With Its Launch Imminent, Joost Has (Many) Advertisers In Line

Joost, one of the most talked-about IPTV ventures in the world, is set to launch shortly – Tuesday, May 1st to be exact. It’s going to be a big day.

No, not a big day for broadcast over the Internet. That’s already been done. Joost has for weeks now even streamed its fair share of video over the Net. So that won’t be what’s “big”. Rather, it’s going to be a momentous occasion for advertisers, who will for the first time spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (each paying at least tens of thousands) to have their products shown supporting programming made available by a still-quite-small selection of content owners delivered on-demand to computer screens around the globe.

Who’s on board come Tuesday? The number might surprise you. Considering the relatively short list of companies and conglomerates responsible for the stuff seen on Joost, it’s genuinely eye-opening to find a good number of big players in the business and consumer worlds joining the fray – at least on a three-month trial basis. The list:

United Airlines
Microsoft
Sony Electronics
Unilever (They market soaps, among other things.)
Purina (Gotta have pet food.)
Hewlett Packard
Intel
Motorola
The Opel and Vauxhall brands of General Motors
The US Army
Taco Bell
Lions Gate Entertainment

The costs for each advertiser are arranged in a two-tier system. At the low side, advertisers can purchase $50,000 worth of ad time to have their products promoted only to US viewers. The cost doubles for companies who wish to reach a global audience.

Mind you, this is only a presumption, but if there’s still something to be said for logic, it’s likely that GM, Intel, Motorola, Unilever, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Sony will all opt for the $100,000 three-month deal. When you consider all six entities rely on worldwide sales to grow, it only makes sense for each to seek the greatest number of eyes possible. And what’s another fifty grand?

We’ve mentioned the phrase “three-month” here twice already; it’s important that we do so with particular emphasis. Joost may be the product of two Internet magicians known by the names Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, but on-demand broadcasts over the Internet, even of a quality that is quite consumable when enlarged, may be the most difficult paper napkin project the two have ever chosen to launch on a very, very large scale. Free peer-to-peer and VoIP programs are wonderful inventions, but it is still very much in doubt whether a large bloc of computer users will wish to watch programming, most of which ordinarily comes by way of traditional television, on their desktop and laptop monitors.

Then again, Joost is free to the viewer, isn’t it? (Thank the advertisers for that.) Though there certainly is reason to be skeptical about the product’s future, perhaps it will be another hit thought up by the famous Finnish-Swiss twosome. Considering how things have turned out for them thus far, it’s hard to bet against the pair. The starting lineup of “stream time” buyers isn’t small, and if Joost’s user numbers grow as many analysts are predicting, it won’t be too long before more spots are sold and more content partners are added to the mix. Then it’s only a matter of scaling the business properly. Which Niklas and Janus seem fairly able to do. Wouldn’t you say?