From YouTube: video of the Wii News Channel. It’s obviously taken by a camcorder directly pointed at the TV. The Wii News Channel interface looks even cooler than I had guessed. Watch what happens to the text when the user zooms in on it. Look at how the world map turns to show different stories. This is an entirely new way to tell the news.
Pay attention: news video is the logical next step. This is what distributed news looks like.
I love this idea. On Saturday, the “Wii News Channel” is slated to start up. Wii users with an online connection will be able to get AP news and pictures, with the news displayed on an interactive map. You can bet video isn’t far down the line. Talk about an innovative way to distribute information. Imagine offering your local content on that map. You’d have a captive audience and a niche market all at once. People are getting news through their gaming consoles. That’s a breakthrough.
It’s very interesting to see how the presidential hopefuls are dipping a toe in the web. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all announced their runs online. They have various degrees of blogs and sites now. Republican Sen. John McCain is taking a different approach: he’s going with sponsored search text and paid video ads along with more traditional display ads. A Google search for “John McCain” turns up the paid ad that leads to exploreMcCain.com, the site for his exploratory committee. However, a search for “Campaign 2008″ turns up the Giuliani exploratory site as the paid ad. And nobody comes up for “presidential campaign 2008.” Free advice for campaigns: don’t just buy your own name for a keyword. Buy as many variations on “president,” “campaign,” “2008″ and more.
Nielsen Analytics says broadband video is the hot space for ad revenue right now. From ClickZ:
The study, conducted in partnership with Scarborough Research, suggests that broadband video actually extends the reach of traditional television and provides a perfect place to target advertising to a “young, affluent, highly educated” consumer with round-the-clock access to high-speed Internet.
After years of worrying that online video would “cannibalize” their viewership, stations and networks are starting to get it. The more you put your stuff out there, the more people will watch.
How to justify spending $2.6 million for a single Super Bowl commercial? Amortize it across the web, in email and over mobile devices. Think of it as a viral jump start.
