Large advertisers are starting to shift their ad budgets to online video. Is the demise of broadcast television at hand?

By Jason Glickman, CEO, Tremor Media

Glickman: online video ads are on the verge of the big time. Photo: Tremor Media

At the 61^st Primetime Emmy Awards this week, television actors were full of quips about the demise of their medium: “Amy [Poehler] and I are honored to be presenting on the last official year of network broadcast television,” joked sitcom star Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  The subtext: Online video, among other things, is killing broadcast and cable networks by siphoning away eyeballs – and advertising dollars.

Despite the jocular talk of doom and gloom on the Emmys, the apocalypse of television isn’t upon us. Yes, online video has garnered enormous buzz – and venture investment dollars – but the medium has yet to secure much more than a sliver of the $65 – $70 billion advertisers spend annually on television spots.

Until now.

Now I would not be so bold as to call “time of death” on the television model. In fact, with all due respect to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I think reports of TV’s death are greatly exaggerated. Viewership is as high as it’s ever been and the medium will (and should) receive the lion’s share of advertising dollars now and in the near to mid-term future. More

Break Media CEO Keith Richman. Photo: Break Media.

By Keith Richman, CEO, Break Media

It has become fashionable to claim that it is impossible to profitably produce original video content for the web.  After all, many high-profile digital studios closed after burning through millions in venture capital, while established media companies are finally making real money by streaming prime-time shows on their websites and through ventures like Hulu.  The future of entertainment on the web, these people suggest, will continue to be driven by expensively produced “premium content” that looks a lot like today’s prime-time TV.  Nothing could be further from the truth. More

The video-sharing site loses money and has failed to attract quality studio programming. So why does Google continue to pump money into it?

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley (left) and product manager Salar Kamangar

You would think Google's executive triumvirate — CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page — would be worried about YouTube. Almost three years after they forked over $1.65 billion in stock to acquire the video-sharing site, YouTube last year delivered only an estimated $240 million in revenue and is deeply in the red.

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world. Users upload 20 hours of video to it each minute, at tremendous cost to Google (GOOG). The company doesn't break out YouTube's expenses, but analysts believe it spends tens of millions of dollars each month just on network capacity to host all those videos.

And, oh, what videos! Four years after its inception YouTube remains a repository for "long tail" content that appeals to niche audiences: clips of cats on skateboards, babies laughing, and kids lip-synching. (There are occasional mass-audience moments, like the clip of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent, viewed 71 million times.)

Gallery: See YouTube's greatest hits

But despite Google's repeated efforts, YouTube has failed to create an environment for professional video content, where many advertisers are clamoring to put their money right now. More

Alec Baldwin promotes Hulu in traditional TV spots.

The Web video shakeout has begun. Hulu, a venture of NBC, ABC, and Fox, is growing nicely, aided in part by a slick marketing campaign using, of all things, television ads starring Alec Baldwin. But a slew of smaller sites are starting to reformulate their strategies in the hope of surviving.

Joost, which was started by the founders of Skype Technologies, recently announced it would reinvent itself as a wholesale technology provider for media companies to publish video. The New York City–based outfit was launched amid great expectations in 2006 with $45 million in funding.

Video-sharing site Veoh may also be in trouble. High-profile backers, including ex-Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner and Goldman Sachs (GS), have sunk $99 million into the New York–based site since its 2005 launch. In addition to the usual startups costs, Veoh has been hobbled by an expensive court battle with Vivendi's Universal Music Group over alleged copyright violations.

Back to main story: Google (still) loves YouTube

Friendly advice for the muckety-mucks of traditional media

By Jeremy Allaire, CEO and Chairman, Brightcove

Earlier this month the media industry elite gathered in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the annual Allen & Co. pow wow, and there are plenty of interesting tidbits and threads coming out of the discussion. I thought it would be fun to pretend that I was there. Here’s what I’d have to say to the old guard – some doom, some gloom, some rays of hope and a few prescriptions.
Your existing businesses are in an inevitable slide downward, and this will only accelerate and continue over the coming decade. Two thousand nine will widely be viewed as the “Year the Media Died,” with a record number of newspaper bankruptcies, closed magazine imprints, and sliding revenues from traditional TV and radio advertising. More