TV Everywhere Scheme Includes Ads Everywhere, Too

So, Comcast is getting ready to roll out its attempt to compete with Hulu and Bittorrent and the host of other options to watching traditional cable television, something they have given the misnomer of “TV Everywhere.”

As defined by NewTeeVee:

TV Everywhere is an authentication system whereby certain premium content (TV shows, movies, etc.) are available online — but only if you can prove (or “authenticate”) that you have a subscription to a multiservice operator (e.g. cable, satellite, telco TV).      LINK

So, by everywhere, they don’t actually mean, say, being able to download the show to watch offline on an iPhone or to burn onto a DVD to take on a trip.  Sure, the same can be said for Hulu or any other streaming solution, but it isn’t TV Everywhere.

Now comes word that TV Everywhere will also include ads everywhere:

The Wall Street Journal follows up this morning with a story about how shows from OnDemand Online participant Turner, including My Boys and The Closer, will both carry their full load of ads from traditional TV, which is more than four times as many ads than the typical ad load on many sites. And as a bonus (for advertisers), the ads can’t be skipped.       LINK

So, once again, the corporate giants are making the key mistake of pretending to offer a better service when they are really offering something less than what is already readily available.  Unlike, say, DVR’ing a show and being able to fast-forward the ads, or watch via Hulu and get limited ads, TV Everywhere forces the viewer to sit through the entire ad-load, something most of us haven’t done for years, outside of major sporting events.

As competition to either Hulu or file-sharing, TV Everywhere strikes me as a weak entrant into the field.  It also doesn’t help anyone who has already severed ties with the cable company for being over-priced and offering poor customer service.

Will Korean DramaFever Show Hulu the Way?

NewTeeVee has a profile of the recently launched Hulu-esque site, DramaFever, that specializing in bringing Korean TV shows to US and Canadian viewers.

Korean shows have proven extremely popular on video-sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion so it was a smart move by the Koreans to come up with a way to better-serve their growing viewership.  It sounds like they are going for innovation and quality service over suing their biggest fans.  Some of the features included in DramaFever are English subtitles and high-quality picture.

While similar to Hulu, there is a big difference:

DramaFever is pushing a free-to-subscription service (aka “freemium,” or try before you buy) that could well serve as an example for sites like Hulu. The site will offer a couple episodes of each show for free, ad-supported embeddable streaming, a la Hulu today, but it will also offer full seasons of all its shows sans advertising for a fee of $5-7 per month. Movies and concerts will cost an additional fee.    LINK

While it would be nice to believe that Hulu will remain forever free and completely ad-supported it is much more likely that Hulu will attempt to milk viewers directly.  Let’s hope Hulu understands that charging means offering more, not just putting up a paywall.  Done properly, Hulu could succeed in creating a teired system that could compete with piracy but done poorly and the only result will be an erosion in any ground that had been made in the previous couple of years.

Pepsi Goes Old School with Clever Hulu Ad Campaign

I have mentioned in the past that I am baffled by the poor use of the ad space offered via Hulu.

Unlike standard TV ads, ads of Hulu simply cannot be skipped. That alone makes them valuable.  Combine that with what is reportedly very cheap time and I am left wondering why I see so many spots filled with PSA’s and Feed-The-Children pleas.

Now Pepsi is trying a very clever approach to some selective media buys on Hulu:

The 15-second ads promote “Pepsi Throwback,” a beverage launched in April to tap into the nostalgia market. It features packaging reminiscent of ’70s designs — and uses real sugar like the soft-drink recipe did 40 years ago.

Pepsi is running the commercials, beginning today, with vintage fare on Hulu like Hill Street Blues, Battlestar Galactica and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. LINK

This is such a smart use of what I am sure is the cheapest ad time available on Hulu and is a great example of using the power of the digital age to enhance a retro message.

Check out the ads:

Will the Web Adopt TV-Like Advertising?

The death of the banner ad, or at least its rapidly waning value, is becoming an accepted fact. While there has been some success with mega-banners, animated banners, pop-up banners and site-takeover banners, the level of engagement and number of click-throughs just doesn’t seem to be high enough to generate the necessary interest, and thus investment, from the advertising world.

Video ads (aka TV commercials) are the next clear market, now that the majority of web users are on highspeed connections.  While there have long been video ads placed before and after (pre-roll/post-roll) existing video content, what we are now seeing is video ad being incorporated in various ways into sites that are predominately text/image based – think blogs, etc.

We saw one strong example of this with the Seth MacFarlane / Burger King partnership that led to the Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy – short cartoons that ran in the sidebars on sites but only if they were clicked on.

The issue, up to now, has been a question of “interruptive advertising” versus “passive advertising.”  While some sites have experimented with full-page ads that load between existing pages there is now an attempt to bring something very close to traditional TV advertising to the web by combining video ads (aka TV commercials) with the full-page ads:

This summer Payne’s company, ShortTail Media, will initiate a beta test of what it’s calling the Digital 30 (D30), a full-page, deliberately intrusive placement built to showcase traditional 15- and 30-second TV spots. But unlike most Web video ads, the D30 loads between Web pages much like an interstitial.

Basically, what would happen is that when you click to go to a new page within a site, instead of going directly to that next page, you would first be shown an un-skippable video ad of likely 15-30 seconds.  Once the ad ended you would be sent on to you desired page.

On the one hand, this sounds like a terrible idea but at the same time, if it is used judiciously (i.e. perhaps a user only gets one ad every ten clicks) it doesn’t sound like a completely unfair trade for free content.  Hulu-users have clearly demostrated that they will put up with a certain amount of advertising as long the content is free.  I’m pretty sure people would feel the same way about their access to popular websites.

At the end of the day, the services and content of the internet are just not free.  Either the end user pays or advertisers pay.

LINK

Hulu Boosts Pirates By Blocking VPN Access

Saw that Hulu has implemented a block on overseas users who were accessing the site via an anonymous proxy server called HotSpot Shield.  The point of the VPN is to block the user’s IP address so that Hulu doesn’t know they are trying to access the content from outside of the US.

Currently, due to a slew of misguided and ill-conceived rules and regulations, Hulu will not provide its content outside of the US and is clearly willing to go to some lengths to keep out those dirty foreigners.

Of course, these are just regular people who really really want to see the content Hulu provides.  They aren’t trying to bypass the advertising or trying to download the content so that they can make it into DVDs to sell on the street.  They’re just fans.

By blocking their access, Hulu (and the studios providing most of their content) simple force those outside the US to use “pirate” services – either P2P bittorrent sites or streaming sites – that are easily accessible. Sites like Megavideo, Supernovatube and Ninjavideo.

Basically, by continuing to believe that they can somehow artificially limit and control where their content is consumed, Hulu (et. al.) are giving a big boost to “pirates” while simultaneously losing viewers who could help drive up the price of ads.

And of course, those who still want to watch the programming on Hulu but can’t access it will probably just go somewhere else — torrent indexes and streaming sites like Megavideo, Supernovatube and, my personal favorite, Ninjavideo.

Hulu vs. Paying for Cable TV

Just a quick thought:

I can watch last week’s episode of 30 ROCK on Hulu right now for free.

However, if all I had was $80+/month cable TV and I had forgotten to set my DVR to record the show for me I would now be completely screwed.

Seems to me that Hulu, on many levels, offers a superior set of features and benefits when compared to the offerings of basic cable.

Time Warner Cable Bandwidth Caps Cause Concern

There are lots of reports today about Time Warner Cable’s testing of a new bandwidth-usage caps that would basically charge you more if you transferred more data online.  This is not limited to strictly downloading but includes streaming, an increasingly popular use of bandwidth.

SAI breaks it down:

What does this mean for you? If you watch about 7 hours a week of standard-def video, or 2.5 hours a week of hi-def Web video, you could easily pass even the 40 GB cap. After that, each iTunes movie rental — or Netflix (NFLX) stream, or whatever — could cost $1 to $4 more. Or Hulu episodes could cost $0.30 to $0.50. That doesn’t even include your other Web usage, such as downloading music, using the Web, etc.

On one hand, there is some logic in a plan that charges heavy users more than light users but it doesn’t seem an especially wise or sustainable plan by TWC.

First, as long as there are other bandwidth providers out there offering unlimited usage, TWC will have time keeping customers signed up.  Second, the rate at which our usage of bandwidth is increasing, often just from month to month, is amazing.  What might seem like reasonable usage today, watching lower-res videos, climbs quickly when one discovers HD streams and the like.

If TWC is your only option for highspeed service, you might be screwed but this kind of action will open up a lot of reasons for competitors to step in with a better offer.

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Time Warner Cable’s Last Hope (oh, and Comcast et. al.)

There is no denying that cable companies are facing some big challenges to their business model.  Until very recently, the only reliable way to view the vast majority of programming made for TV was to pay a hefty monthly fee to a cable company for the privilege.

Over-the-air, while free, limits selection to the few networks that still offer signals and cable “black boxes” are relatively rare.

Then along came that evil internet to muck it all up for the cable companies. Since the only tangible service provided by the cable company is access, the internet is one big wrench in the works.  See, the internet provides access, too.  Until now, nearly all of that access, whether legal or pirated, was  free.  Suddenly, some people began to wonder just what they were paying all that money to the cable company for.

Well, the cable companies are wondering the same thing.  Instead of looking for a way to offer even more to their customers for a lower price, or some other direct response to the online proliferation of TV on the web, they’ve decided to do what they do best: throw up walls.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch “Big Love,” “Entourage” and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred from the service.

Anyone else see the problem with these approach?

For starters, Time Warner isn’t actually offering anything that great to its paying subscribers since there are plenty of ways to view the same content online for free.  The more paywalls they erect, the more likely it is for piracy to expand in response.

The same would be true if only cable subscribers could access, say, Hulu or TV.com.  While there might be some logic in this approach with a pay-cable network like HBO the argument collapses when applied to network TV shows that are chock full of branded content and ads.

It may well be true that the evolution of technology makes things like cable companies obsolete but that doesn’t mean we should support these kinds of schemes to save them.  If there is no economic reason for cable companies to exist they should cease to exist.

(link)

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How Much is Cable TV Worth Online?

Time Warner is announcing plans of its own to offer broadband streaming access to their channel offerings, for a price.  Right now it sounds like they will include access in existing bundles and may have an option for broadband only access in the future. (more here)

This raises a few questions:

1) If the majority of the content is streaming only, does that mean all programming will be available on-demand at any time or only when it is “aired” on TV? There isn’t a lot of value-added if all one gets is to watch what would be on TV, but on your computer.

2) Considering almost everything on TV is already available online what will Time Warner offer that I can’t already get, often for free?

3) What’s really in it for the broadcasters?  Why should NBC let Time Warner distribute their content online when they seem to be having plenty of luck doing it themselves via Hulu?

4) It seems highly unlikely the Time Warner offering will include the ability to download content meaning that there will still be plenty of reasons to pirate.

To say that I am skeptical of these plans is not over-stating things.  The whole notion of a centralized distributor like TWC that actually doesn’t provide a legitmate service feels dated and increasingly obsolete.

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Free Advice for Hulu: Play On

I just finished watching The Daily Show from last night on Hulu and happened to be in the middle of folding some clothes when the show ended.  After a brief ad, the screen went dead and offered up some static thumbnails of suggested viewing.

It dawned on me that Hulu was missing a great opportunity to either introduce me to new content or keep me viewing related content while increasing my potential time on the site – a big benefit when trying to sell advertisers.

So, Hulu, here is my free advice:

Once a program ends, if the viewer doesn’t intervene, just start streaming something else, just like you would do on TV.  Sure, I might not end up watching whatever it is…but I might.  Plus, you’ve lost nothing for trying.

Oh yeah, also, get your deal worked out with Boxee.  Installing these hacks is a pain in the butt and you’e not going to come out ahead by resisting.

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