New Media and Your Business

It's important to understand that the entertainment world as we know it is is in the process of a convulsive transformation. The universe that encompasses movie theatres, television, radio, movie rental & purchase, web sites, magazines, newspapers, music CDs, almost all media types except live theatre are being transformed by the Internet. The shouts you may remember hearing from eight to ten years ago about the potential changes the Internet would bring, and that died down during the meltdown of 2001, are being taken up anew as broadband access has finally hit critical mass. (side note: A quick pat on the back for me: As the bubble was ramping up during '99 and '00 I was telling anyone who asked my opinion that I was mystified by it all BECAUSE there wasn't the bandwidth in place to support the business models being created. Broadband penetration was less than 10% as of 2001. It's now over 70%.)

Starting right now and ramping up steadily over the next 5 years, consumers will implement technologies that allow them to connect their broadband capacity through their computer (Media Center PC) and into their televisions, home theatre projectors and stereos. By doing this they will have access to libraries of TV shows, movies and music ON DEMAND. And importantly, at the same time broadcast and cable television will ramp down in usage because of it's inflexibility.

What all of that means for you and your business is two-fold: (1) that you'll be able to create a presence for your firm on the web, fill your site with streaming video commercials, infomercials, video news releases, along with the more mundane media types like text and images, and (2) you'll be able to promote your business using pay-per-click models through search engines and demographically selected websites (including streaming movies and TV shows) using text ads, billboard/display ads and streaming commercials or infomercials. All at a cost defined by what your firm can afford. Pretty exciting stuff! More to come...