While traditional TV may still be the choice of most sports fans seeking coverage of Beijing 2008, there are signs that the Games are acting as something of a trojan horse for online video.
The Olympic Games is proving to be a big hit for the promotion of Web and mobile video, with official figures from the beginning of this week showing that online video traffic for the Games is up massively.
Huge Increase On Monday
Nielsen’s viewing figures for NBCOlympics.com show a huge increase from the amount of people watching on the Internet over the weekend compared to Monday.
According to the figures, the three day opening weekend of the Olympics saw only up to about 850,000 visitors to the site. Monday saw that number rise massively to over 2 million.
Naughty People At Work
This is being explained by people watching the videos streams while at work. Although bosses may not like the idea, it seems their employees are finding ways around the filters that companies usually put in place to prevent this.
Mobile Video Viewing
Mobile video viewing figures also rose sharply, hitting almost half a million on Monday. NBC told CNet that it “was stunned” by the amount of people using their mobile phones to access online video streams.
This is all great news for the future of Web-based video distribution as we really need the uptake of the services to increase to persuade big media companies such as NBC that the Internet is where their future lies.
Revenue Still A Problem
Viewing figures seem to be up, but that is of course only half the battle. For American television networks to really embrace online video, there has to be money in it, and that is still the sticking point for most.
When even market leader (and Google-owned) YouTube is failing to fully get to grips with monetizing its video content, what hope is there for companies with less experience in the online advertising sector?
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