YouView is the long-awaited (i.e. delayed by two years) online TV service for the UK. It will be available in the UK later this month and is backed by most of the UK’s leading broadcasters including BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BT, Aquiva and BT – Sky being a notable omission (see below). The service is regarded as being the online successor to the hugely popular Freeview service, and YouView boxes will provide a range of services from catchup TV to apps.
For advertisers, delivering linear TV ads over the internet opens up a whole new range of possibilities for more interactive and more targeted advertising. VAN will be aggregating latest news and views from around the web throughout the day. If you’ve just arrived, start at the bottom and work your way up:
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1645: The VAN Verdict
In spite of all of the negative press, VAN remains steadily optimistic about YouView’s future and what it will deliver for advertisers and for the rest of the market. Yes, the initial price of £299 is too high and yes there are other products on the market that can do similar things for less. But none of TrueView’s competitors – even Google – can rival the power of the UK’s leading broadcasters when it comes to pushing products of any kind into UK homes. But this isn’t just a question of people seeing the advertising, but the power of the brands behind Trueview; particularly the BBC, which is the most trusted media brand in the UK.
Over the last 6 months the industry has seized on the post-CES hype, but during that time there has also been a growing realisation that consumers have for the most part remained outside the industry’s bubble. Ask most people whether they want a Roku or a Trueview box and chances are they’ll choose Trueview because they don’t like seafood (no disrespect to Roku who have created a fantastic product). But they did see Alan Sugar on the telly with a Trueview box and they will have seen one of the many ads that will be pushed out over the coming months (which, if you’re interested, will be bought on behalf of Trueview by OMD we hear).
Finally, this is a platform, not a static product, meaning app developers, content production companies and advertisers will have a new and far more cost effective way to reach consumers on the large living room screen. YouView is as close as the UK will get in being an important milestone when it comes to pushing connected TV into the mainstream and it won’t be long before people words like ‘scale’ and ‘reach’ no longer have to be avoided when it comes to delivering video online.
1410 The Telegraph ran with the following headline: YouView is a revolutionary product. For 2010. Ouch.
1236 VAN spoke with TV App Agency’s Bruno Pereira about what YouView will do for the connected TV apps market: “For us, YouView is a validation of the market for connected TV. However, it’s another walled garden from an app development perspective. Developers will have to hedge their bets in terms of deciding where to put their content first, or look at solutions like TV App Engine.”
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1204 Now things are starting to get interesting. Advanced Television have reported that Sky’s Now TV service will be made available. Now TV is a new brand from Sky that will be an online and more flexible version of Sky’s offering that they’ll be offering later this year on a pay-as-you-go basis. Up until now, Sky weren’t expected to participate.
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0810 Lord Sugar officially announces YouView on ITV’s Daybreak.
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Yesterday: MediaWeek say Channel 5 are already talking to a range of brands about opportunities on the platform, ‘which could include hosting branded or ad-funded audio-visual content on the Demand 5 homepage, or signing deals as a category partner’.
1 July 2012: Interesting interview on the Guardian with BT Vision’s Marc Watson on getting the rights to Premiership football. It’s going to be interesting to see how successful Premiership football will be on YouView and if BT decide to prevent Sky from accessing the games BT own rights too (BT have already bagged a deal for access to games shown on Sky Sports).
January 2012: VAN reports on Mediacom snapping up exclusive access to Tesco-owned Blinkbox’s VOD inventory, which it’s safe to assume there’ll be significantly more of in the coming months
