While this isn’t exactly the TiVo+Amazon announcement I was hoping for (that’d be HD Amazon video downloads), Amazon customers with broadband-connected Series 2 or Series3/TiVo HD units will now have the ability to initiate product purchases - triggered via in-show advertising overlays or search:

Starting today, TiVo will launch the new service to consumers by merchandising products related to several high profile shows, including but not limited to The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Colbert Report, and Burn Notice. Consumers will also be able to use TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search to easily explore and buy products associated with their favorite shows, movies, actors, and directors, directly from the television set

I was lucky enough to get a DVR back in 2001, and I’ve enjoyed a largely commercial-free television experience since then. But I’ve always known my ad-free days are numbered. On the one hand, there’s the Web, where pre-rolls, interstitials and sponsored ad banners are pretty common. On the other hand there are DVRs themselves, and the encroaching interests of content owners who are looking for ways to disable recording features to preserve their revenue streams.

First came that network-DVR precursor known as Start Over, offering viewers the opportunity to rewind to the beginning of some live programs, but without the ability to fast forward after that. Now comes the MPAA’s proposal for selective output control (SOC), which would allow service providers to shut off the ability for a DVR to record content around some early-release HD movies.

There’s a lot of fuss and muss around the MPAA proposal, but frankly it’s probably all for nothing. Even if the MPAA doesn’t win this fight (the CEA has come out against the proposal), content owners aren’t going to let everyone watch good stuff for free (or free plus cable/telco subscription) without finding a way to include commercials. Even if, at some point, producers start demanding the use of SOC for regular TV shows, eventually consumers are going to end up giving ground. There are some shows that folks will just turn away from if they have to watch scores of ads. But consumers aren’t going to give up on every show, even if DVRs stop working altogether. (And they won’t; they’ll just “evolve”.) TV is too convenient, and we like our episodes of Lost and CSI far too much.

It’s fun to whine and complain about the MPAA, but the old cliche is sadly true: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. To mix a metaphor, we can only hope the pendulum will stay swinging on our side for a while longer. Eventually we’ll have to start watching commercials again.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…?

(via GIzmodo Australia)

Not much to say on this one, but DISH did provide me a purty image to accompany the expansion of their interactive advertising platform. Basically, television service provider on-demand advertising is here to stay (Comcast, TiVo, DISH)… Their goal really isn’t to be unobtrusive, so we can forget that. However, I’m hopeful it remains tastefully implemented (like TiVo’s thumb bug, unlike their Now Playing ads) and that interactivity will provide advertisers a platform for more entertaining campaigns. And I’ll continue to watch as many movie trailers as they throw my way.

Building on its efforts to reinvent the way audiences experience content and advertising, MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom, is partnering with Cadbury, the makers of Sour Patch Kids soft & chewy candy, and DISH Network Corporation to launch its first-ever advertiser-supported interactive television campaign. iTV voting and polling presented by Cadbury’s Sour Patch Kids will be enabled during The N’s all-new reality series, “Queen Bees,” which premieres Friday, July 11 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. The campaign will be available exclusively in DISH Network homes nationwide.

I’m beginning to think that soon I won’t be able to turn my head without seeing a TV screen. My local Wi-Fi cafe haunt has added a display above the registers with local advertising, and I just heard via Shiny Shiny that London is getting movie trailers piped in on screens at select Underground stops. Add on TV commercials at my local gas pump, and I fear that soon I won’t be able to go anywhere without a video screen in my face.

The idea behind RedLasso is deceptively simple. The service lets bloggers search and share TV clips online. Unfortunately, once you get past that one-line description, things get a lot more complicated. What about copyright? Distribution agreements? Who should get paid for content reuse? After sitting down with RedLasso’s CEO Kenyon Hayward, I came to two conclusions. First, most people are looking at RedLasso from the wrong angle. And second, if TV networks don’t start signing deals with the company, they’ll find they have to build or buy an equivalent service in the near future anyway.

Above everything else, I now think of RedLasso as a reference tool. The company catalogs broadcast content and brings it to a platform (the Web) suitable for searching and sorting. Broadcasters should love this. It creates a way for them to monetize chunks of their content without having to do a speck of work. You know all that money broadcasters have made off traditional syndication deals? RedLasso gives them an opportunity to do the same thing on the Web, but with news instead of entertainment, and in a format that works for the online world - short clips supported by embedded advertising from video ad networks.

So why are the networks sending RedLasso cease-and-desist letters? Ken Hayward makes clear that RedLasso isn’t interested in replaying network shows for free online, and raw content is only available for a limited period of time. Presumably the networks are concerned because they’re still hung up on the control issue. It’s their content after all. Shouldn’t the networks get control over how it’s used?

The answer of course is: not anymore. Ceding control to viewers is what has made Web video so popular. And the fact that RedLasso can help the networks make money on such a turbulent platform should be appealing. If the networks don’t recognize that now, they’ll likely come to understand it as Web video viewing continues to skyrocket in the coming months and years.

Now here’s the reality check. RedLasso has a lot going for it, including huge viewership numbers, but it’s got a lot of obstacles too. Even with the money the company’s raised, it’s bringing in no revenue right now because it won’t roll ads until content deals are in place. It can keep going for a while, but given how notoriously slow-moving big media is, the question arises: Can RedLasso survive long enough to bring the networks on board and achieve real legitimacy?

(more…)

Earlier this week I sat down with Redlasso CEO Kenyon Hayward for an update on the Redlasso business and the company’s ongoing negotiating process with big media networks. There’s much to write about on that front, but since I won’t get to that today, I thought in the meantime I’d share a bizarre coincidence I encountered while testing out the Redlasso service.

Redlasso uses several tools for video search on its site, including meta data search, closed caption service and phonetic word recognition. I tried searching for WiMAX clips first, but didn’t get anywhere except some phonetic results that didn’t actually have anything to do with WiMAX. So then I searched on Comcast. Several hits came back, and I clicked on a clip from ESPN. Interestingly, a DTV transition ad came up. It hadn’t occurred to me that commercials would be in the mix, but of course that makes sense.

However, the exceedingly weird moment came when I realized who was starring in the Comcast ad. Standing in front of me on the computer screen was a guy I went to college with. Actually, it was the guy I performed with in our school’s production of Carousel. That performance as Julie was one of my last hurrahs in the theater world, but “Billy” has gone on to Broadway, print ads, and apparently Comcast DTV commercials.

What a strange, strange and small world.

I’ve heard a lot on “advanced advertising” in my day job recently, so when the opportunity came up to talk with Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback (formerly of PC Magazine) about their deal with VideoClix, I could hardly turn it down. VideoClix does pop-up content for Internet video, (think an online, ad-driven version of MTV’s pop-up video) and Revision3 is now planning to use VideoClix in some of its online shows, starting with a premier VideoClix-enabled episode of Diggnation.

Since advertisers have been slobbering over the idea of interactive advertising for a decade or more, I was anxious to hear how well VideoClix is working for Revision3. Disappointingly, there’s no answer on that yet. Not only is Revision3 not releasing specifics on that front (not surprising with only one VideoClix-enabled show up), but it turns out VideoClix, at this point, is just a piece of spaghetti that Revision3 is throwing at the proverbial wall. According to Louderback, Revision3 is a leader in product placement, online video sponsorships and is even part of Google’s early-stage Adsense-for-video program. In other words, while the company definitely likes VideoClix, Revision3 is hardly betting the farm on it. The company is really just trying something new and hoping it makes some money.

As a consumer, I haven’t remotely made up my mind about VideoClix either. The Diggnation demo is very cool, but in a novelty kind of way, not an I-want-this-on-all-my-TV-shows kind of way. I can see an ongoing appeal for non-fiction shows like Diggnation, but I think I’d find the feature highly irritating while watching, for instance, Battlestar Galactica. I really don’t want to know that I can get Starbuck’s boots at LL Bean. (My suspension of disbelief is stretched far enough with BSG, thank you…)

Despite not giving me any reason to believe that VideoClix is the one great answer to the problem of monetizing Internet video, Louderback did provide some heartening stats on Internet advertising in general. For example, viewers of Revision3 shows have very high unaided recall rates of sponsored products and companies. And, according to Louderback, 48% of viewers have purchased a product or service from one of Revision3’s sponsors.

In addition, without being able to provide any details, Revision3 is apparently pretty happy with VideoClix. The company was planning one VideoClix-enabled show monthly, but is now thinking of upping that number.

So has the Internet finally made interactive television advertising possible? It’s not clear. The answer is probably yes for certain kinds of entertainment and no for others. Sometimes interactivity is good. And sometimes I just want to watch my TV… even on the Internet.