An interesting number from an interview with Disney's CEO on CNBC....they have served 160 million episodes through their advertising supported streams on abc.com over the last year. This compares to the 100 million episodes that Apple just reported for iTunes across all of their CONTENT providers.
JMO, but I ultimately see advertising supported CONTENT winning out against the pay per view model. Of course, the final piece to the puzzle will be moving the CONTENT from the PC to the TV. Hopefully, ABC/Disney will allow Apple to enable Apple TV to eventually provide this feature.
In both cases, I believe the numbers are inflated. Apple has plenty of free videos that can give the number a boost. On web sites, I suspect the number reported is more like hits or presentations. I'd like to see the percentage of completed shows viewed, or at what point a show is considered "served". I suspect the measure is very lax. More importantly, how many return viewers do they have? It's easy to get a bunch of lookyloos (guilty as charged), but sustained viewers require a good show and easy to access system, not to mention acceptable advertisement. Can't tell you how many sites I've ignored because of the intrusive advertisement, even if there was something that seemed worthwhile, if the ad is too in your face, I can mostly skip whatever content is being offered. It's rare that the content is so compelling as to put with burdensome ads. |
