The Rise(?) of IPTV

In October 2010, Marketing Week ran an article on the impending rise of Google TV, with their ‘expert’ commentator concluding that “This will spell the end of the 30-second TV ad during Coronation Street" and "It's a great time to be in the business of data, and a bad time to be a traditional media planner or buyer". He claims that On Demand content fed through an Ethernet cable will completely replace scheduled programming within 5 years. A lot of people, quite rightly, dismissed this as sensationalist nonsense, but a year later - is there anything to suggest if he was on the right track?

Well, the technology is certainly here. Large companies like Samsung are pouring money into their Smart range, which integrate the existing On Demand platforms like iPlayer, 4OD etc into a user friendly experience. Hooking a product up to your Wifi is hardly rocket science these days, and as 7.2% of UK homes already have a Smart TV this is a good rate of early adoption for an expensive product, especially when considering they’ve only been properly pushed for a year.
 

So, perhaps the continued rate of adoption will be slow, preventing his 5 year prediction? Considering most of these TVs are adopting an app-based operating system / interface, then probably not. Most people are used to this functionality by now, with pretty much every mobile / tablet device utilising it in some form or another, and with Apple and Google being major players in this space it’s safe to assume it’ll be easy to use. A lot of people have computers for nothing but Facebook and iPlayer, so building this into a TV makes sense – quickly check your Facebook during an ad break or have Twitter streaming down the right hand side with relevant #hashtag conversations to the programme you’re watching, your iPhone integrated as your keyboard. I don’t think any of this would be hard for the masses to get their heads around?
 

So is the demand there for On Demand to surpass scheduled TV? This is what I think makes his prediction seem ludicrous. As we stand now, 60% of people watch On Demand content. 15% of people will watch this content in the same way as traditional TV (on their TV set) through a connected device (laptop, console etc). Although this is quite a sizable chunk, and I definitely think this number will grow, I just don’t think it will grow that fast. The vast amount of On Demand content that we consume is ‘catch up’ content; things we have been introduced to by TV but just don’t have the time to watch every single week. Importantly, there’s also relatively little content created to solely be broadcast online, and it’ll be far more than 4 years before there is enough investment to make this content good enough to completely change the way programmes are viewed (let alone commissioned and created). Only then can the balance tip toward consuming content designed to be On Demand rather than scheduled.
 

For me, the basis of his statement isn’t too ridiculous. Smart / Internet enabled TV will become mass market in the next 5 years. A third of all people are looking for some kind of Smart function in their next TV, and once a simple, more affordable product comes out people will flock to it as the ‘future-proof’ alternative to a normal TV when upgrading (especially if there’s an apple logo on it). What won’t happen in the next 5 years is that scheduled viewing will be eradicated by On Demand content.
 

I think it’s inevitable that broadcasters will ditch the airwaves for the broadband cable, but this doesn’t mean that they won’t still focus on scheduled programming. It does mean that suddenly there will be limitless targeting options & opportunity for innovation. There won’t be a ‘winner’ between buying 30” slots on scheduled programming or a number of impressions against a vertical. What I do think we’re likely to see in the next 5 years is the advent of personalised 30” TV slots in Coronation Street; the whole country watching different, more relevant ads during the X-Factor final based on family viewing habits rather than the BARB panel.
 

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