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Online Video's Growing Pains

  • Ad Age, Wednesday, February 21, 2007 10:45 AM
It's been touted as the next great marketing opportunity, but online video still has yet to deliver for advertisers. There's a decided lack of viable ad inventory out there. Some of the most well-known online publishers only get 1 million or so streams a month, which pales in comparison to TV, a medium where nearly 1 million or so viewers per episode is considered a minimum requirement.

"[Advertisers] can't buy enough impressions, and it's fragmented," said Todd Boes, vice president-product marketing for online video services provider Maven Networks.

Those who work in the industry believe that will happen through the accelerated convergence of TV and user-generated video. Media companies are placing more of their content online, and new devices and technologies are creating better viewing experiences. Even so, the industry probably needs consolidation in order to bring audiences together. With media companies like Viacom and CBS abandoning YouTube, the most popular online video service, one could argue that the industry is on the path to increased fragmentation.

Yet Maven, which helps media companies put their video content online, believes online video will steal 10 percent of the $65 billion spent on TV ads, which it says will go primarily to professionally produced content.

Read the whole story at Ad Age »

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