Aug 4th, 2008
Aug 4th, 2008
The Games are only a few days away, and I think NBC is ready. The schmorgas board of content options that viewers will be able to tap into is honestly mind blowing. Utilizing on-demand, mobile, interactive, and live streaming technologies–just to name a few–NBC is doing what the rest of the digital industry hasn’t quite figured out yet; they are providing online content to viewers and still expected to draw record numbers of viewers during their TV broadcasts.
As new technologies have been evolving, advertisers have been attempting to monetize these different formats while appeasing users (ie-not annoying them) and adhering to privacy restrictions. For example, mobile marketing is great in theory, but keeping it user-friendly and quantifiable for advertisers has not completely been accomplished to date.
What NBC is doing with their coverage of the Beijing Games is truly making content available to users no matter where they are during the 17 days of the Olympics. Since Olympic events are so time-sensitive, NBC should be able to entice users to subscribe to online feeds, watch live and canned events, so they can stay up to date (and not have to wait for Bob Costas to tell them).
From a ratings side, NBC will still be able to draw a wide TV viewing audience because the crowd pleasing sports like swimming, gymnastics and track are planned to be broadcast live only on TV.
All in all, I must applaud NBC…they have significantly raised the bar from 2006 and for the industry as a whole.
To add to this, today I found research that says that 57 percent of the adult American population are expected to watch the summer Olympics this year. That equates to 128 million American people…not too shabby for NBC.
-Stats from Scarborough Sports Marketing