A WaveTop News Story
Marketing Tools, September 1997
NoteBook
The Web Hits the Airwaves
by Marshal M. Rosenthal
"Webcasting" may take on a whole new meaning
If WavePhore has its way, advertising on the Internet will come with no strings-or modems-attached. In the fourth quarter of 1997, the company is launching a free,
advertising-supported, nationwide data broadcasting medium that is able to deliver streaming multimedia content to home PCs.
But forget about telephone lines and modem connections, because software will deliver Internet content, music, and multimedia by hitching a ride over the airwaves
through National Datacast, a for-profit subsidiary of PBS. National Datacast will use portions of its satellite transmission system and participating PBS member
stations' broadcast spectrum to make the signal available to virtually every home and business, according to Jacqueline Weiss, the company's chief executive officer.
The transmission travels inside the vertical blanking interval of television broadcasts (lines in the black bar seen when the picture is rolling), so it is invisible until
received and decoded by WavePhore's software, which works with any PC that has a television tuner installed. The data is then displayed on a specially formatted
Web browser (not yet determined at press time is whether that will be Netscape or Internet Explorer). Since the signal is coming over a regular TV antenna or
through a cable system, no modem is required. While the speed is approximately equivalent to 28.8 baud (with faster rates planned for the future), information is
automatically saved to the hard drive for easy access later.
"Think of it as bringing the best of the Internet to the home user in a totally non-frustrating way, as a Main page with five major channels; NewsTop, StockTop,
FunTop, TechTop, and KidsTop," says Sandy Goldman, vice president of WavePhore's Consumer Group. Goldman compares the service to using a CD-ROM.
Wavephore users will be able to rapidly move through layers of information because they will already be stored on the hard drive, as opposed to surfing the Web,
which requires waiting for files to download. "But unlike a CD-ROM, this is all fresh and updated information that has been aggregated and then transmitted to the
user over the course of the day," he says.
"Advertising will become more a part of the presentation, since large multimedia files can be downloaded unobtrusively in the background and then viewed later
without the user having to wait," says Goldman. "Besides allowing video, Shockwave, and other Web technologies to be used to their fullest, the large files playing
off the hard drive will let the advertising be more compelling, going beyond the banner to present a better and more dynamic presentation than 28.8 would allow."
Users will be able to filter what data they want to receive (otherwise, 150 megabytes a day could be transmitted), so the accompanying ads will be more targeted to
their audience as well.
Reuters Market News, USA Today, and Ziff Davis will make data available daily from their Web sites for transmission on WavePhore. The content providers will
continue to sell advertising that WavePhore will carry. Ad rates are expected to be about the same as that found on the Web, $35 CPM for standard banners.
Full-motion video ads, such as Shockwave, will cost approximately $50 CPM and up.
Besides content providers, WavePhore also has agreements with Compaq and Thomson Consumer Electronics, which will be bundling the software with their new
PC-Theater multimedia computers. They, along with Microsoft, will be building VBI data receiver capabilities into TV and PC products. Datacast's Weiss estimates
4 million to be in the market over the next year and 20 million by the year 2000.
For more information, contact WavePhore, 3311 North 44th Street, Phoenix, AZ 85018; wavetop.net, telephone (602) 952-5500 or fax (602)
952-5517. National Datacast's address is 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314.
From:
marketingtools.com:80/Publications/MT/97_MT/9709_MT/MT970911.htm
Dave |
