Some minor issues

I was very intrigued when I saw the following headline on clickZ last week: Joost Signs Major Advertisers.
Seems like a good thing right? Joost is great, so extra money might speed things up and improve the service. So the headline sounded great, but then I read the article, and it said they were going to do 30 seconds spot, among others.

I quote

I think this is absurd. Sure, it’s not only 30″, and I’m looking forward to see the other possibilities come into play. There are some real opportunities there.

Why do I think doing 30″ on Joost is absurd? Because one of the strengths was the absence of in your face advertising. The possibilities were smoothly integrated in the media, and in the business model. The presumption was 1/ the lost time (in between programs) 2/ not very intrusive (only a few seconds) 3/ possibilities for targeting and interaction.

Allowing 30″ spots is just lazy advertising. There is so much more. Especially is you take the technical possibilities into account.
But most of all, it’s undermining the model in the end. 30″ advertising will diminish the user experience.
These day and age, where users can simply grab the content they want (bittorent and others) you’ll have to bring added value. (classical) Advertising isn’t added value. If you don’t succeed in doing this, they won’t use your product and just download the content again. So in the end,everybody loses: the content creators for not getting paid, the advertisers for missing the opportunity, and the end user for being illegally (they don’t care if they don’t have an alternative) and because they have to do more efforts to get what they want.

This said, I’m a Joost beta tester for a wile now. I’m going to bring my findings in a separate post. I just saw I have a massive amount of beta invites left (about 1000) so if you like to join the program, drop me a mail or leave a comment.