and tech savvy. Similarly, the BBC has provided additional online content for shows such as Spooks and Doctor Who, where people can play games and find out additional plot points.

When done well, this content may be very powerful. In The Truth About Marika, the conspiracy theory was so convincing that a quarter of the show’s audience actually believed it was real.

But engaging with TV content online is becoming a mass activity. The growth of laptops has enabled people to consume TV and Online content simultaneously, as this chart from Thinkbox/IAB suggest (again clickthrough for a larger version).

If people enjoy a show, they will go online immediately to find out more about the storyline. Not just for Heroes, but for other shows. In the weekend after a major character’s death in Coronation Street, alternative versions of the death were viewed 650,000 times.

This approach has twin benefits. It rewards the biggest fans with additional information on their favourite characters and storylines. But it also creates new advocates. Casual fans consuming this content online, either by accident or design, may be won over, increasing the chances of them not only watching the TV broadcast themselves but also promoting it to their friends.

And word of mouth isn’t a bad thing to be able to harness…

sk

The five questions that need to be answered about online video

I’ve recently put together a presentation deck on the state of the online video market. It consists of both the primary research that we have been conducting here, and the secondary research I have been able to source through subscription services, press releases and generous folk who put their work online – such as Ofcom and Universal McCann.

I’ve been taking the presentation around our various agency clients in order to spread the love (and of course use the face time to sell in opportunities). Thus far (touch wood) the presentation has been well received.

The general feedback I’ve been getting is that people are willing to experiment with online video, but the paucity of makes it difficult to justify a long-term investment. Any data showing the efficacy (or otherwise) of online video is therefore valuable.

Below are the five major questions regarding online video. I’ve tried to give a steer on them but currently there are no definitive answers.

1. Who is watching?

And indeed how many. This is the crucial question for agencies. With many (but not all) moving to online video from TV, the gap where BARB audience ratings should be is extremely conspicuous. Alas, JICIMS don’t have an immediate solution and so for the interim one or a combination of the below is used

• Internal site stats. But even if they are externally validated (e.g. by ABCe) there is still the lack of transparency about whether the stats have been gamed and comparisons with other sites won’t necessarily be like for like. And of course the major problem is that it gives you numbers, but not demographics. I posted about many of the problems around online measurement here.
• Users could be forced to register and share information before being allowed to view videos. But this contravenes the “openness” of the web
• Comscore and Net Ratings give basic demographic details for video views and offer a competitive context. However their methodologies aren’t universally accepted. All impressions are equal – whether auto-rolls or each ad in an ad break being tagged as a separate impression
• If none of these methods are viable, then we are forced to rely (at least partly) on survey data. And that opens up a whole new can of worms

2. Which advertising model is best?

Or, which is your favourite child?

There are a multitude of ad models and formats to choose from. I detailed many of them in a previous post here. Since writing that, I have read about two further types of ad format which add to the choice available.

Inskin Media wrap an interactive banner/border around content

MirriAd digitally incorporate brands and products into a show in post-production – whether a logo on an object, or a car driving off in the background.

Pre-rolls are the most common format (from memory, I read a stat saying two thirds of European video providers use pre-rolls), and their prevalence has driven acceptance. While people may have initially been turned off, familiarity has bred acceptance. The public generally agree that advertising is a reasonable exchange for free content.

However, not all content sites are equal. Ipsos have shown that people are less likely to find advertising reasonable on user generated content than professional. This is why I am eager to find out whether Youtube’s post-roll experiment works. Despite ads only being placed after partner content, Youtube has the stigma of UGC and I believe people will have trouble accepting ads on the site, no matter what content they are placed around.

3. How effective is my advertising?

This is the big question in all forms of media, and online is no exception. However, because audiences can’t be so easily identified, it is also a big problem. To my knowledge, there are three routes to go down

• Pop-up/overlay advertising. We know respondents have just seen the ad (unless they are the control), but this is the downside. The questionnaire is served at the point of exposure. There is no window to allow the ad to embed into people’s consciousness.
• Behavioural tracking. Whichever company does this first (and effectively) will become very, very rich. Obstacles include coverage (it is unlikely that all websites will participate, and even the most popular ad networks only cover a fraction of the web) and the sheer volume of data that would be generated. Analysis of longitudinal data would require a cloud/farm of Google or Amazon proportions
• Surveys on online panels – again the can of worms of claimed, rational, after-the-fact responses among members of a panel

4. Why should I add online video to my media plan?

Indeed. But why should I add radio, or press, or cinema? Each medium brings a different audience and a different experience – if they are used in conjunction effectively then a stellar transmedia campaign can be executed.

My argument regarding online video is that it dovetails very nicely with television. Rather than cannibalising, it complements. TV has the mass reach and epoch-defining moments. Online video offers the shared experience asynchronously, allowing the attentive audience to interact on their terms. People tend to watch TV programmes online when they have missed them on TV, while short-form extras can deepen the experience (look at Heroes for example), and increase engagement among the TV-viewing audience.

For those that are interested in numbers, creating an accurate measure of incremental reach is vital. Touchpoints offers it at a platform level but isn’t granular enough for most situations. A tool that highlights incremental reach and frequency across a multitude of platforms and channels therefore needs to be developed.

5. Where is this going?

I don’t understand financial markets but I do understand the dangers of speculation. And that’s what any answer to this question would be. Forrester, emarketer and so on may predict future audiences and revenues. But who knows what the situation will be like next year, let alone in five. How long did it take Youtube to change the market? Or iPlayer/Hulu? And what effect will Kangaroo/SeeSaw have?

And as for the unified home entertainment TV/Internet experience? I’m not even going there…

sk

ABCe and the difficulties of auditing online metrics

As the recent influx of links have shown, I have struggled to keep my blog updated in recent weeks. This post has been saved in my drafts for close to a month now. While it may no longer be current news, the principles underlining the issues are still, and will continue to be, pertinent.

So, please cast your minds back to May 22nd, when it was announced that the Telegraph had overtaken the Guardian in terms of monthly unique users, and with it took the crown of the UK’s most popular newspaper website.

The figures were according to the ABCe – as close as the UK gets to officially audited web statistics. However, close is a relative term. The ABCes are still far from universally accepted and as can be inferred from the FAQs on their website, there are still many challenges to overcome. It will be some time before we can even approach the accuracy in audience figures for other above the line media (outdoor excepted).

To my eyes, the main issues surrounding effective online measurement can be boiled down to 3 broad categories.

Promoting the best metric(s)

The biggest and most intractable obstacle. Which measure should be given most credence?

TV – the area I am most familiar with – also has a variety of measures. But average audience – across a programme, series or a particular timeslot – and coverage – the total number of people exposed to a programme/series/timeslot for a given time (usually 3 minutes) tend to be used most often.

Unfortunately, neither of these are fully appropriate for the web. So what are the alternatives? The main three are

• How many (unique users) – but how unique is a unique user? Each visitor is tracked by a cookie, but each time a user empties his or her cache, the cookie is deleted. On the next visit, a new cookie is assigned. If I clean my cache once a week, I am effectively counted as 4 unique users a month. Plus there is my office computer, my blackberry, my mobile and my games console. I could easily be counted ten times across a month if I use a variety of touchpoints.

• How busy (page impressions) – but how important is my impression? I may have accidentally clicked through a link, or I may continually refresh a page to update it. As for automated pages, such as the constantly refreshing Gmail or Myspace ? Is each page refresh counted as a new impression? Furthermore, if a page impression is used to calculate advertising rates, what happens to the impressions made with an adblocker in place?

• How often (frequency – page impressions divided by unique users) – as this relies on the above metrics, it is heavily compromised

What about other measures?

• Average time spent can be massively skewed by people leaving their browsers open while they aren’t at their pc

• Average number of visits would give a decent measure of engagement, but the cookie issue would mean it would be understated.

• Measuring subscriptions would be interesting, but these may be inactive, sites offer multiple feeds, and take-up are far from universal. As people become more adept with web browsing, RSS may gain more traction but websites such as Alltop are showing viable alternatives to the feed-reading system.

And beyond these concerns, there is still one crucial question that remains unanswered. Who are these people?

TV, radio and press use a representative panel of people to estimate the total population. For TV, the BARB panel consists of around 11,000 people who represent the 60m or so individuals in the UK. But we are seeing that as the number of channels increase, this size of panel isn’t able to accurately capture data for the smaller channels.

So what hope is there for the web, with the multitude of sites and sub-sites with tiny audiences? Not to mention the fact that these audiences are global.

Of course, online panels do already exist. But these only sample the top x number of websites, and, as it stands, the – differing -figures each of them produce are treated with caution and – on occasion – suspicion. Witness the argument between Radiohead and Comscore, to give one example

So I’m no closer on figuring out how we measure. How about what we measure?

Determining the content to be measured

If we are looking to determine advertising rates, then the easy answer is to measure any page that carries inventory. But should the quality or relevancy of the content be considered?

Sticking with UK newspaper sites, questions over what material should be audited include:

• If we are looking at UK sites, should we only look at content orientated towards a UK audience? Should this content or audience be considered “higher quality”?

• If we are considering the site as a newspaper, should we only look at current content only? For instance, the Times has opened up its archive for perusal. Should all of this content be counted equally?

• How relevant to the contents of the news do the stats have to be? Newspapers have employed tricks from crosswords to bingo to free DVDs in order to boost their readership, but should newspaper websites be allowed to host games, social networking spaces or rotating trivia (to give one example) as a hook for the floating link-clickers or casual browsers?

• How does one treat viral content, that can be picked up and promoted independently of the proprietor? See the story of the Sudanese man marrying the goat, which remained a popular story on BBC News for years, or the story about Hotmail introducing charges, which is brought up to trick a new batch of gullible people every year or so

• What about if the internal search is particularly useless, and it takes several attempts to get to the intended destination?

• And a tricky question to end on – can we and should we consider the intentions of the browser? For instance, my most popular post on this blog is my review of a Thinkbox event. Is it because it is particularly well written or interesting? No, it is because my blog appears when people search for a picture of the brain. Few of the visitors will even clock what the post is about; they will simply grab the picture and move on.

All of this makes me wonder how much of a false typology “UK Newspaper site” is in this environment. What proportion of visitors could actually be identified as being there for the news, and not because of clicking a link about the original Indiana Jones, or a funny review of the new Incredible Hulk movie

Could those articles have been approved purely for link-bait? As they also appear in the print editions, I think not. But I’m sure it does happen.

Accounting for “performance enhancers”

In the same way as certain supplements are permitted in athletics but others are banned, should some actions that can be used to artificially boost stats be regulated?

• Should automated pages be omitted?

• If the New Yorker splits out a lengthy article across 12 pages, can it really be said that it is 12 times more valuable than having it appear on one page?

• Many sites now have “see also” or “related” sidebars. Should sites that refer externally be penalised for offering choice, against those that only refer within the site itself?

• Search engine optimisation is a dark art, but there can ultimately only be one winner. While there are premium positions in-store and on the electronic programming guide, search engines have much more of a “winner take all” system in place where the first link will get the majority of the click-throughs. Should referrals be weighted to account for this?

There are a lot of questions above, and no real answers. No measurements are perfect, but we look to be a long way off approaching acceptability in the online sphere.

This is by no means my area of expertise, and I would love to hear from anyone with their own thoughts, suggestions or experiences on the topic. I will happily be corrected on any erroneous details in this post.

sk

Photo credits:
Measurement: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacesuitcatalyst/
Metric hairclip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecraftic/
Greenshield Stamps: http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/
The Incredible Spongebob-Hulk: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_gin/

James Murdoch is wrong about the iPlayer

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/dantaylor/

At the Marketing Society annual lecture, James Murdoch accused the BBC iPlayer of squashing competition.

I completely disagree with this. The iPlayer is dominant, but it is taking a large slice of an inflated pie. Without the iPlayer, the market would be a lot smaller. No-one was complaining of the other video services using 3-5% of the UK’s Internet traffic beforehand.

The BBC is able to devote greater resources to promoting the iPlayer (£131m over 5 years) than its commercial rivals. Since online video is a game-changing technology, I believe that the BBC is justified in doing this. They have used their money to:

• Fail. All the coverage of the flash iPlayer overlooks the fact that the p2p service floundered throughout 2007
• Promote. Barely a trail or continuity goes by without the iPlayer being mentioned – commercial broadcasters have a multitude of commitments battling for space and could not give their online video the same level of coverage
• Populate. As well as in-house productions, the BBC has been paying for ad-hoc deals to bring in third party content (such as Damages)
• Reassure. Despite everything that has gone one in the past few years (from Hutton to RDF to Socks), people will still look to the BBC rather than a commercial rival

As for James Murdoch’s assertion that it is crowding out competition, I have had a look at Comscore data and that tells a different picture.

Admittedly, the iPlayer only appeared for the first time in March data, and so currently there is only one month of data to compare to. But over the year so far

• ITV.com total visits and unique users have held constant
• 4OD total visits and unique users have risen
• Sky Anytime unique users has fallen but total visits have risen
• In March, the iPlayer had the most total visits, though fewer unique users than ITV.com (which is admittedly, the whole website and not just the catch-up area)

Now Comscore stats will never be completely accurate, but it paints an interesting picture and one that is at odds with James Murdoch.

And of course, Project Kangaroo will launch later this year. That will completely alter the shape of the competition. In theory, the iPlayer could back down into a secondary role and allow Kangaroo to dominate the market. But how Kangaroo will sit alongside the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 is unclear, and the lure of the ad-free iPlayer may be too great. Personally, I see Kangaroo – attempting to be the iTunes of online video – becoming the first port of call but Interesting times are certainly ahead.

sk

Online video: Today and tomorrow

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/blake/

MediaGuardian reports that the BBC iPlayer is seeing significant growth while ITV.com has been left “trailing”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for ITV, nor the other commercial broadcasters. In this situation, a smaller piece of a bigger pie is better than a large piece of a small pie. With new and emerging technology, the major battle is for it to gain traction and acceptance among the mainstream. Fortunately for ITV et al, not only does the BBC have the muscle (and the inclination) to do this, but its unique status means that there will only be limited opportunity for advertising revenues. Once the technology embeds, this leaves it the smaller, commercial rivals to battle it out with the Joosts, babelgums and so on for the cash.

Furthermore, there is a rather large Kangaroo looming on the horizon, and it has yet to be finalised how this is to fit in with these different offerings. At the launch it was announced:

BBC iPlayer content will be listed within the new service, while Channel 4’s website will host a catch-up service which will see 4oD “evolve into the new [Kangaroo] service”.

Channel 4 are suitably vague, while there is no mention of how ITV.com, Five Download (notably absent from the launch) and any other eager player will fit in alongside this service.

Interesting, a quote from the article read:

“Right now, however, the big winner is YouTube, which accounts for over a third of online video viewing, according to comScore,” “This suggests that short-form entertainment may be more appealing to internet audiences.”

Can the iPlayer and the Kangaroo buck this trend, or will it be the clips that drive online video usage. For me, that will be decided by future broadband speeds. My online viewing is rarely planned, and so I prefer to stream low quality clips than plan a high-quality download. If only I lived in Japan.

sk