Cliff Webb from Narrowstep held an interesting presentation. Narrowstep does IP-TV, or rather “TV over the internet” as they chose to call it. Apparently clients and customers tend do go for the more descriptive than technological approach.

According to Webb, enabling a complete freedom of choice is the most important factor for the success on IP-TV. The second factor for success was engaging niche communites. As more and more people are part of a community of some sort – both online and offline – this enables the long tail on an international level.

Webb mentioned a few examples: itvlocal.tv – the British television network ITV are launching nine special channels, apart from the four regular channels that they have. With the new channels, they work hyperlocally (see my post on Rob Curley for more on hyperlocal). They have classifieds, dating, property, live cameras (showing a miserable day in Brighton at the time) – all with a hyperlocal perspective.

This also opens up new ways of advertising – people can make their own tv advertisments and then you can upload it to ITV. It then runs on the website. This costs them about 25 pounds for 30 days. Even the Brighton surf shop does it! The formula that seems to work best is one 30 second ad, every 5 minutes. The viewers then know that there’s only going to be one ad, and because of that they keep watching.

One more example. Cycling.tv has made half a million euros in premium memberships – this year alone. They have about 30-50 000 viewers and have sold ten ad packages á 25 000 euros so far. Seemed to be very successful. And how do they know what cycling to send out? They ask their community of course. That’s how you get loyal viewers.

tags bloggar.se: NMD06, narrowstep, ip-tv, cycling.tv, itvlocal