What do you think the potential is when every home turns on their t.v. in the next few years and sees a search engine front page?
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. I realize you and I aren't coming up with new ideas here (the Internet "portal" is a term that seems to have been added to the lingua franca in the last few weeks on CNBC, and plenty of people have debated the inevitable Web-television convergence for a while now), but incredibly, although some people "get it," I still see people saying things like "What's Yahoo? Oh, they're kind of like the Yellow Pages for the Internet."
That's partly right, but wow, I can't believe how much that understates the case! These companies are next-generation TV channels. To take a nitty-gritty view for a moment, I see the ISEs dumbing down their home pages to be TV-friendly (not requiring a keyboard; allowing web navigation by TV-style remote; not having small type that's hard to read on a low-res TV screen), and presenting maybe six gigantic buttons with the "hottest" sites/subchannels to visit. It has to be that way because people are used to turning on their TVs and pressing two buttons (channel up, channel down). People won't want to type in some enormous URL just to be able to watch TV/surf the web -- they want to be pushed to whatever's the latest, newest, and coolest.
Now, imagine how much a company will pay to be one of those six buttons! Multiply that figure by ten when you take account of the fact that LCOS/YHOO/whatever will be able to boast that EACH of its customers has filled out a comprehensive profile form listing his/her hobbies, geographic location, demographic profile, and recent purchases. The ISEs will be able to guarantee the advertisers the best possible targeted marketing in the history of modern media!
While traditional TV networks are trying to figure out where their 300 Vice Presidents fit into the scheme of things, scrappy little companies will truly be eating their lunch.
That's what we're buying today at the bargain basement price of market. |
