Secrets of the Catalog Master
Vol. MMVI No. 3 May 2006
(Continued--page 4)
The View
What’s Next?
by Don Libey
You’re probably not going to like this. It is a complexity far more disturbing than the concepts of paid search, key words, ad words, or anything else you have had to grapple with in the last ten years. The Internet is going to shift from the PC to the TV.
Not only that, but the online channel will no longer be static; it will be dynamic and it will be in a video format. Web TV. Motion pictures. Talkies. Big screens and little screens (cell phones and Treos and Blackberries, oh my).
Intelligent life forms have drifted away from the inanity of television in general and the banality of reality shows. It just can’t get any dumber. Instead, increasing numbers of intelligent people (those who have all the money) are spending more time on online projects, research and interests. And that trend will grow over time.
The Internet is evolving and will continue to evolve into a visual media as well as a content media. Most information—most search—will have a video component, a movie if you will. But the real evolution will be the emergence of thousands of highly-specialized Internet “channels.” These will be like URLs or the old ‘website.’ And these chunks of special interest channel time and space will be bid on and paid for by merchants wanting to attract customers to their live-action, video platform.
You will bid on and pay for channel space and time in the same way you now bid on key words and ad positioning. If you have the highest bid for Internet ‘prime time’ in your narrow area of special interest you will be positioned at the top of the Web TV Guide. Let’s take the ancient art of gilding, as an example. Gilders use thin sheets of beaten gold to gild or decorate objects. It is a very obscure art and the supplies are not easily found. With the Gilding Channel of Web TV, a gold-leaf supplier will be able to educate new gilders, show advanced techniques to masters of the art and to sell gold- and silver-leaf and other supplies. If there are five suppliers for gilding products, they will compete in an auction for a piece of the web channel for the gilding shows. The supplier that spends the most gets a chunk of the best mega-channel (maybe Google WebTV) and the best time slot. Those who don’t spend, get 3 a.m. on SquatOnline.
Think of this as Internet online Direct Response TV, but hopefully with class. Okay, probably not. “Hi, I’m Billy Mays! I want you to buy my WonderBroom!”
Regardless of the intellectual quotient, the Internet and the online channel are absolutely morphing as you read this. Next year’s online channel strategy will be completely new and the old web page fundamentals and usability studies will be left in the dust, and you will be learning how to be a movie producer and how to create online screenplays that tell a consumer or a business story. All the metrics will be different and it will involve an entirely new structure of cost and break-even. Getting a name and getting that name to your WebTV channel at a cost that you can afford is the name of the game.
Look at it from the transaction side. There will sit customers watching interesting programs that merchants have ‘put up’ on the channel. They will have remotes with a button labeled “Purchase.” As the show unfolds and the content convinces them you are the right WebTV show to watch, they will push the button and a transaction will occur—seamlessly and instantly using all encrypted information requiring no shopping cart or information to be obtained. The WebTV channel host will get their cut, the airtime broker will get their cut, the channel search and auction firm will get a piece, and you will have arrived at a whole new reality of online marketing. Five years. Count on it.
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The Libey Economic Outlook is published seven to eight times annually by MeritDirect. The information provided is published for information purposes only and does not constitute recommendations for investment or other financial activities. No guarantee of business performance is made or implied and readers are encouraged to seek adequate professional advice prior to making strategic and financial decisions or investments, or altering planned business activities. Copyright 2006 by Donald R. Libey. No reproduction or dissemination of this material by any means whatsoever, electronic or printed, is permitted without written consent of the author and publisher. Copyright infringements will be pursued to the full extent allowed by law. The Libey Economic Outlook is provided to clients of Libey Incorporated and its strategic partners and affiliates, MeritDirect, Amtower & Company, and SpyderHost, Inc.
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