August 3, 2006

Revenue-generating opportunities are expected to grow as content aggregators and portals offer online video services. "Online Content Aggregators -- AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple -- Slowly Defining the Future of Television," a new report from In-Stat, outlines the market's growth over the next few years.

Content aggregators, including portals like AOL, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and providers like Apple, are in the early stages of providing video services. "The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to over 131 million households by 2010," said the report. The future of television is slowly being defined online, where the big Internet portals are finding ways to blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen during the course of a typical day," said In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold in a statement.

Increased demand for online video is in part attributed to the growth in broadband adoption, which is expected to more than double by 2010. High-speed Internet-connected households are expected to grow from 194 million in 2005 to 413 million by 2010. Professionally produced video content is already consumed by 12.8 percent of all broadband households. Most of the content is served through online content aggregators. Traditional and pay-TV networks are implementing personalization models to leverage the demand for video content online and additional formats.

The report is part of In-Stat's Consumer Media and Content service. It examines the growth of consumer households with high-speed, broadband Internet connections. Modeling is then done to provide market penetration estimates for broadband and related services.