Andrew Walmsley on digital: Digital's growing pains set to ease

Marketing 09-Jan-08

The rise of Facebook, Google's acquisition of Doubleclick, the continued boom in both online advertising and ecommerce - the sheer pace of growth continued to keep us all on our toes over the past year. As January gets into full swing, it's a good time to think about the trends that will define 2008.

First, IPTV. Over the holidays, the BBC has been promoting iPlayer
heavily on TV. The system enables users to watch BBC programmes over the
internet up to seven days after broadcast, and it's a great free

product.

But it's just one of several IPTV platforms from UK broadcasters: Sky
and Channel 4 have their own, while ITV streams shows. This makes
watching TV online clunky and over-technical, with different software
required for EastEnders and Coronation Street, and no common programme
guide.

Kangaroo, the BBC's joint venture with C4 and ITV, is expected to put
paid to these obstacles, bringing these operators' channels together
with others on one platform and potentially doing for IPTV what Freeview
did for digital TV. Furthermore, the average speed of UK broadband
connections is 4Mb and more than half of UK homes now have broadband,
providing a critical mass of users that could add to the momentum for
IPTV to take off this year.

The next trend to watch will be mobile internet use. Poor battery life,
duff devices, worse software and cripplingly high costs have conspired
to keep the web firmly in the home or office. But all these problems
look likely to be solved in 2008. It is not just better mobile handsets
that make using the net on the move a reasonable proposition (Apple's
iPhone is the first truly usable mobile web browser, coupling a good
device with excellent software), but also the success of ultra-mobile
PCs.

At the same time, mobile networks have rolled out fixed-price access
(which fuelled the growth of fixed-line internet access), and Wi-Fi
hotspots (many of them free) have become more common. With longer-range
technologies such as WiMAX starting to become available, we will see the
web unplugged.

A lot of attention has been paid to how brands will be affected by the
transparency the web demands, but 2008 will be the year that this
transparency comes to politics.

We have seen how bloggers have embraced the task of keeping our
representatives in order, but technology is set to change the
availability and meaningfulness of data. One site, Earmarkwatch.org, has
a tool that flags every location 'earmarked' by the US Congress for
defence spending on a map - voters can see instantly which states are
benefiting from federal investment, and which are not. Such applications
could change (not just for the better) the level of understanding we can
have of what is done in our name.

Regulation will be another key factor in 2008. Last year the US Federal
Trade Commission approved Google's acquisition of DoubleClick, no doubt
aware that it bolstered a substantial export opportunity for US
business. But will the European competition authorities take this view?
They were tougher on Microsoft in the past, and may be less inclined to
support Google, whose share of the search business is close to 90% in
the UK and Germany.

'New' media isn't new anymore; digital is outgrowing its adolescence and
regulators are starting to wake up to the power it wields. Government
and business are sitting up and taking notice, even if they are still
scratching the surface of what will be possible.

With internet adspend predicted to overtake TV in the UK in 2009, this
is going to be a growing-up year for digital; the year in which it
starts to become the establishment.

- Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level

30 SECONDS ON ... CYNICAL ONLINE PREDICTIONS FOR 2008

- 'American Idol and YouTube will join forces and create Internet Idol,
where we can be chaffed by more whiny, self-indulgent, self-absorbed
petitioners for the me-too generation.'

- 'The word "integration" will do its internet farewell tour and leave a
greatest hits website for agencies of the future to laugh at.'

- 'Online video will be made obsolete by online telepathy; users will
imprint stupid clips and reruns directly onto each others's visual
cortex. Watch out, Facebook!'

- 'Device miniaturisation will become all the rage in 2008.
Unfortunately, people miniaturisation won't be perfected until 2022;
late July is the target date.'

- 'At 2.42pm on 12 September, Google will become self-aware and take
over New Jersey.'

From '10 Most Cynical Online Predictions for 2008', posted on ClickZ.com
by Dorian Sweet, executive creative director at Tribal DDB's San
Francisco office.