The 2008 Beijing Olympics have had record viewership and Web site traffic on NBCOlympics.com. EMarketer has estimated that online video ad spending will reach $5.75 million. This number represents 1.1% of the year’s total online video ad spend projection, which totals $505 million.
“Getting a little more than 1% being one company with one event, albeit 17 days, is not doing badly at this stage. It’s part of a growth curve,” explained David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. He said more video ad dollars would have been raised if NBC had not required online viewers had to download Microsoft Silverlight, a competitor to Adobe Flash.
Additionally he said NBC limited which sports they would stream live, including some of the most popular ones. “[NBC] said there would be close to a billion dollars in ad revenue during the Olympics and almost all of that is television, he said. “They need to protect their legacy business, which is TV. They’re not wrong to do that, but it does produce slower growth.”
