iplayer - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

We recently compared ITV's online video player to the BBC's iPlayer, finding that the ITV offering was far less usable than its rival.

ITV has since launched a new and improved version of its online TV service, so we've taken another look at it to see where the improvements have been made...

ITV's online catch up TV offering will be revamped in an attempt to compete more effectively with the BBC's iPlayer.

Though ITV launched the service months earlier than the iPlayer, it has quickly been overhauled by the BBC's offering. Around 11m videos were viewed via the iPlayer in January, compared with just 2m for ITV.com  

According to figures quoted in The Guardian this week, ITV's online video player has been losing traffic, while the BBC iPlayer has grown rapidly since its official launch last month.

ITV's offering beat the iPlayer to market, launching a 30 day catch-up service back in June, so why has the BBC overtaken it so quickly? Let's take a closer look at the two services to find out...

Visits to the BBC's iPlayer have increased 15-fold over the past month, thanks mainly to a major advertising campaign for the catch-up TV service.

The figures from Hitwise's Robin Goad show that the iPlayer, having launched a streaming version of the service and opened up to the public, has begun to take off.

The BBC last week made a streaming version of its iPlayer available for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

The BBC has said it will begin to stream iPlayer content through its website by the end of the year, having concluded a deal with Adobe to use its Flash software.

The move follows heavy criticism of the Beeb over its decision to limit access to the service to users of Windows XP.

ITV's Jeff Henry has been discussing ITV.com, and the company's future plans at the AOP Conference today, outlining the company's plans to make £150m in online revenue by 2010 from Friends Reunited, ITV Local and ITV.com.

ITV plans to make much of this projected revenue from online display, video and local ads, and plans to introduce a new targeted video ad system. The projected figure of £150m is three times what ITV makes at the moment. Can it do it?

Well, the broadcaster launched its broadband TV service summer, and it now has a broad range of recent and archive programming available to view online, but much of this is spoiled by the amount and style of advertising on offer. It's too much...

P2P streaming TV site Joost is now available to the general public, though still in beta, as the company says it still has one or two technical problems to iron out.

The BBC is reportedly in talks with Microsoft over allowing the corporation's content to be downloadable via Xbox Live, as Microsoft looks to turn the console into an entertainment hub in people's living rooms.

In the US, Microsoft currently offers a video on demand service through content deals with Warner Bros, MTV and others. It apparently now plans to expand this service to Europe.