Say Hello to Online TV

It is an accepted fact that day after day, the Internet invades almost every aspect of our daily lives. The Internet had sunk in into our everyday living in such speed that it becomes an important commodity before we even realize it. True enough; the internet has become a rapidly emerging broadcast medium, providing information throughout the world. It now hosted many websites intended to deliver news, current events, and entertainment in many forms – text, voice, images, and videos.

Few years ago, the most prevalent broadcast medium is considered to be the Television. Television programs and formatting may include the news segments – world, regional, local, and entertainment news, business segment, television shows or serial films, sports, and many others. Now imagine these programs formerly exclusive to conventional Television be made available in the internet. Isn’t it amazing?

It is just at least two years ago that many conventional TV networks and online service providers like Veoh and Joost started delivering television programs via the Internet, but the audience reception is just too overwhelming. Based on a survey conducted in the US by the Opinion Research Corporation, Americans shifting to online television as a source for information and news are increasing. Conventional television usage declines a considerable 3.6% while online television is gradually gathering momentum with an increase usage of 1.9%. Another survey conducted in the United Kingdom suggests that one (1) out of three (3) Internet users are watching television online.

The Market

The online TV market is found to include mostly the young, the affluent, and women population, although this may vary depending on the varying Internet exposure of different countries and places around the world.

In many surveys, the young population generally accounted on the bulk of online TV audience. The age bracket of 18-34 years old reports the highest in terms of online source reliance for information sources like online TV. Also, college graduates tend to be frequent online source users.

Some surveys also indicate that considerably wealthy Households with $100K incomes are more likely watch online TV than its conventional counterpart.

Also, recent July 2009 study shows that women are more inclined to watch online television to watch episodes of their favorite programs than men do.

Contents and Content Providers

Most conventional TV companies are also the content providers of online TV. These include the well established Television networks as NBC, BBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN, and many more. These Television networks provide episodes of their most watch and top rated TV shows and programs for the online community. Most of the top rated shows on conventional television also have a very good following online. Most of these shows are Serial Films, Reality based shows, talk shows, News programs, and animated series.

Profitability and Potential

The life-blood of online TV is advertisements, just the same as its conventional counterpart. In every television programming – online or conventional, a portion of the time or space is allocated as advertising space. The more hits the show generates or the larger the audience the more advertisers will line up and the more expensive the advertising space will become.

Online advertising is considered to be one of the most cost-effective and powerful advertising tools. Online advertising offers good product exposures in less cost. As a matter of fact, in United Kingdom it is predicted that online advertising spending will overtake that of the conventional TV. The study estimated that by the end of 2009, online spending will have the biggest share of the total spending for advertising, which reflects the trend towards online TV and its great revenue potential.

Future Trend

Although the reign of conventional TV is far from over, statistics showed that Television usage is declining in a gradual rate. Although online TV relies heavily on the accessibility of the internet throughout the world, especially the less developed countries, it is not far-fetched to say that online television is the next big thing to happen in the next months or years to come.

Online TV will transform the way we envision the communication media today and the near future. The promise of online TV access wherever you are, and whenever you want, is, therefore, not just wishful thinking.