Category: USEN

If “broadcast as video” is the new direction the ad agency-TV industry will pursue as Jeff Jarvis notes in the comment section of a vc’s post “Umair, Jarvis, Disney, and Me“, Gyao.jp of Japan is probably more or less in the same spirits yet coming from another direction. Originally sprang from USEN (wikipedia in Japanese), one of Japan’s media contents players but obviously not in the TV networks industry, gyao.jp proclaims that it now has registered viewers of more than 8 million (the size equivalent of 80% of Japan’s largest Yomiuri newspaper subscription). The program is offered all free of charge.

Not sure if they have originally come up with the video with non-skippable ad format, which is reportedly the method Disney will deploy the next month, or stolen it from somewhere else. Yesterday, I first tried Gyao.jp and found the program quite impressive. Especially “Kume Hiroshi’s car touch,” the car review program by Japan’s long-time TV journalist, Hiroshi Kume　(wikipedia only in Japanese), who acknowledged in the campain video that he likes more freedom in editting than he can with traditional network TV.

CAUTION: If you’d try out gyao.jp, make sure you use IE, but not Firefox, with which I had the problem. Not sure if it works fine with MAC.

It’s interesting to note, on the other hand, Yahoo Japan (strongly backed up by Softbank) was leading the internet video streaming free of charge still in the old format (contents only ). Worth keeping an eye on them.

ビ デオとしての放送、米国でディズニーが無料放送をインターネット配信するというニュースが流れた後、いろいろが議論が起こっている。そのなかでおもしろ かったのは、おなじみのJeff Jarvis、米国の広告代理店の動きとしては、「ビデオも放送である」という捕らえ方を模索しているらしい、そこに広告収入を求めていこうという動きが ある。日本でいえば、民放とはかなり毛色が違うが、gyaoが同じフォーマットでインターネットTV放送を開始していて、すでに８００万人の登録会員がい るという。久米宏のカーウォッチという番組がおもしろそうだった。今後が楽しみな分野である。