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BitTorrent Inc. Introduces Ad-Supported Downloads
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 03, 2007 12:14 PM
from the sure-to-be-popular dept.
from the sure-to-be-popular dept.
BTJunkie writes "BitTorrent Inc. is experimenting with alternatives to paid downloads on their Entertainment Network, and is now experimenting with advertising supported downloads. This news comes nearly one month after the initial release of the Entertainment Network, a possible sign of failure.'The ad-supported model is currently being tested on episodes by the video gamers network G4, but is likely to be tested on episodes from other publishers in the future. The video ads are short video clips delivered by YuMe Networks, a company that is specialized in IP based video ads. YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi said that the company expects to deliver more user targeted video ads as soon as BitTorrent Inc. signs more deals with publishers that want to experiment with ad-supported downloads.'"
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Future of downloadable media (Score:2, Interesting)
That together with their crowdfunding business model to fund the recording will be the future I think, or at least will play a big role in it.
Yuk (Score:4, Interesting)
Road signs, radio, tv, t-shirts, hell, even the back of police cars in some cities.
Personally i try to avoid doing businesses with companies that practice 'flooding advertisement'.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Just as long as they realize they *still* can't force me to look at or pay attention to their ads.
Re:Yuk (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Yuk (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Umm.... advertising is a way to influence people buy stuff. See the generic/store brands at your favorite grocer. Cheaper *and* no advertising needed.
In the absence of ads, people are generally smart enough to know what they need, when they need it. The world as we know it wouldn't grind to a financial halt if advertisers were to die off in some mass extinction, in spite of what sales people would like you to thin
Re:Yuk (Score:5, Insightful)
Without advertising, I doubt so many people would be buying things they don't need and overextending their credit to do so. While the world wouldn't grind to a financial halt, it would slow down significantly, probably causing a major recession/depression. The economy is unfortunately very dependent on the stupid people of the world who use their paycheck as a ticket to shop till they drop for useless crap.
I used to be married to someone like that.
Parent
Re:Yuk (Score:5, Insightful)
As ortholattice says, one of the most intractable problems for the US economy today is the extension of expensive credit. The savings rate is MINUS ONE PERCENT. We are told that this is a great and booming economy, but everybody owes more this year than they did last year, and the cost of carrying that credit is more expensive than ever.
We have just started to see an unprecedented level of mortgage forfeiture. People will lose their homes like never before because they used the little bit of equity they had built up in their houses to pay off their credit cards, and they did so by snapping up all the insane adjustable rate mortgages and interest-only home equity loans. It all worked as long as prices went up. With just the merest contraction in the housing market, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people are going to get hurt when their monthly mortgage payments quadruple.
Advertising. Making you want something you don't need, making you want something you don't want. Making you want something that's bad for you. It's the economic equivalent to religious fanaticism. The "free-market" radicals that have been driving this country and our economy since WWII have lied to us. The free market only serves to shrink the number of people who have power and wealth. The only way this game ends is by the vast majority of us living in near poverty, working 60 hours a week just to live.
I'm looking at a graph published in the Detroit Free Press that was made using US Census data. Since 2000, the average income of Americans has gone down by between 6 and 9 percent. That takes into account the nice raise that you think you got back in January. Yet, your president tells you that we've got the strongest economy in years. What he leaves out is that it's strongest for him and his pals. You and me? Not so much.
Sure, you've got a swell 42" HDTV screen, a nice car, and a couple of the latest game consoles. But only because your credit cards are working harder than ever before. What you really have is indenture to the credit industry. We're getting screwed and advertising is the pimp. As long as you can keep moving up, getting those raises, avoiding layoffs, moving those balances from card to card it'll seem like it's all working. Do you know what those in the credit industry call people who pay their credit card balances in full every month? "Deadbeats". Seriously. They hate people who pay their bills on time and are responsible.
Advertising is not your friend. Neither is "faith-based" finance.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really.
I use adblock while web browsing, and any site that manages to piss me off with lots of advertising never gets visited twice.
And yet I am still, through my own targeted browsing, led to devices/things I wish to purchase on-line.
I guess this is because, contrary to the statistically defined web browsing individual, I am in fact already aware of the things I want to buy, and quite capable of convincing myse
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Online ads are just one small part of the problem.
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However, I make a point of not buying anything that pisses me off through obtrusive advertising.
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I pretty much not only ignore advertisements but put those items on my 'not going to buy it' list.
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Re:Yuk (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising is designed by the worlds best psychologists to make you feel unhappy with your life as it is, so you will go buy something. They work even if you ignore them. What you are experiencing is the surrendering to their influence that happens when you just give up under the bombardment and the accompanying rationalization. If you cut yourself off from the constant bombardment of ads for a little while, you'll be shocked.
Advertisers, with knowledge and intent, systematically manipulate people to react according to their primitive responses instead of with reasoned responses, contrary to peoples larger self interest and for personal gain.
And they've carved an industry for themselves out of the fact that "Superior Performing Product A" will be ignored in the face of competition from "Inferior Performing Product B" assisted by the pervasive advertising machine.
Their tactics are so effective that to a certain extent they've made themselves the gatekeepers of the so called free market economy.
They're fucking evil.
Parent
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* The first is the obvious costs of creating and distributing the advertising including the administration surrounding that process. Note, that when I say the cost to distribute the advertisment, I am talking about the cost for the distributor to distribute the advertisment.
* The second cost is the time wasted by those looking at (or just avoiding) the advertisments. This is an
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But yes, we got both types over here in the states. Public busses have done it for decades. Rather disgusting if you ask me.
Even our license plates are advertisements in many cases. ( for the state one lives in )
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This is the same logic as "Their best bet is to have a shower and dress up nice before raping my wife."
Patch (Score:5, Funny)
Patch to bypass advertising to be released in about a week. Probably on Bittorrent.
BitTorrent Inc. concept flawed from the start (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw in this logic is a failure to understand the success of the BitTorrent protocol. People use BitTorrent because they don't have the money to pay for the bandwidth to distribute what they are distributing because they don't have a revenue model.
However, if you have a half-decent revenue model, such as advertising, revenue easily offsets the bandwidth costs of distributing video from a central server over HTTP, so why put your users through the pain of having to install a piece of client software?
BitTorrent's problem is that anyone that can afford to pay them for their services can probably afford to distribute their content over HTTP from a centralized server, and why wouldn't they given the much lower barrier to entry for their users?
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Big words from the man who "invented" Freenet. *coughBrandonWileycough*
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</sarcasm>
Re:BitTorrent Inc. concept flawed from the start (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, if this turns out to be a highly desirable feature, browsers will soon support P2P without the need for external/plugin software.
Parent
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Not so, the more popular the content, the cheaper the bandwidth required for each individual download, meaning that it makes even more sense to distribute from a centralized server.
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Will it pan out? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, the tv shows need ad-revenue to keep going, even if the could offer the episodes with commercials, they still need to keep cycling the commercials for a flow of revenue. Plus bandwidth problems if using direct downloads for HD quality episodes.
I hoped for something like this. I loathe the current internet-based offerings on the network websites. Small resolutions, and constant re-buffering and queuing the next clip.
I just wonder if they will be able to pull this off without having the commercials easily circumvented. I have no doubt that the commercials can be circumvented, the key word here is
Re:Will it pan out? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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Er? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like a sustainable formula to me. No DRM though, I want to be able to burn it onto a cd and watch it on my Tele, not just my small compu
G4 (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Downloads only happen when the client is full-screen/ad playing?
Workaround: shut off monitor/speakers, make sandwich
Videos interspersed with ads?
Workaround: Annoying, but use virtualdub to take them out.
Popups/software required?
Workaround: figure it out or just stick to Paarrite Bay
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really - it merely shifts the costs, and costs more because of implementation expense. Advertising requires significant expenditure in the people who work in the field. That expense is borne out by the customer - as all expenses eventually are. Advertising is overhead. Overhead should always be minimized.
Parent
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This is a well known dance (Score:5, Informative)
Then, came the internet, and the most tech savvy people began to get access to what they want, ad free and faster than over the legal channels of distribution, going around the artificial international syndication delay, that used to be 12, even 18 months! Most people still don't have access to such goodies, but it is a matter of time until someone with guts and technology creates a high quality YouTube-like system for movies and series.
Trying to push advertisement to this internet target audience will not work, as getting rid of ads is one of the reasons people go to the internet to look for things. People would even pay for content, they do it every time by buying complete season DVDs (although 70/$60 is kinda bitter to shell out in a single season), as long as the price is not extortive. People will not pay $4 to rent an episode for 24 hours. They can buy the whole season for, let's say, $60, what in the average 22 episodes season + 8 extras mean that they can *own* the goddamn thing for $2/episode. People will not download it to watch ads, they can watch with ads TV already, without the hassle of having to download, or watch it without ads, jumping through a few hoops.
Bottom line is: sell an episode of a serie in an ITunes like system (preferentially without the DRM) for $ 0.99 (fixed price) and people will buy it. Better yet, along with the file transfer, let people watch what they bought in an YouTube style interface, so people don't need to bother with media players, codecs or moving the file around.
* By time I was writing this, I remembered I was watching my favorite soap opera ( gasp!) but the advertisement ran for so long that I completely forgot about it, and lost the whole second half. Damn.
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Here in Portugal the 3 major channels (RTP, SIC, TVI) use to roll out ads for 15, 20 minutes, for goodness sake!
Seriously?! I guess we are kind of lucky here in the UK as we have the BBC. But it would be interesting to see channels' market share by %adverts (controlling for content, etc.) to see if the intangible cost to viewers can be worked out... i.e. how much extra would you pay for a reduction in x minutes of advertising? My worry is that content providers are working under the assumption that more ads does not equal less viewing pleasure - which might mean we are all heading for the Portugese model.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Entertainment Value (Score:2)
Too little, too late (Score:2)
so wait (Score:2)
The true price of media is revealed! (Score:2)
How much can watching an ad be worth in revenue? Certainly not £1 per customer. It's the same on TV - they don't make anything like £1 per viewer on a show. Sure, there are bandwidth costs, but since it's BT you take on some of those yourself anyway (or your ISP does).
I'd pay 10p for a half hour TV show. No DRM, good quality xvid. Plays on everything with my choice of software.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"For example, a 30-second spot during the 2005 Superbowl sold for $2.4 million. Commercials during less-watched programs are more affordable, but the cost of those commercials may still run in excess of $100,000 per 30-seconds."
About 95 million people watched the Superbowl. That would seem to put it at much less than $1/viewer, or about 2.5 cents (1.25p in real money). Considering they want to charge a few pounds per program...
Not even full episodes (Score:3, Insightful)
The ad-supported downloads don't even appear to be full episodes of the G4 shows, just segments. These are already available for free via G4's podcasts, so why in the world would anyone want to go through the trouble of downloading them over bittorrent?
Plus, to make matters worse, the download rate was only 65K/sec, which is pretty very slow for my internet connection. The video quality wasn't even that good, something that would have made the bittorrent.com version better than the podcast version.
Bittorrent.com really needs to stop treating their potential customers like idiots and offer some incentive to use their products instead of the competition. The fact that they use the bittorrent protocol should lower their costs on the bandwidth side, but it increases the complexity on the customer's side. They really need to do something to make up for that (much lower prices or extremely high quality).
Make ads people want to download (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at all the ads that are on YouTube as content and actively downloaded. Even on my PVR I rewind and watch again good commercials. The problem with advertising and IPTV is that they force stupid, annoying, and pointless ads in a shotgun fashion assuming a captive audience. Run creative ads and use search terms and the like to target them. I figure Google is going to clean up big time on this on YouTube very soon.
I'm a single guy who doesn't drive but loves anime. If they would kill all the car ads, and the tampon ads and run anime and asian film ads I'd be as happy as a clam, toss in a link to the online store or ticket purchase and I'd be even happier. My democracy player downloads these ads automatically.
In the same fashion NewType magazine runs a DVD in every issue which has about three single anime episodes and a pile of trailers. While it's effectively pure advertising, its one of the most popular features, and when they discontinued it, readers made them bring it back. I've ended up buying many entire series based on the previews on those disks. That's focused and effective advertising.
The most effective email advertising I've ever encountered is the favorites search option on eBay. I get emails on a regular basis for stuff I'm actively seeking. I read every email and end up purchasing a reasonable percentage of items.
Television producers should move to bittorrent (Score:2, Insightful)
I totally foresee a future in which bittorrent becomes the "mainstream" medium, television is rendered obsolete, and big-name television producers stop "broadcasting" shows, they just upload them to bittorrent -- with the commercial breaks put right into the video file.
As it is now, when people rip video from television and upload it, they take the time to remove the commercials -- because hey, you're already going to all of the trouble to rip it, upload it, and attach your name to it, why not make it qua
Actual datapoints (Score:2)