Is the Googleplex really the Dark Star, which attacks with sheer mental power all media conglomerates in the whole world? As we learned once from a tiny startup from Redmond, Washington: softwarebased world domination schemes are doable. It’s mostly a matter of the right timing combined with right cash flow.
Of course, Big G is to Microsoft what Austin Powers means to Mini-Me. They are much younger. Now look at that: Both are going after tv riches. The Microsofties conquer ally with old media since the nineties of the last millenium. From WebTV to WinCE STBs – nothing ever worked out. Their final (?) quest: selling Windows-based IPTV backend systems to telcos, so they can sell Windows-based STBs to consumers. Let’s see.
Googlianism works differently. The first law: For every problem there’s an algorithmic solution. The second law: If there’s no algorithmic solution, hire somebody who might find it. And, not to forget: As long as it might sell ads, it’s good.
And that’s how Google is going after the stupid box. Their cuckoo-approach, as published two months ago (listening into everybody’s home to serve the right ads) could have been a part of a Think Different! campaign. Their last move makes more sense. Google just hired Vincent Dureau, CTO of iTV/IPTV middleware company OpenTV.
FierceIPTV knows: Dureau was responsible for developing OpenTV’s key technologies, global business relationships and, in the early days, building its engineering team from scratch. OK. Quite a standard move, so far. But the good part starts here: Most interestingly, Dureau took the lead of OpenTV’s advanced advertising technologies, even penning a white paper that reads: “We believe that addressable advertising, where specific video ads are targeted to specific audiences will become central to advertising on digital television within the next 5 years… advertisers will be ready to pay premium rates to cable operators who can demonstrate increased efficiency of their advertising network through targeting.”
Here we go: Old media, be afraid. The main difference between the big tv networks and the cable networks with their smaller reach is: well, the footprint of the large networks allows them to sell their ad inventory with a premium. But IPTV means the possibility of a gazillion channels. AdSense-based IPTV should mean. the playing field gets more even. And as ad spending won’t explode, the monies have to come from some other segment.
But now the caveat: People spend onliy 5 percent of their time searching, but search commands over 40 percent of the online advertising market, writes Guide.
Via FierceIPTV
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