According to a new report from The Diffusion Group (TDG), Americans will be spending more time watching videos online than via broadcast TV by 2020.
The report, titled The Economics of Over-the-Top TV Delivery: How Television Networks Can Shift to Online Content Delivery, says by 2020, viewers will be watching over two hours of online video daily, surpassing the time they spend in front of a TV.
TDG analyst Colin Dixon says Americans only currently watch 22 minutes of video content online, as broadband Internet is still, for the most part, in its infancy.
The report cites the growing number of Internet-capable devices as the main reason for the strong forecast, including set-top boxes, HDTVs with the capability built-in, and Blu-ray players.
As the devices become more standard in households, consumers “won’t be thinking ‘I’m watching online video;’ they’ll be thinking, ‘I’m watching TV,’” adds Dixon.
Result for: television networks
YouTube launched in May 2005 with a specific goal; to make it possible for users to easily upload and share videos with each other. The type of content wasn’t particularly important, as long as the process was easy for the uploader and the viewer. Not long after it launched, YouTube built a multi-million community of users and became a well known brand.
The site now exceeds over two billion views daily, which it points out is double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined. It has hosted all kinds of video content from homemade videos to coverage of social unrest, such as the Iranian election protests in 2009 that showed the power of social media to spread information. The website is currently blocked in China.
More than 24 hours of video footage is currently uploaded to YouTube every single minute.
YouTube has launched the YouTube FiveYear Channel, which includes the “My YouTube Story” project where users from all over the world describe how YouTube affected their lives. Users can submit videos here, and they may be selected for the My YouTube Story project.
Result for: television networks
Gamers may be surprised to find that while driving through their favorite parts of town in the Xbox 360 version of the hit game Burnout Paradise, Presidential hopeful Barack Obama will be looking down at them from a few of the game’s virtual billboards.
The billboard ads, which feature Obama’s face and the tagline “Early Voting Has Begun. VoteForChange.com”, have been sighted by gamers and the publisher Electronic Arts has confirmed that the campaign paid to have the ads placed there.
“Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” EA spokeswoman Holly Rockwood added. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”
The image is linked below:
Obama ad in Xbox version of Burnout Paradise
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