Joost: TV on demand - on your computer!

I recently received an invitation to take part in the Beta test of Joost. If you haven’t heard the hype yet, Joost is essentially TV on demand on your computer, in fullscreen! First off, a big thank you to celebrity chef Benjamin Christie for the invitation. I’ve been trying to get one for the last couple of months. Ben has a show on Joost called The Australian Food TV channel and, in a very smart move for him, he has apparently secured the Australian advertising rights for all of Joost.

So why is Joost so different to all the other types of video content on the Net?? Forget about amateurish video of some kid teaching his cat to catch a fish out of the fishbowl… No, on Joost the content is professionally made, with something for everyone, ranging from car show (a la “Top Gear”, except it’s called “Fifth Gear”) to cool documentaries about all sorts of stuff. Ben’s cooking channel is great too, and you can watch it when you want.

Joost was created by the same guys who invented Skype and uses P2P technology to deliver the large amounts of data to your computer. If Skype is anything to go by, I’m sure that Joost will be equally successful. The small amount of advertising I’ve seen to date on Joost is very discreet and certainly doesn’t consist of 30 seconds ads. Ok, so I watched some different  programs and I did see 1 ad that lasted 20 to 30 seconds for Coke, nothing too intrusive though. Obviously, once the project is out of Beta testing, I’m sure they’ll increase the amount of advertising, but for now it simply a small text based ad in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Of course, for us the interesting thing will be to see what kind of pricing model Joost puts into place. With Google’s recent acquisition of Double Click, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the ads (that Double Click serve) go to the same auction model as Adwords. Maybe Joost will go down this path too?

In coming months, I believe we’ll see yet another channel for online marketers to integrate into their budgets. It’s certainly an exciting time to be in the online space.