You gotta be crazy not to see this.
Internet = Interactive TV
Not next year but now!
Somebody said YAHOO could develop this technology. - WRONG.
You don't have time to reinvent the wheel and try to gain market share.
By the time you draw your gun the bad guys have put 10 bullets in you.
These guys are right:
******************************************
netcognizance.com
Yahoo! likely believed it had to snatch Broadcast.com away from America Online Inc. (AOL), which also had been negotiating with the company, insiders said.
Yahoo! also may have felt pressured to make an abrupt move. The company hasn't been as aggressive a deal maker as some of its competitors and its site remains largely text-oriented. The result is that it has seen some its mindshare on the Internet drop, said Stephen Caldwell, vice president of marketing at Transport Logic, an Oregon Internet service provider.
"Yahoo! has lost a great deal of its power in the market," Caldwell said. "Broadcast (technology) will bring some of the sizzle back to it."
*************************************
netcognizance.com
BCST Had serious talks with MSFT and AOL.
YHOO had cultural fit and perceived benefits down the road.
BCST gets YHOO's brand name, clout, and 30 million regular customers
YHOO gets streaming media.
************************************
Every night I punch up my RealPlayer app and listen to various stock talk programs at 33K streamed video/voice. The voice is crystal clear with no break ups (unless they used the "free" producer program which is only for losers). The Video is choppy but useful.
I just signed up for AtHome and I don't need to tell you what that is going to do for me at 100x more bandwidth.
This is not tomorrow's technology.
If YAHOO sat on its ass and allowed AOL to buy the best broadband players in town, YAHOO would be dead meat in less than a year.
AtHome is right when it points out that interactive TV style ads are at hand now and the advertisers will pay real big bucks for placement.
You are a advertiser.
If you don't get results, you are fired.
Where would you spend your millions to advertise?:
1) TV - a blind "shotgun" broadcast which you can only justify as "branding". These advertisers only get by because evaluating the validity of a broadcast ad is close to witchcraft. Fast talking snowjobs with lots of diagrams win the day.
2) Internet - where you can target your audience, present your custom ad, get a cash order on the spot, receive customer interaction, know exactly how many eyeballs saw it and when and on what day, and allow the ad to sit on the server to be requested by viewers at any time, etc, etc.
******************************
This is a big plus for YAHOO and they needed one. |
