Web video has been growing for a fair number of years now, with broadband sparking an explosion in on-demand video services and sites.
With YouTube leading the way, video viewing over the Internet is growing around the world, and according to a new research paper, that growth is going to carry on and even speed up over the next five years.
A Billion Viewers
A paper called Over-the-Top Internet Video Strategies for Carriers by ABI Research predicts a quadrupling of viewers with at least a billion people accessing video over the Web by the year 2013.
Senior analyst Cesar Bachelet said:
“The rapid expansion of broadband video creates opportunities across a number of market sectors.”
“A wide variety of actors aim to gain a share of this fast-growing market: not only content owners such as the BBC and NBC Universal, and Internet portals such as AOL and Yahoo!, but also a range of new entrants including user-generated content sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion, broadband video sites such as CinemaNow and Lovefilm, and Internet TV providers such as Apple and Zattoo.”
The paper goes on to explore how traditional TV networks will have to choose an if you can’t beat them, join them kind of approach or risk losing a huge slice of the television market.
Bandwidth Costs
I still think there’s a big problem in that ISPs are going to be unwilling or unable to soak up the bandwidth costs associated with streaming television services. The BBC have already been criticised for costing British ISPs money, and that is surely only going to get worse.
If a solution is found for that, whether by advertising or subscription charging for individual programmes, then Web video looks to have a rosy future ahead, with everyone due to climb on the bandwagon before long.
