Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
Opinion Surveys vs. Direct Experience
Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on April 8, 2009
How do opinion surveys of the uninitiated compare to the knowledge of those with direct experience?
There’s a lot to be said for direct experience.
While looking for an advantageous way to attack the Confederates in the Spring of 1862 the commander of the Federal army in Virginia and his staff approached the Chickahominy River. Stopping at the bank, they pondered whether it was too deep for troops to cross. As the group discussed the matter, one of the youngest staff members rode his horse down the bank and into the river. From his dry saddle at midstream he turned around and shouted back, “This is how deep it is General.” *
The officer with wet boots was George Custer, who later became the youngest Brigadier General in the Union army. Years later along the banks of a Montana river incongruously named Little Big Horn he would achieve even greater notoriety. But that’s another story, and a good one.
Getting Internet Video on the television is a similar. Those who have experience unlimited Internet access quickly comprehend the future as though they had a vision on the road to Damascus. For such users the television evolves into a dual function device. In one context it remains a conventional television, but in a second it becomes a giant window into the Internet Cloud. After 10 – 15 years of surfing the Net on their computers, they’ll never be satisfied with a Walled Garden of Internet content on the TV. No matter how beautiful, it will always be perceived as a Walled Prison.
Thus, survey results from conventional TV watchers revealing they want YouTube on their TVs overlooks two bigger points. First, if they are constrained to limit their response to YouTube or other discrete items per se, they are unable to express a desire for unlimited access. But the second point is even more significant. Specifically, many users cannot realize how much they want something until they have experienced it. That’s why auto dealers want you to test drive a car. It’s also why 15 years ago many of us thought the Internet was for geeks only. In our analysis, unrestricted Internet access at the TV is even a more applicable example.
The point is one of the basic conclusions of our earlier “Third Generation Television: Internet-Video-to-the-TV” research report. In short, no matter how much consumers are surveyed about Internet access to the TV, their true reaction cannot be measured until they have experience it. Once they have, a number of points become obvious.
One is their ultimate dissatisfaction with restrictions to Internet access on the TV. Another is that they will have a decided preference for advertising-supported video as opposed to rentals from places like iTunes or Amazon-Video-on-Demand.
The second point leads us to undertake a new research project, “Future Developments in Video Advertising”. The report is currently in preparation and will be released within 2 – 3 months. Advance subscribers get a discount. If you want subscription information, or merely would like to suggest coverage topics, feel welcome to contact me.
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*Catton, Bruce: Mr. Lincoln’s Army, p. 118, Smith Press, 2007
Categories: Podcast Audio
Tags: Custer, Future-of-Television, Internet-Advertising, Internet-video, online-advertising, Opinion Surveys, podcast, podcasting, television, Television-Advertising, YouTube
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