Technical, economic and social developments, which are only inadequately described by IPTV, Web TV, Digital Special Interest Channels, and Web 2.0, are leading a fundamental structural change in the relationship between consumers/viewers and providers.
Until now, the value creation of television was geared towards offering content in order to gain the highest viewer attention percentage possible and to market a portion of this attention through advertising formats (e.g. TV commercials). As long as there were only a few TV stations available, this was a successful business model.
Today however, the viewer has the power to decide when and which media content he “consumes”. He/she can actively suppress advertising, zap or click to any media environment he prefers. At the same time, technology enables active navigation of media content, empowering the user even more:
- search,
- On-Demand streaming and download,
- and interactivity of content
These navigation tools offer viewers and consumers a completely new dimension of content relevance. The future belongs to
“Long Tail” specific, on-demand offerings, with context-relevant services and interactive ad formats that are targeted and relevant
These enhanced “program formats” are increasingly determined and - even outside the context of User Generated Content - “coproduced” by the users in increasingly differentiated clusters. This is the priciple that unifies the various new approaches from YouTube to Joost to sevenload.
Hi Axel,
Content providers have always felt they know best when it comes to deciding what their customers want to watch/listen, when and in what medium. Then along comes the internet, downloading, peer to peer; consumers have become empowered to take control of what and how they consume and, with that, we are seeing the disintegration of the old supply chain and markets, particularly in the music sector.
What a lot of “old” media/content companies failed to realize, or perhaps lost track of, until relatively recently is that the customer proposition or offer must be relevant to their customers; to satisfy the customer need or expectation. This is not a new concept – to be successful the products or services provided by any business have to be relevant to their customers. But now, with easy and inexpensive access to source from alternative channels, consumers in the entertainment and media space are demonstrably reinforcing this basic axiom.
Some say that this realization, for the music industry, has come too late, but whilst this is proving difficult and challenging for “old” media/content companies, massive and exciting opportunities to monetise this changing dynamic are being created every day.
I agree with you that we are seeing fundamental structural change in the relationship between consumers/viewers and providers. However, whilst this is true, it remains crucial that relevance to the end customer must be achieved. The technological revolution we are experiencing is truly wondrous, but simply applying exciting new technology is only half of it. The other half is applying technology in such a manner that the product or service is relevant to, wanted by, the customer.
As the world becomes a smaller and smaller place, the need to accommodate vastly different consumer requirements, cultural differences, differing languages, and the full range of socio-economic and demographic differences, will necessitate a more sophisticated understanding of who the customer is and what turns him or her on. This is the challenge.
Best,
Randall Harper