More on ABC's Online Video Efforts

Joseph Laszlo | August 04, 2006, 06:19 PM

ECommerce Times had a piece today giving some more detail about ABC's so-far successful effort streaming episodes of its shows, with ad support, the day after they air.

I've blogged on this topic previously, but it's worth noting some of the new details here.

First off, ABC distinguishes between "5.7 million episode requests, totaling 16 million video streams." I'd thought previously that they'd hit 11 million "views," equivalent to audience, but this suggests the audience might be much lower than that.

Still potentially attractive to advertisers, as they're young folks, and they recall ads well. Just not so many of them. We have some data on how many consumers view full TV shows online (as well as other genres of online video); it's a very small number so far; clients should definitely set up an inquiry if they want to talk about those stats.

Mostly it seems people watched episodes the day after they aired, and because they missed the TV broadcast; it's a way of staying caught up. Which, by the way, is my guess for most file sharing trading of TV episodes, as well as iTunes purchases. Until everyone has a network DVR, this is a role the Internet is uniquely good at playing.

The article's last sentence was a good one, too: "Discussions with ABC affiliates are currently underway regarding their anticipated involvement with the project." Although we're a LONG way from ABC's initiative putting a dent in broadcast ratings, farsighted affiliates are I'm sure already concerned. Given a choice, an affiliate would probably prefer the risk of skipping ads from a standard or network DVR, to the risk of the network cutting them out of the revenue picture altogether via the Internet.