Commentary

Contact: A Broadband Dream Come True?

reating a web-based streaming TV network was one of the great business model fantasies of the Internet gold rush, but one that usually ended in scandalous crash-and-burns like TheDen and Pseudo.com. So you can't blame U.K.-based Internet TV firm Narrowstep for keeping a relatively low profile about the 325,000 unique users it attracts to 30 niche-oriented streaming media channels like Cycling.tv and High.tv.

"Our audience is growing about 25 percent to 30 percent a month," says Dilip Shukla, commercial director. The company claims to serve 1.8 million tv ads a month into these channels from sponsors like Sony Ericsson, HSBC, Nike, and Canon. Narrowstep markets a tv Station in a Box turnkey solution to Internet service providers, content providers, and even local communities that want to start a TV station on the Web. The partners often provide the bulk of the video content - usually enough for a full programming day - and Narrowstep will also license rights to major events.

The result is a network of regularly scheduled programming (24/7) like FieldHockey.tv, and broadband TV shopping at tv-iStreet.com, which may give advertisers a new way to hit smaller targets more efficiently and with the same assets they use on cable and broadcast.

Broadband tv and a working ad model are no longer dot-com pipe dreams, says Narrowstep, which claims it has the metrics to prove it. "The average monthly viewing time is three hours," Shukla says.

Viewers are returning five and six times a month because Narrowstep and its partners show exclusive content like live coverage of the Ryder Cup and Lance Armstrong racing. With such high-interest content, almost all of the tv ads inserted into the video streams get watched. In fact, a new programming structure is already emerging for the Webtv format.

Narrowstep has set its sights on grafting the bid engine approach from search to TV ad placement. Its forthcoming Adserver product will let clients bid on available slots across the network, in channels, or within specific audience profiles. On the back-end, customers will receive real-time performance metrics that allow them to optimize a broadband TV ad the same way they would keyword campaigns. Is this a vision of a fully digitized TV/cable universe where a real-time bidding engine runs pricing on tv spots? That's a chilling thought for networks and cable programmers.

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