Last month's launch of Google TV was no surprise to seasoned media-watchers. Yet, while its audience may be ready for it, the advertising market is totally unprepared.
In the analogue age, the TV time-buyer's life was good. With just two commercial channels, the time of both sold by their regional ITV franchises, the day was pretty straightforward.
You tooled up for work, checked your schedules, shouted at some people down the phone, went to lunch. Sometimes, you had to come back, but with the evening's peak-time closing at 1pm, there wasn't much reason to. Then Sky came along and the channel count rose. Yet, time was still bought in 10-second increments, measured via BARB, and dealt in the same way. In broadcast, nothing really changed.
Except it hasn't escaped the TV buying departments' notice that the medium is going online. So, as fast as they can order stationery, they are rebranding as AV departments. It will take a lot more than some new business cards to meet the challenge of online TV, however. For all the talk, there is still no prospect of the sort of unified market that made broadcast such a scalable and profitable media sector for advertisers and agencies alike.
Instead, the web of suppliers, aggregators, platforms and devices is complex and incestuous.
While the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky all have their own online TV services, they are joined by dozens of online content originators, many of which distribute via aggregators such as MSN, YouTube and AOL. The big broadcasters are also experiencing competitive pressure from production companies, which are distributing their content directly to consumers, avoiding intermediaries.
You can't find full episodes of Harry Hill's TV Burp on ITV.com at the moment - the series has its own site. Simon Cowell also rigorously restricts how The X Factor is used online by ITV.
Aggregators such as YouTube are being joined by the likes of Hulu in the US, SeeSaw in the UK and specialist vertical operators such as LoveFilm, which has a burgeoning library online. These are becoming a powerful challenge to the existing players, making C4's decision to give long-form content to YouTube one it may come to regret.
Where, in the past, we watched TV that came from a dish or aerial, more of us now get it from other sources. Sky's box is internet-enabled, and you can access its service via your Xbox. In the US, viewers can watch Hulu, Netflix and Amazon VOD through their Wii; here we can use our PS3 as a video recorder. We can also get iPlayer via Virgin Media's box or on BT Vision, and Thinkbox research shows 12% of UK households hook their PC up to the TV.
TV manufacturers are keen not to be left out, offering internet-enabled sets, while Project Canvas (expected to be branded YouView) is working on a standard for internet-enabled set-top boxes, something that will now have to compete with Google TV's set-top box and Apple TV.
If you can't stay at home, your laptop, smartphone or iPad lets you carry TV with you, streaming video or downloading it so you can watch on the train.
So far, so fantastic for consumers; but, as the saying goes: 'The great thing about standards is there's so many of them.' With such a panoply of models for delivery, format and measurement of TV and variety of places to buy it from, the new TV ecosystem is simply too diverse to thrive. No one doubts that it's the future, but Google's avoidance of any mention of how advertising will fit into its TV world is significant.
The value chain will be radically different to that of broadcast. No amount of new stationery will address that.
Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level.
30 SECONDS ON ... Harry Hill's TV Burp
- Harry Hill moved from Channel 4, where he had had his own surreal comedy show since 1997, to ITV in 2001. the pilot of Harry Hill's TV Burp aired on 22 December; the series proper began its run the following November.
- In the show, Hill presents selected highlights from the week's TV in a satirical tone. This is augmented by guest appearances, sketches, songs and recurring jokes, such as 'fights' to determine 'which of two people or objects seen in a clip 'is best'.
- In the last series, an X Factor spoof segment, The K Factor: So You Think You Can Knit, was won by tiny wingless knitted fowl, Peter the Duck.
- Despite the show's family-friendly humour, the first three series aired in late-night slots. However, the success of repeats on Sunday afternoons during series three led ITV to move the show to the Saturday teatime slot, where it remains.
- Harry Hill's TV Burp will return for its 10th series in the autumn. The 18 episodes are expected to run between October and March next year.