Media Symbiosis

The talk on new media threat to older media is less and the buzz on new media opportunity is louder.

Yesterday BBC Director General Mark Thompson told the BBC Trust AGM that they have explored new ways of reaching audience through cooperation with the YouTube, the popular social networking website. Thompson even talked up the prospect of finding talents for the BBC from those who upload video clips to YouTube.

The BBC has had a popular website in BBC.com, but the visits to the YouTube have overtaken those to the BBC website. Besides, the BBC audience has been mostly in the middle-aged group, and the broadcaster needs to reach more younger groups through such popular social networking website as YouTube. It is one of the ways that the broadcaster could remain relevant in the digital and multi-channel age, and continue justifying the license fee when people are pampered by the availability of more than one hundred channels and various platforms.

BBC is never alone in their bid to tap the new media opportunities, as another UK broadcaster BSkyB also reached a deal with Google in December 2006, under which Google will provide BSkyB with technology so it can offer email and internet telephony to customers of its fledgling broadband product. Google, which paid $1.65bn (£840m) for YouTube in October, is also licensing its video search and sharing technology, which Sky will use to set up its own user-generated content site.

On the other side, Google has never limited its ambition to the online world, instead it has aimed to expanded to the offline world and explored new ways for targeted and measurable advertising.

Through the deal with the BSkyB, Google will be able to move into TV advertising. Google is looking to use information about viewing habits, which can be obtained through the broadcaster's set-top boxes, to produce more targeted TV advertising. Eventually, marketing experts could tailor campaigns to specific viewers, even storing adverts on the set-top box itself. In addition, the company has also launched trials with other offline media like launching the radio advertising and placing classified ads in newspapers.