If you wanna be a video star, the Web is the place to be. A New York research firm has upped its estimate of what will be spent on online streaming ads next year. According to eMarketer that figure should now hit $650 million, up from a forecast of $640 million published last November.
By 2009, eMarketer said, $1.7 billion will be shelled out annually for Web video advertising, a $200 million increase from its earlier prediction.
The company said the “media frenzy” over Web video and the growth in traffic of video-sharing site YouTube led it to revise its figures upward. That attention to video and a growing focus on Internet marketing by entertainment firms will lead to innovative Web ad opportunities, eMarketer said in a release.
“As more TV networks make their content available on the Web, deep-pocketed marketers will better see online video as a necessary piece of their campaigns,” eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman said in a statement.
Last month, YouTube launched a program to sell video ads on its home page and on pages generated for advertising customers. The ads will be sold on the basis of page impressions, not clickthroughs.
