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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Consumers Want Their Web Video…Off the Web  monetization and distribution continue to challenge publishing brands with business models, sales teams and mind-sets that were made for text and images. Competing head-to-head with video juggernauts like YouTube on the low end of user-generated fare and Hulu on the high end of full-bore episodic TV is a tough place to be. But the next great opportunity for Web video and the franchises magazines build there may actually be back on the TV itself. The proliferation of Web-to-TV video connections is about to accelerate radically as Web-enabled TVs, set-top boxes and even Blu-ray disc players become a new and different platform for your streaming media. According to In-Stat, consumers are eager to get their Web TV—on their TV. Using full-length movie content as an example, the firm polled consumers to find that almost 70% said they were either “extremely interested” or “very interested” in getting films streamed or downloaded from the Internet to their TVs. Even though few convergence devices like Apple TV, Roku or Internet-enabled TVs are in the market, many millions of users appear to be finding ways to get Web video content to their living room. Netflix, for instance, offers a service to its by-mail DVD rental customers that gives instant Internet access to thousands of films. In one survey of customers, over half of those customers already stream the movies to their TVs either through a laptop or PC connected to the TV or via a game console like the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Dins Kaplan, co-founder of vide aggregator Blip.tv, tells minonline that getting Web video to the TV is the next great stage for these evolving business models. “Our goal is to make Blip.tv available to half of TVs in the U.S.,” she says. Blip.tv is already partnered with Tivo, the Roku streaming media box and Verizon .png) FiOS set-top boxes as well as the upcoming Boxee Box. Most of these convergence platforms bring Web video to TVs in the form of apps or widgets that a user activates on screen via a simple remote. According to Kaplan’s very early finding on TV usage of Web video, the typical viewing session is five times longer on a Web-enabled living room device than it is on the Web. Consumers generally will go through multiple episodes of a series for one to two hours at a time when they are in lean-back mode. Typical video session times on the lean-in Web are only three to four minutes. The migration of Web video to TV may not take as long as one would think. Market researcher In-Stat projects that by 2013, 40% of all digital TVs shipped in the U.S. will have Web connectivity built in. People who buy these devices tend to make use of the connections. About half of those who purchased network-capable Blu-ray players used WiFi to link to the Web, and a third used direct Ethernet connections. The Web-to-TV connection is already generating a discrete economy and supply chain. With the dizzying number of content providers clamoring to be on TV screens, consumers electronics makers are coming to rely on middlemen like ActiveVideo and ClearLeap. These brokers aggregate video content for the device manufacturers. Ultimately, the move of Web video to TV screens should be good news for magazine content providers. Any emerging platform is hungry for recognizable brands, and Web TV will be no exception. But more to the point, the living room changes the conditions of viewing and of distribution. It has been difficult for Web video franchises to get traction because online attention spans are so short and brand building is so difficult. The TV screen offers an opportunity for Web video content with consistent hosts and situations to get a more TV-like audience loyalty. The journey of magazine publishers toward becoming TV-like producers may end up on TV after all. Tomorrow at minonline we review some of the key takeaways from a recent min webinar on magazines monetizing their video programming. Don't chase YouTube and Hulu, our experts advise. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com COMMENTS
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