The technology world is taking
its turn at an incredible speed, which is evident from the fact that the past
without an iPhone is not too distant. From an iPhone to today the world has
changed to such an extent that we have started demanding a lot from technology.
From buying baby diapers online to books, we have seen a change in our buying
habbits. But there is a bigger change that is happening, which is not evident
at first glance. It is change in the consuming habbits.
By consuming habbits, the reference
is towards the way we consume digital goods, and services. Be it movies, eBooks
or music, our habbits are changing. We want all the information to be on our
finger tips, be it a late night movie in our cozy home, or to catchup an
episode of Boston Legal. The underlying effect of this change in consumption
trend is the changing role of various devices be it television, mobile or
tablet. The old age platform of entertainment like television, are moving
towards new usecases and the elevance of digital television is losing its
relevance due to inherent inflexible nature of content and content on demand is
essentially taking baby steps towards capturing the eye-balls at home. Till now
the reach of content on demand was limited to laptops, PCs and mobiles, but
there is a major push towards taking it to the homes on a larger screen.
In this transformation the devices
OEMs with limited control on content will probably restrict their engagement
with customer to one time transactions, but the content providers see towards
gaining windfall profits due to possiblity of becoming mainstream entertainment
content provider on the primary screen at home. An example of this phenomena is
Youtube which has seen net revenue CAGR of 50%(source: emarketer.com) from 2011
to 2015. With the acceptance and adaption of Smart displays, that can access
internet, the revenue growth is poised to pickup, and video adverts which have
been forte of television channels is going to face challenges from unexpected
quarters.
|
Online
Content Providers
|
Satellite
Channel Content
|
|
1. Context Sensitive ads
2. Captur statistics of ads exposure
3. Limited capability to directly capture conversion
4.
Better market targeting
|
1.
No context sesitization
2.
No information about ads exposure
3.
No such capability
4.
Generic market targeting
|
The advantage that platforms like
Youtube, and Dailymotion have as compare to television channels is that these platforms
can serve the ads to users based upon users persona or context. These context
sensitive advertisement will have higher probability of capturing the mind
share of viewers. Further on a TV screen viewers might not be inclined to skip
the ads as they do on laptops/PCs. Companies
like Google are trying to give momentum to this trend by products like
Chromecast and Chromebit. With the direction towards IoT the context of user
will be defined more accurately and the user targeting will become increasingly
more specific to improve conversion rate.
This change in consumption
habbits has multiple stakeholders playing their roles simultaneously, with each
facing their set of opportunities and challenges. These stakeholders include end
user device OEMs, content providers and advertisers. I will touch upon the opportunities
and challenges for these players in coming articles in details. I have already
touched upon the topic of how Google has invested on fortifying its position in
an era of mobility with smart investments like Android. I Would really like to know
your views on how you see the phenomena of blurring lines between various
content sources going to unfold in future.
