• by Christina Tancredi , May 8, 2008

You ever consider buying a Prius? They're a little weird-looking and strangely quiet when stopped, but they're pretty good to drive and the quiet at stops turns out to be more relaxing. For the Luddites reading this, a Prius is a a gas-electric hybrid car that gets about a million times more miles per gallon of gas than a Hummer. With gas prices rising much faster than inflation, it is getting a lot more common to see a Prius on the road and a lot harder to find them at a dealer.

Now how about VOD? VOD is video on demand, a hybrid of TV and DVR technology. VOD is noted for its large array of viewing choices from linear to on-demand only programming. VOD viewers can-fast forward, rewind, and pause programming, but, more importantly, they can watch what they want -- when they want -- with a few clicks of their TV remote. In a nutshell, VOD provides viewers the opportunity to watch a large library of content at their discretion without having to set up or record programs in advance. Sounds awesome -- right?

Problem is, VOD didn't get the Prius PR team. DVR and TiVo get all the good press, and traditional TV gets all the good TV advertising money.

From what you read, you would think everyone and their mother has a DVR. Look closer at the numbers. At the end of '07, 36 million households had access to VOD programming versus 24.6 million households that had DVR. 46% more people in U.S. have access to VOD than DVRs. And people just don't have VOD, they're using it. Recent studies have shown that 80% of people that have digital cable have used VOD in the past 90 days -- and half of those users use VOD at least once a week.

These viewers are seeing the true benefits to VOD -- as there is no need to worry about whether or not your show is DVRd, or if you are running out of storage and are in danger or recording over previous programming. Plus -- and this leads us to traditional television -- how does this affect advertising and relevancy? If a viewer DVRs "The Office" and watches it two weeks from now, how many of the ads that are in the program are now irrelevant? However, if that same program is on VOD, whenever the viewer watches that program -- be it two, four, six weeks or six months from now -- they will only be seeing ads that are relevant at the moment they are watching it.

Traditional TV advertising struggles to offer more exact measurement. Numbers are more or less estimates. This is where people say: "Well put it on broadband, we'll get exact numbers there." But seriously, have you watched shows on broadband? While it can be a useful diversion, can anyone say it's a better user experience to watch a show on your laptop versus watching it on your 50" HD TV? Again, here is where free VOD has combined the best of both platforms -- it offers exact delivery while retaining the storytelling power of the TV. That is why engagement on VOD blows away regular TV. Furthermore, in the immediate future, VOD is the only platform that offers the only real pathway to marrying actual set-top-box data to actual demo data.

So what's my point? If you're pondering the benefits of buying a hybrid car, think about hybrid TV. It's the responsible thing.

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