Olympic Coverage

The invisible (apparently) online video upside

Pete Wylie — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:56:09 -0400

comScore released online video metrics today, which report that Americans watched 556 million hours of online video in July. Five. Hundred. Fifty-six. Million. Hours. In case you were wondering, that's 63,400+ years worth of online video consumed in one month!

If that's not enough eye-time to sell some advertising, who knows what is.

But that's exactly the problem that is dogging the industry right now. The most recent figures from eMarketer put online video ad spending at less than $600 million for 2008. Some quick math breaks that down to roughly a dollar per hour of online video content viewed. 30-second TV spots continue to cost into the upper six figures and beyond, so where is the disconnect with online video?

Everyone intimately familiar with the industry has heard the stock answers; fear of ads running alongside questionable user-gen content, viewer distaste for/avoidance of ad formats, and lack of ROI. The lackluster online video ad results for NBC's online Olympic coverage are a perfect example of monumental traffic, coupled with tepid ad sales.

But ad buyers should change their tune quickly as the number of viewers and videos viewed skyrockets. The same comScore figures indicated that more than 140 million Americans watched online videos in July, and, on average, they watched 82 videos each, or roughly four hours of content. YouTube led the way here, with five billion individual videos viewed for an average of 54 videos per user. Most of this content probably ran without ads, which will soon prove to be a major oversight.

For more:
- see the full comScore numbers here

Olympic online video final verdict

Pete Wylie — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:09:03 -0400

The 2008 Olympics ended Sunday, and NBC reportedly has streamed 72 million videos through Saturday, according to an eMarketer report released today. But despite the heavy traffic, the report estimated that NBC earned a mere $5.75 million in video advertising for all its efforts. That's just 7.3 cents per stream, hardly gangbusters monetization.

The large audience and tiny video ad revenue highlight a trend disclosed by another eMarketer report released last week that adjusted predicted online video ad spends for 2008 to $585 million, down from its original, $1 billion-plus forecast.

How do you effectively market online video ads to advertisers wary of the format? The Olympics and this past March Madness video coverage show that high-profile sporting events can draw huge crowds, so why aren't content deliverers making more money off of the audiences they attract?

Internet audiences are fickle, first of all. Despite having exclusive rights to online video and the Olympic logo for the duration of the Games, NBC finished second to Yahoo! Olympics in overall web traffic to Olympic sites over the past two weeks.

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan of seekingalpha.com suggests that NBC could have sold licenses to its exclusive content to turn a larger profit on their online investment. The proliferation of pirated content, such as all of the "unsanctioned" videos online of Usain Bolt's incredible 100m final, dilutes the value of ads placed over supposedly "exclusive content."

One thing is for sure, in 2010 and especially 2012, there will be a fierce struggle for the online rights to those Olympics, and a significant amount likely will be spent on online video advertising.

For more:
- Ashkan's insightful comments on alternative strategies for the next Olympic online host

Yahoo's Olympic Upset

Pete Wylie — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:23:20 -0400

NBC's online coverage of the Beijing Olympics continues to be a boon for the traditionally TV-centric company, as nbcolympics.com draws hordes of users who have viewed more than 56 million video streams since the site went live. But despite the record online video numbers, it looks like it might have to settle for silver(light) in overall traffic.

According to Nielsen Online, Yahoo Olympics is the surprise leader in traffic so far in this competition, with 52 million unique views to NBC's 47 million.

NBC Olympics had more than a million more unique visits than Yahoo Olympics on Aug. 8, the day of the opening ceremonies, but saw the margin narrow until Yahoo Olympics began leading in daily unique traffic on Aug. 11. It has led ever since.

There are still several positives for NBC, however, as viewers spent almost three times as long on its site compared with the Yahoo site; 15:50 on average for NBC, 6:49 for Yahoo. And video numbers continue to be record-breaking, likely helped by peak traffic at lunch time (the top hour of coverage for NBC last week was either 12 or 1 p.m.).

Yahoo's surprising Olympic finish will also likely cause some heartburn at Microsoft, given the recent squabbling between the two firms.

For more:
- Nielsen reports Yahoo Olympic upset.

Digital Rapids Claims Olympic Online Video Success

Pete Wylie — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:42:09 -0400

While NBC and Microsoft have been getting most of the publicity for the unprecedented amount of streaming video of the Beijing Olympics, Digital Rapids has played a crucial role in encoding and delivering the thousands of hours of sports coverage enjoyed by millions around the world.

Mike Nann, director of communications, says there were plenty of obstacles to be overcome.

"Due to the limited amount of space each media outlet gets in the International Broadcast Center at the Games, and NBC's ambitious plan for streaming video, we had to tailor a solution in a scenario that was less than optimal," Nann said.

Nann mentioned myriad restrictions on the infrastructure, including heat generation, physical space for racks and broadband access.

"Each system had to serve two channels of video in three different compression levels, as well, for a total of 6 VC-1 streams per system" Nann said. "Usually, we'd like to dedicate a system to each channel for optimal quality and streaming speed, but we had to operate within the parameters."

Nann said a feature of Microsoft's VC-1 SDK called dynamic complexity enabled the Digital Rapids servers to optimize each channel without overloading the CPUs, because it automatically would balance any overhead while also capping streams that threatened to monopolize the feed and slow down the server. Nunn said there have not been any major issues with the video, so far.

"We had a lot of lead time to do QA analysis and problemshoot," Nann said. "I think it has been a great experience over all, and I think it is a great experience for web video."

For more:
- Digital Rapids press release on supporting Beijing Olympic video

Hoping online revitalizes the Olympics

Doug Mohney — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:33:28 -0400

The average of viewers for the 2004 Games in Athens was over 40. Many circles are predicting and/or hoping digital access to Olympic coverage will change that statistic.

Younger viewers have been "lured away" from sport by the digital revolution, with a variety of entertainment options to select from on broadcast TV and the Internet, so the Olympics just aren't that special for the under-40 set.

Losing youth isn't a good thing, since billions of dollars in sponsorships and broadcasting rights that currently support the Olympic movement could go away if viewership numbers in the big spending (18-34) demographics continue to decline.

In addition to adding extreme sports like snowboarding and BMX cycling to the games, access to the digital world could be just as important in keeping the Olympics on top. The test will come in Beijing, the first "digital Olympics," with approximately 1,200 hours of smaller sports coverage to be available online in streaming formats and on-demand replays available as well.

For more:
- Digital revolution could be Olympics salvation, from the Guardian

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NBC Gets Flamed for Vista-Only Olympic Distribution

Doug Mohney — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:40:52 -0400

Critics are lining up as NBC announces its online video tech for distributing Olympic coverage.

NBC Olympics on the Go, from NBC and broadband media company Wavexpress, is a podcast-like service to let users pick their favorite sports and have coverage automatically downloaded after NBC broadcasts each event from China. However, the service is only available for PC users running Windows Vista Ultimate or Home Premium PC. So, pfftp to XP, Mac, and Linux users. There's also a video player to be downloaded and details needed be worked. Reports say event coverage will be available 12 hours after an event and downloaded coverage should be playable for at least the duration of the games.

Microsoft had already cut a deal for its Silverlight environment to be the cornerstone of NBC Olympic distribution, so people shouldn't be too surprised about the Vista-only hook for Olympic footage. However, the move may not go over well in Europe and other places where Microsoft is seen as acting in a monopolist fashion. Goodness knows what the Football/Soccer fans might do.

Mobility plans have not been announced yet, leading to speculation that something might appear in a Zune format since NBC broke off its distribution deal with iTunes.

For more
- Wired reports on NBC Video Distribution for the Beijing Olympics
- Ars Technica Vista-only Olympics piece

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