Is web video giving television commercials a run for their money? According to new data from Pivotal Research Group, the online-video market earned approximately $1.8 billion in 2011, and half of that involved just two players: Hulu ($300 million) and YouTube ($600 million). EMarketer anticipates the web video market will grow more than 40% annually for the next three years, but translating these numbers for advertising is a little more complicated. According to comScore, Americans watched more than 8.3 billion video ads in March 2012. Hulu led the pack with 1.7 billion video ad views (a 39% increase over last year), followed by Google sites — including YouTube — with 1.2 billion views. Yet some critics are questioning how many of these ads are actually viewed by the consumer. Nielsen estimates 56% of traditional television ads are skipped over using devices such as DVR and 63% of TV ads are outright ignored. Is it safe to assume the same is happening online?
Maybe I’m just blogging out loud, but it seems like with web video there’s more than what meets the eye. Online advertising may or may not be replacing TV, but it certainly is taking things to the new and exciting level.
Which prompts the question: Are TV ads becoming a thing of the past? Are web video ads now a viable form for communicating a brand, or will TV commercials continue to rule the foreseeable future?
Please feel free to leave a comment below, or head to Vertical Marketing Network’s Facebook page to join the conversation.
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I personally do not watch TV shows online. I continue to watch them through the TV and am happy to say that I watch 95% of shows that have been DVR’d. I’m clueless when it comes to hip and happening commercials, whether they are online based or TV based. In order to catch my eye, markets are going to have to place commercials on the social media sites that I frequent and hope that they are short enough for me to watch!
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I’m a big advocate of streaming TV shows online. I dont have the luxury of watching all my favorite TVs after work so I source the internet to catch up on my shows at my own convenience. I don’t mind the commericals during my shows as long as they dont repeat. Often times, they’ll use 1-2 commericals throughout the show and repeat it 3-4x. It gets a bit annoying at that part. I would watch it the first time, but every time thereafter just gets ignored. In the occasion that I actually DO watch TV, I still watch the commercials to see how people are branding themselves. To this day, I’m not a fan of cheezy commercials. Ew!
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