Based on what’s been unveiled this year at CES, I’m betting that 2009 will be the year when streaming video really goes mainstream. At least two big consumer electronics manufacturers, LG and Vizio, have announced networked TVs. Netgear has announced a router that streams HD video and Slingmedia is showing off its iPhone app. Add broadband capable HDTVs to the long list of STBs that enable HD streaming, gaming consoles, computers with TV tuners, web properties with backing from major networks, and IPTV,  and one begins to see just how quickly this trend is taking off.

Abundant hardware options are only the first part of why 2009 will be the year when streaming video makes the jump from the desk to the couch. The other part is consumer exposure to and comfort with the medium. In 2008 two historic events, the summer Olympics and the US Presidential Debates, were streamed live in their entirety. This was a huge step forward because many people recognized the convenience and saw, for the first time, that the video quality of streamed video was on par with what their televisions delivered.

What does this all mean for marketers? There are going to be some pretty profound implications as we shift away from the one way paradigm of TV in the living room. Fist off, if I can raise my hand to find out more about a product or service in an ad streamed to my TV, that will be measurable. Some ad-supported streaming services like Hulu are already tailoring their ads to the behavior of specific accounts.

What happens when an ad is clicked is also going to be very important to marketers and advertisers. It seems likely that TV ads will become the entry point to a high fidelity branded experience similar to a many branded microsites. Expect lots of Flash. This is fine but, I would hope to see other less disruptive approaches that don’t aim to transport a viewer away from their program as soon as they raise their hand. My hope is that service providers and manufacturers establish a mechanism to bookmark an ad [or piece of interactive content] for exploration at my leisure.

Even more interesting than the prospect of interactive ads in the living room is prospect of native applications for broadband connected televisions. Microsoft’s Mediaroom platform and a joint Intel-Yahoo effort are among a series of competing platforms designed to deliver widget-like applications to connected TVs. It’s unclear what a useful branded application would look like in this space, but there are plenty of possibilities. My hope is that branded applications become an alternative to more intrusive ad models giving marketers options that would allow them to play a part in enhancing the living room TV experience.

As I see it the last remaining hurdle is for broadcast networks to stream live content at the same time they broadcast it. The current latency between when a television program is aired and when it becomes available as a stream will not be acceptable to most consumers. There’s no technical reason for this, but I’m sure there are licensing and legal reasons for it. It seems likely that the entire business model of broadcasters will have to be upended before we see real improvement on this front [IPTV excepted].

Dan Neumann