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Why the Online Video Business Is a Joke

So complicated.

The simple reality is that TV advertising, that is the real big money in TV advertising, is all about brand and image. It is not about Google, lead generation, DR marketing (though there is some of that on the low end), targeting etc and the other parlour tricks of the web business. Video is about big time brand building.

When you are in that business you must have quality trusted environments and engaged users and reliable technology. Online video has none of that. Except for a few young demographic brands, the real money will not be playing with YouTube or any of the other user generated (READ: free and low cost) stuff.

Add to that that, video just doesn't fit well with the online experience. Online is forward leaning, TV is lean back. How many online video screens have you clicked away from because you just don't want to wait for the load up?

Add to that Google is not about branding. It's not in their DNA.

Online video will take a couple of billion away from traditional TV, enough to make them very nervous for the next few years, but ultimately it will be a side show.

CBS and CNET: Vision, or Desperation?

Old media content cos love new media content cos. Feels comfortable. Feels like you can replicate your old world experience in the new world. You can't. Virtually all of the old world media companies are being defensive in these aquisitions. They are looking for synergies and ways to defend their old market positions instead of building new businesses in the new world and embracing the future. The old organizations are so full of fiefdoms that simply want to bury the new to perpetuate the old, survival becomes impossible. CNET will get diminished or destroyed the same way CBS abandoned Marketwatch, Healthwatch, Sportsline, NBC-Zoom (and currently iVillage). Inforseek was at one time the #4 largest portal on the web...unitl ABC bought it. The cable MSOs obliterated $ 4 Bil in market cap in Excite@Home. The landscape is littered with these old media/new media failures.

Old media companies have a terrible history or doing any kind of diversification.