Although there hasn’t been a proven ad business model yet, online video consumption is growing at a furious pace and has great potential for marketers to tap into. YouTube has announced partnerships with both CBS and MGM to post full length TV shows and movies on the site.
Other mainstream media networks have already crossed-over into the digital space offering viewers a chance to watch some of their favourite TV shows online. According to an August 2008 report by eMarketer, Google ranked number one, capturing 55.4% of U.S. visits to its online video property, while its nearest competitor, Yahoo! came in at a distant second with a 7.0% share of visits. NBC, Fox, CBS, and Time Warner all made the list too.
Notable mention to Hulu, which ranked 14th on the list but was only launched in March 2008. In terms of user consumption, Hulu had 119.4 million videos viewed. Hulu is a free, ad-supported online video site backed by both NBC and Fox. Hulu is the one to watch at the moment -that is if you’re in the U.S.-as its clean interface and searchable database of videos has made it popular among online video users. Not to mention it has a wide range of content, including your favourite TV shows. Unlike say….Joost. Sorry! At least their newly revamped site creates a better user experience and doesn’t require downloading an installer. Oh, and they do have Sports Illustrated Swimsuit On Demand!
With other startups like Mogulus, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, and Sling this is an exciting time for online video advertisers and viewers. There are still many great TV shows to be discovered and the quality of the content from both traditional media networks and user generated video (UGV) shows us that TV isn’t dead. It’s just reinventing itself.
A study by The Diffusion Group (TDG) shows promising numbers for online advertisers, reporting that 69.4% of ad revenues will come from long-form video in 2013 compared to 41.6% in 2008. While some may not like seeing in-stream ads, pre-rolls, mid-rolls, or post-rolls this represents a fair trade-off for having free live or on demand access to our favourite shows.
Now if only some of these video streaming sites would allow access to Canadian viewers, that would be nirvana!
