One or two aggregators will emerge, says Greg Douglass
The online television and movie market appears ripe for consolidation.
In the next year, one or two big aggregators of streaming Internet content will emerge, said Greg Douglass, global managing director of media and entertainment at Accenture. “At most, there will be three or four at the end of the day.”
Examples aggregators are Comcast’s Fancast and Hulu. But these sites could see competition.
At the same time, online video advertising will increase, despite the downturn, and new forms of advertising could become successful online.
“Ad supported video will continue to grow and will be largest part of the market,” Reed Hasting, CEO of Netflix, said at the NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco. As ad prices rise, broadcasters will need to show fewer ads per episode.
Executives said that so far ad budgets for online video appear to be holding steady. Budgets are being cut for traditional television advertising, but not for digital initiatives, said Douglass.
And traffic appears to continue to grow. In the past six weeks, the online audience for streaming content at Fox Broadcasting has rocketed ahead, said Hardie Tankersley, vice president of online content and strategy.
Douglass said broadcasters might benefit by placing retail ads – such as ad for a boxed set of a program’s first season – at the bottom of the display screen. Use the current video content to drive sales, he suggested.
Posted by Mark Boslet 
