TVloop Blog

NewTeeVee is reporting that the networks drove $1.63 billion in web advertising in 2008 - roughly 2.4% of the total generated on broadcast and cable TV.  As Liz Gannes says in her post, seeing the word billion next to online advertising of any kind is a good thing…especially in this economy.  The 2008 figure is an increase of over 28% from the 2007 total of $1.3 billion. Convergence Consulting, the company respsonsible for the report, estimates that networks will almost double their online revenue to $3.23 billion in 2011 - up to 4.6% of total advertising revenue.

While the number is still relatively low compared to what networks are garnering from broadcast and cable, a billion dollars is definitely something that grabs attention.  The more revenue these companies can drive online, but more they’ll continue to make their content available to consumers.  And that’s a good thing for all of us.  The big questions is whether they can drive enough to offset any reduction in TV traffic as a result of pushing more content online.

From our perspective, this is very good news.  Since we have full epidose content from ABC and Hulu (Fox and NBC), we have 2/3 of the shows that users are watching online.  So if they want to reach Lost viewers in a very integrated way, they can sponsor various product features throughout TVLoop to go along with any online video advertising they may be doing.  So as the networks have success online, brands will continue to get more and more comfortable with integrated online campaigns.  And that makes the increasingly tough job of our sales team that much easier.