What if the ISP controlled the advertising?
Posted by Matt on June 28th, 2007This technology is just plain nasty for internet users. Last week Redmoon internet users started noticing a few extra adverts on the pages they visited. In Fact – it wasn’t just the odd page – for those users it looked like the entire internet had been taken over by a massive company paying to get its ads on every site they visited. Some users were thinking they had a virus, running fruitless adware tests, or trying different types of spy ware blocker – with no effect. These adverts are not pop-up ads’ they are inserted into web pages on the fly, and made to look like they’re actually part of the page. After more digging around it was discovered that Redmoon had implemented technology created by NebuAD, which allows the internet provider add their own adverts on the fly to all web pages that their users are viewing. Just imagine what the bbc page would look like..
(peer-peer). The creator of the program then went onto use similar technology to create the biggest public VOIP system which is used worldwide for users to chat to each other (SKYPE). Niklas Zennström the creator of both these programs then began in late 2006 to work on a project known simply as ‘The Venice Project’ . On January 16th 2007 the brand “Joost” was revealed to the public, and private testing on the Joost program began. Joost uses peer-to-peer based secure streaming technology to deliver high quality video over the internet.
Joost is revolutionary, you can search for TV programs the way you would normally use google, while watching a program you can chat in real-time to other people also watching that program – If you fancy using instant chat to talk to your friends – no problem, that facility is there too. Content is interactive, if an advertiser wants to link content being shown on Joost direct to another web site they can offer added pop-up graphics which directly link the user to the content they want to get to. Even better – adverts can be targeted by country, and eventually users, based on viewing history. Joost is still experimenting with advert placement – micro adverts (5 -10 second slots) are currently being tested. These adverts are placed at the start of every other program, to initially cover a screen which would be otherwise just be saying the world ‘buffering’. the program immediately following the advert then has a interactive image-tag which will pop-up for a few seconds at the bottom – left had side of the screen – Clicking on the advert will allow users to go directly related Joost content or any other web connected activity. whether it’s applying for a credit card, taking atest drive, or purchasing an item online.(see below) 
But what about those existing channels that people are used to are they destined to die off? There is there an efficient streaming mechanism to revamp all the channels that people are used to and update them thought streaming to enable banner adverts and interactive content. This may be the mechanism that BBC, Channel 4 and iTV use to try and retain market share. The system is called Zattoo, and it’s currently undergoing beta testing – there’s a formidable amount of content partners signed up already with 50 free channels that includes itv1, bbc world, mtv, cnn and Bloomberg. It would be relatively simple to re-brand it as a UK player and distribute on cd or download to all uk TV license payers. benefits to broadcasters are of course – no infrastructure costs, highly personalised banner adverts and user history, and a global audience.
When the web was created the connections that people had to access content were relatively slow, only able to transfer small amounts of information and images over long periods of time. Now with cheap broadband technology available, and hundreds of Internet providers selling people fast connections there’s really no limit to the kind of content that can be made available. Even better – as the connections and speed have improved so has compression technology – what once used to take up several Cd’s worth of images and video – can now be optimized to run live ’stream’ across a broadband connection with hardly any download needed.
The massive proliferation of broadband technology in the UK has meant more and more people downloading audio and movies to their computers, through download sites and file sharing – This activity hasn’t gone unnoticed and SKY was one of the the first to launch it’s movie on demand service direct to a users home computer. It meant they didn’t need a TV, they just downloaded a small piece of software, and then went to the sky website to download and watch any movies in the sky schedule. Content would then be downloaded for users to watch at a their leisure . The benefit of this is that the user is no longer tied to the television, they can download and watch movies while carrying out other work on their laptop, or simply just free up the television to be used by the family members. Sky sneak advertising into the actual player itself – while movies are being downloaded and within the interface of the sky player other adverts appear, (not while watching the movie, but while you’re browsing for items to download) They know that with enabling users with technology to skip adverts they also have to compensate that revenue with enabling other ways to get targeted information to them. All the time the users are downloading movies and browsing content, sky is pulling back their viewing and surfing habits, and storing the data for a later date when they can create even more targeted advertising and sell more products directly to that user.
I’m currently testing a couple of ‘download and play’ broadcasting technologies. The first that has the potential to become widespread in the UK is the BBC iplayer. The BBC is still working out the finer points of its technology, but it’s basically very similar in functionality to Sky’s download able service. BBC programs up to several weeks after broadcast are published through its iplayer service for users to download on their computers. Content retention is time-limited by the BBC’s choosing, the BBC has a very healthy dvd library, and it’s spent a long time working on anti-piracy measures, and making sure that content expires after certain periods of time so that users still have a valid reason to purchase dvd based content.
digital television (to record, rewind, pause live television) combined with internet based technology to give the consumer access to premium content, downloadable music, or the latest films. This is still just the beginning, but downloadable content just doesn’t really cut it when the consumer lives life in the fast-lane – they need content directed to them, personalized for them, connected to their lifestyle, and they need it anywhere they are. So far progress on the iplayer technology has been fairly slow, delivery of content through the player is incredibly slow, and although the speed is set to increase as more users adopt the player – so far – apart from the quality of the content there is little to differentiate it from the more established SKY download services.
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