Our media strategies editor wonders whether or not the big role for video in 2006 is going to be off the web rather than on it.

In 2005, there was no shortage of talk and trade press coverage about how video was becoming the next big thing online. The points of discussion for how video would gain ascendancy online included:

• Using it for advertising
• Distributing video content on the web and
• Consumer-created video content finding audiences using the web as a venue for exposure that content might not otherwise have gotten

The enthusiasm for video's various applications through the interactive medium was driven by, and made possible by, the increasing availability of broadband access to the average media consumer.

And the enthusiasm was not unfounded.

According to the most recent @plan figures (Winter 2005/2006), there are over 100 million people online (74 percent of the total online population), ages 18 or older, who have broadband access. According to the same source, there are over 25 million (19 percent) who have downloaded or watched video online in the last 30 days.

Advertisers responded by placing video advertisement and content online. Automotive advertisers like Honda, Cadillac and Audi have all made ample use of video online, both in the form of advertisements as well as branded content.

Media companies as well began making video content available online, sometimes repurposed from preexisting content from TV (for example, The Apprentice) and sometimes original content, such as Yahoo!'s Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.

In 2006, however, it appears that the biggest impact video online has on media consumption, and therefore planning and placement, might end up being OFF the internet rather than on it.

The battle for the third screen

In the last two weeks both the trade press and the mainstream business press has been replete with stories and press releases about how internet media companies are bringing their services to media outside of the web and how traditional media companies are bringing their video content offering to vehicles beyond just the web. Could it be that the internet video revolution is going to neither be televised nor streamed online, but rather VCasted?

Both Google and Yahoo! announced at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that they were going to extend their offering to not only television, but to other portable media devices in an attempt to move beyond the browser and take advantage of the growing trend of video-on-demand. 

Google and Yahoo! are going to be bringing video content from traditional broadcast networks to the web, either charging for downloads or marrying their advertising models to the video content that is made available. But they are also both in the works for bringing their own endemic offerings to other devices beyond television and the web. Yahoo! Go, an initiative unveiled at the CES show, will allow Yahoo! to bring not only its existing services to devices from televisions to cell phones, but also the new video content that will become part of their core of services.

Traditional network broadcasters have been instigating their own initiatives of bringing video content out of television and onto the technophile and early adopters' "third screen." (What I mean by third screen is that screen that is neither television -- the first screen -- nor the computer, which is the second screen).

ABC's water was the first to break in the birth of this migration of video from television to other media devices. Episodes of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" were made available for purchase through iTunes late last year. NBC recently announced that they would be doing the same thing. CBS currently only has plans to make its sports content available through Google, but might make that content and other kinds of programming available through the Apple music and video service.

What this portends

What does all this mean for the media planner and buyer? What does this mean for the savvy marketer?

Well, it means that there are going to be even more places and more times where and when media can be consumed. It means that audience concentration may be diluted but its size might not; and in some instances it might even grow. Think about it. I've never watched an episode of "Lost," but I sure would like to. However, given its narrative structure, much like "24," if you've missed one, you've missed them all. With a video iPod I could now catch up on the series over time at my convenience -- on the train, a flight, or waiting for a movie to start. I'd be added to the audience, but I would not be among those who are accounted for through traditional means of measuring and monitoring audience.

Why does this matter? Because it is an opportunity for marketers and advertisers to capture this unaccounted for audience. Those watching on television are already included in the kinds of calculations made by planners and buyers in search of a particular audience. But what if they could get a bead on the extended audience now made possible by the distribution of content to devices that have unfettered the consumption of media from time and place? And what if, by doing so, the distributors of that content could sell those audiences to advertisers?

With video content, arguably among the most desirable, moving to venues that aren't either television or the web, and with web-based content and services also moving to venues beyond the browser, marketers and media planners are going to face the challenge of figuring out just how to reach these decentralized audiences.

Questions concerning the size of audiences, the make up of those audiences, the types of units to run and how to measure it all are just the start. Who do you talk to if you want to propose buying media such as this? Who do you talk to if you want to propose selling media such as this? Does this go to the online guys and gals or the offline guys and gals?

Points North Group, a research outfit, and Horowitz Associates, a market research consultancy, found that 62 percent of respondents said they would rather watch a TV program later with ads.
 
If I want to propose subsidizing the download cost of the "Lazy Sunday" snippet from Saturday Night Live (If you've not seen this, it is quite possibly the funniest, most entertaining thing to have been on TV this decade) by running a pre-roll ad for my client, who do I talk to about doing that? Is it NBC or Apple?

The media content diaspora, video or otherwise, to the third screen is the biggest thing to happen to the media industry since the advent of the graphic-based web. Methods and prevalence of adoption are not yet known. But it is certain that there will be more people tomorrow watching video on their iPods or checking the web from their cell phones than there are today.

This is a challenge for marketers because their audiences are no longer crowded into the same place anymore, but it is also an opportunity because there are ways to speak to an audience -- even if a small one -- in ways that we've never been able to before.

Jim Meskauskas is media strategies editor for iMedia Connection.