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BitTorrent Inc. Introduces Ad-Supported Downloads
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.'"
SellaBand uses a 'DRM-free and ad supported downloads' business model for their music. You can read how it works http://www.sellaband.com/site/how-it-works.html">h ere (steps 6-7):
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.
Please mod me only (+) Underrated or (-) Troll
Anyone else around here sick of all the ads we get bombarded with on a nearly constant basis?
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'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Patch to bypass advertising to be released in about a week. Probably on Bittorrent.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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?
I had spoken with a friend about this sort of thing. I download tv shows because I don't want to watch tv shows on their schedule. And air times for shows are a constant battle of popularity. I don't even mind the commercials. I basically want the equivalent of free tivo. But all the TV shows are generally bittorrented without the commercials.
/easily/. So that advertisers will still pay to keep the show going as long as those who don't want to go through the fuss of dodging commercials will still sit through it.
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
So the users provide all the bandwidth, and BitTorrent Inc. keeps all the revenues? Great business model!
Entertainment is going to have to come up with SOME way to make money. TiVo has killed tv advertising. People (like me) don't want to pay for something like Television. I wouldn't mind a 2 minute commercial at the beginning of my LOST download if I could get it Legally, As fast (or faster) as i can through other means, and without commercials every 10 minutes.
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 computer screen. Encode it in H.264, or DiVX or whatever is high quality.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
How will this work? (Link is, predictably blocked at work for having *torrent* in the url).
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
It's dead, Jim.
I've seen it twice already. First, in financial troubles, over the air TV broadcasters began to pack the transmission with endless and annoying advertisements. Here in Portugal the 3 major channels (RTP, SIC, TVI) use to roll out ads for 15, 20 minutes, for goodness sake! It is not that rare for people to forget completely what they were watching *, when zapping through the channels. That pushed a lot of people to cable, as initially they were mostly ad free and, thus, worth the price. But as budgets got short, spendings got high and greed kicked in, they began to pack paid channels (like AXN, History Channel and Discovery for instance) with publicity too, not in volume, but enough to annoy. At the same time, cable companies began to offer premium channels with less or no advertisement on them, but you have to pay extra to get them ...
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.
When do most smart people use bit torrents. Well if you are like me you do not sit there and watch a linux iso, video game you bought, or whatever download for 3 hours. you either let it run in the background or you start it before going to bed. So hoe effective is this if any of us would start the download and go play a game, watch tv or surf the net.
Wait, G4 is a video gamer's network? When did this happen?
Saving the World: One Drink at a Time
Now your warez experience is going to be subsidized by advertisers!
Well, it gives you something to do -- read and click on ads -- while waiting for you download completes. That's Entertainment Value.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If they'd brought this out years, before Youtube and before illegally torrenting shows for free became so widespread, they might have had a winner. Watching a few ads first is probably sufficiently minor that a lot of people would just live with it...if the ad-free alternatives weren't as easy or easier. Now, pretty much anyone that knows what BitTorrent means, knows where and how to get the illegal stuff, and there's nothing BitTorrent, Inc. can do that can compete with that.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
do they help seed, or are you fucked if no one else that likes the same shows as you is stupid enough to seed?
-- lol pwned
I have always said that £1 is too much to download a TV show, and here is the evidence.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You can fast-forward mpeg-2 and 4 because of keyframes, which are displayed when fast-forwarding. So make sure your VBR-Torrentcasts are dense in keyframes at the commercials, and the message of the commercials can be read in the keyframes.
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).
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
The success of the BitTorrent protocol was largely due to people who didn't want to pay for things to begin with. Since the protocol is open source, it would be really difficult to charge for a "better" client since the code would just be forked and the pay-for version abandoned. Unfortunately, with something as relatively simple as a BitTorrent there isn't really a support revenue model either. It seems a shame that Bram isn't getting anything out of BitTorrent, but that was his choice up front.
So if Google buys YuMe, will it be called it GooMe?
Take a look at Wikipedia.. zero ads, donation driven. Yet the donations aren't even 1/500th of what Google adwords text boxes would bring in... Going ad free on the Internet today would appear to be an irrational decision. Sure, not everyone is out to make a pile of cash, but even non-profits have missions that having more money can help.
The problem is that Madison avenue is focused on push advertising rather than pull.
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.
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 quality? Pirating is all about your rep. But if the producers just played into the torrent fad, then no one would have to rip the videos themselves -- and since the videos are being handed to people on a silver platter, my guess is that no one would bother to take the time to recut the video to be commercial-free and upload it again to another torrent (which would be illegal and probably have less seeds/leeches as a result). Of course, people would probably be quite likely to skip the commercials while watching, but whether or not they skip them would probably depend on the product being advertised -- a commercial would probably have about 5 seconds to grab the viewer's attention, lest it be skipped. Since you're uploading these programs to the internet (and don't have to deal with the cable provider), you can pick and choose your own targeted advertising ... I wonder how advertising for shows gets
picked now?
Also, it isn't as if people don't "skip" the commercials on television already -- they walk away to use the bathroom, get something to eat, or even just change the channel until the commercials are over.
Doesn't this sound like a win-win situation? The consumers get the
product for free, whenever they want it, and the producers reach a
MUCH larger audience with their advertising (thereby increasing advertising revenues -- also, since the popularity of a torrent can easily be gauged by keeping track of how many people have/are downloading it, the popularity of a torrent could become the new "ratings" system, determining how valuable getting commercials onto that file would be for an advertiser).
One final thing, I wonder how much cheaper it would be to upload a TV show onto
bittorrent than it would be to get it on a cable channel? I don't know all of the specifics, but it seems totally feasible that the television producers could make more money than they do now by using free torrents to distribute their shows -- even while providing the product for free! After all, free product = more users = better advertising profits.
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 quality? Pirating is all about your rep.
But if the producers just played into the torrent fad, then no one would have to rip the videos themselves -- and since the videos are being handed to people on a silver platter, my guess is that no one would bother to take the time to recut the video to be commercial-free and upload it again to another torrent (which would be illegal and probably have less seeds/leeches as a result). Of course, people would probably be quite likely to skip the commercials while watching, but whether or not they skip them would probably depend on the product being advertised -- a commercial would probably have about 5 seconds to grab the viewer's attention, lest it be skipped. Since you're uploading these programs to the internet (and don't have to deal with the cable provider), you can pick and choose your own targeted advertising ... I wonder how advertising for shows gets
picked now?
Also, it isn't as if people don't "skip" the commercials on television already -- they walk away to use the bathroom, get something to eat, or even just change the channel until the commercials are over.
Doesn't this sound like a win-win situation? The consumers get the product for free, whenever they want it, and the producers reach a MUCH larger audience with their advertising (thereby increasing advertising revenues -- also, since the popularity of a torrent can easily be gauged by keeping track of how many people have/are downloading it, the popularity of a torrent could become the new "ratings" system, determining how valuable getting commercials onto that file would be for an advertiser).
One final thing, I wonder how much cheaper it would be to upload a TV show onto bittorrent than it would be to get it on a cable channel? I don't know all of the specifics, but it seems totally feasible that the television producers could make more money than they do now by using free torrents to distribute their shows -- even while providing the product for free! After all, free product = more users = better advertising profits.
PS Sorry about double-posting, I tend to forget paragraph tags when I'm excited about an idea.
Well sorry, I wrote a long post but decided it is too close to my own business. Anyway these guys are just getting started, or else they have tunnel vision. All they need to do is talk to people who have already done the market research and have seen lower tech systems actually now working and drawing money. I'd be really surprised if they don't have some successes, the question is probably how to do so while maintaining flexibility for the future. FWIW the market already exists in Japan and I've been thinking Zudeo could be an interesting tool to develop it.
Blizzard uses the bittorrent protocol to distribute large patches. As well you can download the complete game (around 3.5 GiB) in the form of a demo. Instead of distributing torrents they distribute there own client/torrent so from the end users prospective they're just downloading a patch program and running it which then takes care of everything except the need for an open port. However if the user is unable to open a port everything will still download fine via HTTP directly from Blizzard. It appears very similar to the way MS distributes many things (with a small program downloaded which downloads more stuff). The point I'm trying to make is that it's still worth while for companies with money to dump some or all of their bandwidth costs back on their users ISPs.
I agree that Bittorrent Inc. is still going to fail but I think it's more because bittorrent users already know where they can get better content for free and without ads delivered by the same method. Companies are just going to have to get used to the idea that they're going to have to have to actually compete with "free" by offering more then free can offer. Most people using paid services, like iTunes, are doing so because they have the money to spend and its nice and easy. It's not because they want to "feel good" about not "stealing" music. Generally society (at least where I live in Ontario, Canada) doesn't view downloading as committing much of a serious crime. It's a crime like speeding on the 401 is a crime. It's something that's against the law but everyone's doing it and no one cares really. So I really doubt anyone is spending money on paid download services because "it's the right thing to do" and companies are still marketing and pricing downloadables without considering what "free" has to offer because they feel there's no way to compete with these "criminals". But clearly they're wrong. You can't get the iTunes experience for free and that's why it's semi successful (still to expensive for widespread use in my opinion). Unfortunately for Bittorrent Inc. you can get the bittorrent experience for free and on top of it bittorrent inc. is practically the last horse out of the gate.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The great thing about Sellaband's approach is that it focuses on the part of the equation that really is scarce and valuable: the artist's time and talent. You can easily copy an MP3 file, so it's hard to get people to pay for one.. but you can't copy an artist's time. If you want him to record a song for you, you have to pay him. There's no way around it (unless you kidnap him and force him into slavery, I guess).
However, their model could still use some improvements. For example, they currently set the same price for every artist ($50,000), and they use that money solely to fund the production of an album. The artists don't get a penny of it; they have to rely on ad revenue.
What if, instead, an artist could set his own price and use the money however he wants? Let's say you're a guy with a laptop and a guitar, and you have no desire to sell CDs or go to a studio for professional recording, you just have some ideas for a few songs. Why not charge only a few hundred bucks (which would be held in escrow), record and mix the songs yourself, upload the MP3s when you're done, and then pocket the money? You'd be directly selling your labor, giving yourself a guaranteed income instead of hoping for ad revenue that may never materialize.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
What is it with these people, I get the tv i want now with no commercials, (thank you all you bt posters, i love each and everyone of ya), have for over 2yrs now, why go back. I tell you what, bring back Dead Like Me and Serenity, and I'll watch your commercial laden swill... til someone posts it elsewhere with the ads cut... :) CAT OUT OF BAG, these are not code words they are old adages, they get that way for a reason. We got a taste of free music, we still have it; we now have free tv and I don't want to go back. The place i live now still has the previous occupants cable hooked up (cabalco cable did not bother to disconnect it yet), so once in a while I try to watch tv but GODDAMN THE COMMERCIALS every 5 minutes, I would start reading again... :)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I think i've heard of this somewhere before...
Hmmm...download free stuff for just the price of seeing a few ads. Its brilliant!! Hey we could call it Adware...
Oh, wait...Never mind.
Ever watch Cable TV? Satellite?
It's not enough to interrupt you every five minutes (I'm not joking) to show you ads. It's not enough to have product placement that's really only vaguely relevant (Bond's electric razor in "Die Another Day"). They now have to randomly cut into your show -- take over a fucking quarter of the screen, WITH SOUND, to show you an ad while your show is still playing.
This is not just virtualdub. There's no way to remove these without butchering the content, or resorting to DVDs. Which is what I have done. Fuck TV, I'll either pirate or buy/rent DVDs. If they ever do it to my DVDs, I'll just give up any TV at all.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There seem to be a few comments around here along the lines of "advertisements suck" and the occasional "bring back firefly"
Does anyone have any idea how much ressurecting Firefly would cost? That money has to come from somewhere and if we aren't paying for it up front (straight-to-video, cinema or the idealogical subscription-but-ad-free-cable) then it has to be paid for by advertising.
I havent seen Firefly, i could have torrented the lot but havent, not one second of it has passed my corneas and will not do until i get around to buying the box set. I doubt very much my purchase will cause the magical relaunch of the series but we cant have it both ways.
What needs to happen is some established dude like Rodriguez needs to stick the finger to the studios, get a whole bunch of cash from some very optimistic investor and release a kick ass film trilogy via the iTunes model (distribution and bandwidth issues aside): $2.50 for DVD ISO or AVI, $5 for the HD H.264 AVI, $10.00 for the physical DVD with making-of booklet (shipping not included).
what THEN needs to happen is for amazon to pick up the physical edition and the film reviews and word-of-mouth being very positive and not just in the "oh isnt it quaint a low-budget indie film with cardboard sets releases it's wares on the interweb" way but a "holy fuck this is some good shit i only wish it'd had a cinema release so i could see it on a big screen" way.
so long as people pay for the damned thing, knowing that not one cent is going to rupert murdoch and friends and dont just torrent it then the revolution will begin. what will probably happen is that a bunch of slashdotters will bemoan the codec, format, price, color of the website, fact that some guy shoots before some other guy and tout that as a reason not to pay for the thing because, y'know it should be free for $INSERT_REASON
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
IMHO, IANAL, TINLA, etc...