Google TV – Internet ready Television, and Web TV marketing
It has been tried before. And it has failed miserably. Still, with more TV sets out there than computers and smart phones combined, and with lots of new markets emerging in developing or BRIC countries (though in Google’s case not China), the rewards, for whoever can crack it, are enormous.
So no marks for originality this time, Google, but full marks for aggressive assertiveness.
For the last quarter Google have reported revenues of $6.77 billion – hardly a figure to be sneezed at. Despite this the web advertising behemoth is hungry for more and have clearly been watching a lot of TV, just not in the way you might think.
Television has, thus far, been perhaps the only traditional medium not to have been directly impacted by the web. Whilst publishers of books and newspapers, the music industry and Hollywood have all seen their market share, and to some point, their entire business models, decimated by the ascendancy of the Worldwide Web, more eyes are glued on the telly than any other media format, as this article by The Economist explains. So, logically, for a company that makes its money from providing access to content and services provided on the back of selling ad space, such a move was predictable and, one might even say, inevitable.
Google TV promo and announcement
As I said the vision of combining the TV and the Web is hardly new one. There have been plenty of attempts so far, all unsuccessful, with one such product from 1995, called WebTV, listed as a runner up [scroll down to see entry] on PC World’s worst products of all time.
WebTV was later snapped up by Microsoft becoming MSN TV. Though even with the massive resources of Microsoft behind it, and through partnerships with Sony, Phillips, Samsung, RCA and Mitsubishi, the product never really took off. What it did do, however, was lay bare the hunger that the big corporations all have to merge the world’s two most dynamic and influential mediums.
All things considered, WebTV and its progeny were, in essence, an idea whose time had come but the technology had not come along with it. In the mid-nineties websites were often designed quite badly and browsers were fickle, to say the least. CSS support was often poor or non-existent. Cast your mind back to the first websites you saw, with all those awful gaudy, low-resolution graphics and insipid animations – now imagine how those websites would look, not on an old VGA monitor, but on a big screen TV. The result would be blockier than Legoland. As for watching online videos, forget it. Flash had only just arrived on the scene when WebTV did, and the idea of using Flash for YouTube-style streaming video was ten years away. Using the web for streaming video back then was sort of ridiculous anyway, as everyone was still crawling along on dial-up modems. Though it is humorous to imagine an entire family sitting in the living room reading the words “buffering…” off the big screen impatiently awaiting a low-resolution, minute long Real Player video.
Things have moved on since those days, and rapidly too. We now live in an age of high speed broadband and high definition TV, with 3DTV just around the corner, spurred on by the success by films such as Avatar. Google, like Microsoft and WebTV before it, have already wooed the electronics industry. Sony have signed up and are building Google TV-enabled HDTVs and Bluray players, peripheral manufacturer Logitech has also signed up to make special Google TV set top boxes, Intel has also been announced as a partner and invariably more will be announced soon.
The idea is that these devices will come with an integrated browser/system (Android/Chrome-based) which can access online content direct through your TV. Such a system also makes it easier for people, young and old, to access content. For the older generation in particular, the ability to use the familiar remote control, rather than the alien mouse and keyboard, could make the Web more accessible for millions. (That is presuming they are not the sort who believe that flipping channels too quickly will break the TV.)
Laziness, in the end, is the name of the game. This is television, after all, and so the easier the technology makes it to do things the better. Personally I don’t watch much TV but I do love to watch movies. I’m what you’d call a film buff, actually, and what happens me often (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) is I’ll be watching a movie and see an actor and go, “oh, it’s that guy” and will not be able to enjoy the movie as I’ll be sitting there racking my brains trying to figure out what other film I’ve seen him in lately. With Google TV a quick flip of the remote and I could be on IMDB getting the answer in a matter of seconds all without missing a second of my movie – wonderful. So basically what this offers, amongst many other things, is the ability to access information without having to get off one’s ass to turn on the laptop or pick up the phone. In other words, this is the holy grail for couch potatoes everywhere.
It’s a dream come true for the younger, more net-savvy generation, too. For example, you could be lying back in your living room watching TV and, when your favourite show is over, jump direct onto your Facebook or Twitter account to discuss it with friends during the commercial. This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a rapidly growing trend. The hit TV show Lost, for example, boasted a massive fanbase who would jump online straight after each show to discuss the episode they just watched. Along with other shows such as American Idol, it was one of Twitter’s top trending topics of last year.
Clearly Google are clearly taking the “children are our future” maxim to heart. In this case the device-hungry multitasking children who, although they’re constantly flipping between their phone, their laptop and their games console, are, for the most part, whilst not glued, at the very least passively consuming TV more than any other medium.
What Google are trying to do, in essence, is to provide all these distractions on one single device and keep people there and presumably, to wean a whole generation of new customers within the Google umbrella. Considering Google’s broad spectrum of services on offer; Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Picassa, YouTube, Buzz, Google Talk, to name a few, and most importantly of all, Google Search, one need never turn on their computer again. Making all these available from one’s armchair at the flick of a remote is a brilliant, if somewhat unoriginal, strategy.
Google really aren’t doing anything new here. They’re simply porting their business model from one media platform to another, something which they’ve already done quite successfully by taking their services from the web to the mobile phone. Now they’re going after TV with the same concept; access to content offset by advertising – plain and simple. Who creates the content is irrelevant.
The reaction from TV networks to this announcement is bound to be mixed. Rupert Murdoch, for example, has no love for Google, and has never missed an opportunity to express his ire at a company he considers to be content thieves. Google also faced an enormous backlash from the major networks when it purchased YouTube in 1996, most notably from Viacom. Whilst Google does police the site regularly to remove copyrighted content the sheer scale of videos and users on the site means it’s people can’t be everywhere at once and such content almost always slips through. Add to this the ease of online piracy and you can see why the majors are clearly worried by any or all threats emanating from the Internet. Thus far they have had little to any success in providing alternatives.
Providing customers the ability to view TV shows online has resulted in various different approaches from paid to completely free. One such example is the TV streaming site Hulu, a collaboration of US broadcasters Fox, ABC and NBC. Although Hulu is highly popular it has not exactly proved to be the revenue generating monster they had hoped for. Not least of which because, in an impatient, attention-deficit afflicted medium like the Web, even 30 seconds of advertising is considered way too much. In North America commercial breaks of an average of 2 minutes occur three times during a 30 minute show, first after the main credits, then halfway through the show and then again before the end credits, shaving what was once a half hour show format down to around 20. People have come to accept this with TV but on the Web it’s unacceptable. The reason is simple, because the Web is an active medium whilst the television is, neurologically-speaking and otherwise, the most passive medium we’ve got.
Still, the major dilemma the networks face is that, whilst more and more people are tuning in, advertising revenues are dropping. What Google offers them is an ideal way to tap into countless unseen methods of generating new revenue through new forms of advertising, by becoming resellers of said advertising platforms and also by keeping the spotlight on themselves by offering increased interactivity with their audience. If you ever watch CNN you’ll see they’re always asking you to join in on the discussion on the Twitter or Facebook pages. But who’s really going to do that? You have to get up off your ass, walk over to your computer, switch it on, wait for it to boot up… ahh forget it! Whereas now you can just flip the remote and open the page direct. With this technology the possibilities for connecting with one’s audience are endless. For example the kids they could watch their favourite cartoon and then, when the show’s over, play an interactive video game starring that cartoon character. Or imagine the possibilities of a fully interactive Who Wants To Be A Millionaire type show where you can be a nationally televised contestant but playing from home.
When it comes to mobilising the masses and providing extra revenue through interactivity nothing beats reality TV, the most successful of all being Simon Cowell’s fleet of interactive talent show franchises and its infinite stream of imitators. Love him or hate him one cannot deny that Simon Cowell has stumbled upon one of the smartest business models in the history of television. Not only does he have this enormous TV juggernaut with all its advertising revenue, there’s also the interactive side of it, the weekly SMS text-in, resultant tours and record sales, etc. You can take American Idol or X-Factor as an assembly line where every part of the process generates revenue, in hundreds of countries simultaneously. Factor in Google TV into that and you can take it even further.
Now imagine that you are afforded even more ways with which to involve your audience, such as through social media. Imagine that instead of having regular TV advertising spots between shows for recording artists and tour dates, you can actually flip your remote and download the music (for a fee or for free, the choice is yours) direct to your set top box or pay to watch additional behind-the-scenes footage on Hulu. Later, when videos go viral on YouTube, like Susan Boyle last year, you can generate even more revenue by specially tailoring your YouTube channel for Google TV. Imagine that the TV networks can also get a cut of the enormous pay per click advertising revenue served up directly to customers. No doubt the network heads, even Rupert, are beginning to see the enormous potential for additional (and in many cases much-needed) revenue.
Now the channel, network or provider (cable company/satellite broadcaster) can sell even more advertising and localise it far more than was ever previously possible. Not just by country or region, but by actual address. Such a service would also be a huge boon for small businesses making TV advertising far more affordable and also far more effective by targeting specific regions only.
How this would work is similar to how the web targets advertising today; by detecting your IP address and using it to determine where you are located based on your local exchange/provider. So, let’s say, for example, you own a local auto dealership or restaurant. There’s really no point in having a national or even regional advertising market campaign carpet bombing the airwaves when your target area is much smaller. With this technology, however, you can create TV advertisements for broadcast but pay far less and only serve those ads to people in your particular catchment area during relevant shows. So the auto dealership could advertise during the Top Gear, the restaurant during Jamie Oliver and the local town sports bar can now advertise directly during the World Cup, only just to a very small audience. You could also, in theory, have live links that then allow people to view the company’s website, read company reviews, see its location in Google Maps and even download those maps to their Android phone’s satnav software. Throw a microphone and some VOIP capability in there and you don’t even need a phone, you can just press a button on your remote control and you can make voice calls or send SMS text messages .
In other words, if this technology takes off, it’s going to turn conventional broadcasting and TV advertising on its head and forever blur the edges between electronic media of all forms. And if anyone has the leverage, the know-how and the ambition to do achieve this, Google has.
And even if Google don’t manage it, and I can’t imagine why they couldn’t, Web-enabled TV, like 3DTV, is bound to hit the market sooner or later, it’s simply a question of when. In the meantime it’s a good idea for business owners to start thinking about how best to prepare for it so they can take advantage of it when it finally arrives.
Broadcasters are going to have to think really hard about how they retain their audiences. This is difficult enough right now, with hundreds, if not thousands, of channels to choose from. But soon they’ll not only have to contend with fickle audiences flipping from one channel to the next, in linear form, from channel one through to channel 999 and beyond, but also with hyperlinks which warp them right out of the telly dimension completely and onto the worldwide web. That’s a ratings war you cannot hope to win without being able to provide compelling, interactive diversions with which to keep them in your orbit. Oh yeah, and anyone working in the field of Teletext, it’s time to start looking for a new line of work, so start sending out your CVs – now.
As for the Web itself, that’s arguably going to have even bigger changes ahead. One obvious point, which I touched on earlier, is how to optimise one’s website for television. In essence, you simply need to think of it as a really big monitor (which, is basically, what it is). So in design terms that means accessibility becomes more important than ever. The last thing you want is to have your web content display as a small box in the centre of a huge blank space of a wide screen, or have graphics that aren’t optimised for the format and look gritty. Other considerations include fonts and colour settings. Colour is of particular importance as televisions are more prone to colour saturation. Google also reiterates that you must always keep in mind that you are now designing not for the web as you know it, rather web for the “living room environment”. You can read Google’s hints for designers and developers here.
One thought I also had is that .tv domains might well become more important now, just as .mobi domains have for mobile devices. This could well be important because, since people will now also be using a remote control, rather just than a mouse or touchpad for navigation, menus will have to be greatly simplified, and, depending on your existing website’s design, or content, it might be a good idea for you to have a specially designed TV-friendly site, once again, for the living room.
Having said that, the living room is not the only place in the house you’ll find a TV set. Indeed the TV set has become like the fireplace of old; always on in the background, often in several rooms at once. In Britain the average number of TVs per household is between 2-3 sets, according to the BBC. Many British households also have more than one Sky Box (or similar set-top box). A large amount of people have a second TV room for children, a TV in the kitchen and/or in the bedroom. So whatever about Google’s advice on designing a webpage for the living room environment, you might also want to consider the other rooms the TV is in.
As for marketing for the bedroom environment? Well, to borrow a phrase from Billy Connolly, we’ll draw a discrete veil over that one shall we?