Microsoft as the gate keeper of video analytics

There's a post over on TechCrunchIT about how NBC is going to use Silverlight and the Olympics to do some audience research around how people consume digital media. Basically NBC has a ton of content that will come from the Olympics and they're planning on providing it in a number of different ways including in the browser, on the regular television set, and on mobile phones. I've also heard they're providing a feed or stream directly into Windows Media Player so you could watch it on your desktop.

NBC and Microsoft now have a huge test segment and a number of different ways to slice it. What makes Microsoft so interesting is that with Windows Media as the baseline, they can deploy a ton of different experiences and then deploy more targeted advertising based on the platform. They've got Windows Mobile, they've got Zune for devices, they've got Xbox for television, they've got Silverlight in the browser, and they've got Windows Media Player on the desktop. They are pretty much alone as the company that can distribute the same basic video file and provide that many different touch points. Update: a reader just sent me this press release that says Wave will be providing a desktop experience around the Olympics through Media Center.

I don't think they'll be rolling all of those things out for the Olympics, but since we're in the infancy of digital media, Microsoft has a lot more room to test than other companies. I think it will also be interesting to see how Microsoft treats the HTML5 video spec. Because the spec essentially leaves it up to the browser to choose the codec, all of those Windows machines would more than likely be using Windows Media. That could give Microsoft more marketshare in the browser than they have now with Flash being the major player for digital media.