Latest Trends in Time-Shifting

October 18, 2004

Coming back to San Francisco from the East Coast today, I had the opportunity to catch up on some reading. I was paging through Fortune when an article caught my eye about Comcast and their dream of video-on-demand. The article claims video-on-demand is a reality at last.

The realization I came to is the marketplace is changing. We want to time-shift our media consumption. We want content available on our time. We first heard about this when TIVO hit the market but TV is not alone. Time-shifting is occurring with radio and online as well.

Look at the latest trends in time-shifting:

TV: Explosion in digital video recording devices (TIVO) and video-on-demand.
Radio: Podcasting and Replay Radio have yet to go mainstream, however once the technology is cheaper and easier to use, consumers will follow.
Internet: Content Syndication (RSS/ATOM) consumption is doubling every month.

Because we are time-shifting our media usage it means we are time-shifting (or deleting) the advertising that is attached to it. This has huge implications for marketers. Marketers will need to embrace the changes in the marketplace and rethink how they advertise to consumers.

The impact of time-shifting may be small today, but this is one trend marketers cannot afford to ignore. More on this subject later.

Posted by Bill Flitter on October 18, 2004 9:56 PM
Permalink | Feedback(0) | TrackBack (0)