The Television Landscape is Dramatically Changing
In this session led by Lifestage Matrix Marketing President Geoffrey Meredith and JCOM CEO Joyce Schwarz, the fast changing landscape of the television was reviewed in earnest. The first half of the session was packed with useful facts and figures such as 20 percent of adults not returning home prior to 9 p.m. - therefore not able to view commercials; 50 million Americans will have digital video recorders by 2008 and 81 percent of DVR users citing the ability to skip commercials as the number one reason for using a DVR.
Meredith spoke about how the commercial pods will change due to the rise of the DVR. Rather than the typical program being broken up by :30’s, the flow of a program and its commercials will contain things such as “speed bumps” whereby portions of the commercial will be sped up or slowed down to account for DVR users capability to fast forward through the commercials and “telescopes” which are interactive links within :30’s that, when clicked, jump the user to a long for commercial. His biggest point was that control of commercial television is shifting from the programmer to the viewer and that “advertising on demand” models will become the norm.
Schwarz spoke about what she dubbed “custom-tainment” - adapting the mode of entertainment in a way that allows for acceptable advertising such as advergaming. She also spoke at length about the five screens through which programming and commercials will be delivered. the first two, television and the Internet are common. The other three are on a growth curve and are wireless device screens, broadband devices and public space projection screens. The PowerPoint presentation was cut short by our old friend the Subservient Chicken who, after being asked to do Yoga, refused to return control of the computer to the presenters perhaps in a last ditch effort to make sure control is not completely in the hands of the consumer quite yet.
Link to PowerPoint presentation to follow.
