So, should a ‘property’ in the real world become an internet TV ‘property’. Hmm… Well, I guess it depends on what kind of audience it draws. Channels launching an internet TV presence is a no brainer, but individual stars with their own channel ?

The key question is whether stars can extend their reach to become brands. Very few people become brands. Is Paris Hilton a brand ? Oprah Winfrey certainly is and plans to launch her own broadcast channel in 2009.

A related question is ‘can brands become an internet TV property’; for me the unequivocal response is ‘yes’. Indeed, despite the failure of channels such as Bud TV, the near future is going to be full of companies launching their own audience driving properties.

But the key is to be able to leverage an existing brand profile – a TV viewer has the choice of a few hundred channels, whereas on the internet there are millions of places to go; there is a real danger that the brand gets diluted.

The trick with building an internet TV presence seems to be to leverage what has gone before and exposure on other media.

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The Price Of Fame

It seems that the latest buzzword is ‘longform‘. After years of being told that it would never work, apparently it’s all the rage. Brightcove have ‘reworked their platform’ for long form and YouTube is rumoured to be going in the same direction.

In reality, there’s little technical difference between long and short form. Sure, the picture quality needs to be somewhat better to retain attention, and the full screen experience helps, but anyone can do that now.

The reality is that most internet video companies saw their revenues coming from pointy clicky land – i.e. in short bursts based on page views and pre-rolls. The reality is that with a sophisticated ad platform, such as the one Narrowstep has had for the past five years, you can serve more and more targeted ads.

There is a natural conflict here from a generation of webmasters brought up on the mantra that clicks are good and the reality for internet TV that staying on the same ‘page’ for a long time is far more lucrative.

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Vindication

A new service brought to you on IPTV Times is Deconstructed!, whereby dodgy press releases are put into context and rated. Who knows, some of my own companies’ releases might appear in the future!

Let’s start with KIT Digital, who claim to be bringing the Euro Championships and the Olympics to internet and mobile TV.

In reality, Entriq has been powering the live and on demand internet video coverage of Euro 2008 and will also be working with NBC on the Olympics – all KIT are doing is making interviews and other background material available to non-rights holding broadcasters.

Bullshit factor: 6/10

NEW: Deconstructed!

The difficulty of finding advertisers has long hampered the development of the online video industry. A web channel operators thinks that it’s obvious that if they deliver a targeted audience, advertisers will be clamouring at their door. Unfortunately – and wrongly – online advertising of any kind remains a numbers game. No one got sacked for delivering ten million impressions, even if it didn’t result in a single sale. The long tail and the Google model is far from sinking in at your average ad or media agency, even though they might claim that they ‘get it’. The trouble with the long tail is that it’s time consuming. Booking ads with a thousand sites that deliver 10,000 viewers is a lot more complicated and time consuming than booking ten sites that deliver a million viewers each.

So, here’s an idea. Why don’t the ad networks, such as DART, offer an aggregation service ?
But wait a minute, who owns DART now, err, duh, that would be Google, who are unlikely to compete with themselves. The other players in the market are Atlas (owned by Microsoft) and 24/7 (owned by WPP). YuMe (see recent blogs) are the best of rest.

Whilst everyone is obsessed with building niche TV channels online there remains a wonderful opportunity to build a long tail video ad network.

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A Bright Spark

Microsoft has done a deal with video ad network operator YuMe to handle its unsold ad inventory. This is quite a coup for the company and the market is crying out for a video ad marketplace for those not large enough or sophisticated enough to qualify for the Doubleclicks of this world, or even YouTube’s video overlay trial.

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MS and You