The Blurring Lines of Media Entertainment Access……..

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.