VANCOUVER – Stephen Armstrong didn’t exactly have the easiest of tasks in front of him yesterday: Explain all new and developing media trends in 75 minutes.
The massive shifts in media consumption is keyed off of one major growth product: broadband. Quoting research, Armstrong said that by 2010, 422 million homes around the world will have broadband access. That works out to about 18.5% of all the world’s households, he calculated.
In Canada, 51% of us have broadband in our homes and growth continues. Plus, "it’s no longer the exclusive preserve of wireline carriers," he added, pointing to developments in WiFi, WiMax and satellite broadband technologies.
Wireless broadband enabled the delivery of mobile TV, something that will be expanded upon during a Concurrent Session this morning. Armstrong mentioned TVO mobisodes; Telus, Bell Mobility and Rogers Wireless’ MobiTV; CanWest Global’s BlackBerry TV, as just the tip of a growing iceberg.
On the player side, besides smart phones, that is, don’t expect iPod to continue unchallenged, said Armstrong, naming Microsoft’s Zune player as a challenger among a number of newer technologies "that will match or exceed the capabilities of the iPod."
Saying the above players were on the edge of "science fiction," he pointed to the trends in other technologies, such as the rampant growth in P/DVR set top boxes. While penetration is just 6% in Canada, Stateside, PVR homes stand at 12% with a prediction of 50% penetration by 2010.
And while DVR viewers watch more TV, they also watch fewer ads.
So, the leading DVR brand south of the border, Tivo, has been experimenting with new ad forms, such as pop-ups when users pause, rewind or fast-forward their recorded content.
The penetration of the DVR is also helping push other capabilities, such as seamlessly linking the PC to the TV or to the hand-held. For example, with a Slingbox, consumers can watch their TV from home anywhere in the world on many, many devices.
"It’s the Internet, everywhere," said Armstrong who said the real meaning of convergence comes in the relationship between broadcaster and viewer, or "the interaction between content makers and their audience," he said.
That interaction and additional choices has begun in Canada in such places like the CTV Broadband Network, CanWest’s broadband distribution of Survivor and Deal or No Deal, CBS’s InnerTube, NBC’s National Broadband Company.
Customers, added Armstrong, want to "escape the tyranny of the single screen."
And how does all this broadband impact traditional broadcasters – in a bottom-line sort of way? In the U.K., Google has surpassed Channel 4 in ad revenue and will soon overtake the broadcast TV market leader, ITV.
While radio and TV ad sales are barely growing or flat – and in some cases, declining, the online advertising market continues to grow in huge jumps. The online video market only attracts about 2.3% of Internet advertising revenue, explained Armstrong, but research shows it will grow at double the rate of overall Internet spending with a market of $2.4 billion within four years.
And where is a lot of that video currently being seen (besides on YouTube)? Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. MySpace, in fact, draws over 4.6% of all Internet traffic and its owner, News Corp., is using it to distribute and even pre-release movies and TV shows.
The one major stat that looms over all these nifty new services? "none of them make money yet," said Armstrong.
