For Broadcast July 2, 2008

Away from Kangaroo, online TV is going gangbusters. BBC iPlayer has reached 100 million requests to view and last month it averaged 700,000 online views a day. ITV logged 12 million video views in May, Fremantle has unveiled more online ventures including Parentshood on iVillage.co.uk and Jane Tranter told an RTS audience earlier this week that online-only dramas with a budget of £1.3m were in the process of being commissioned by the BBC. Oh, and RDF is launching a comedy destination site.

Despite all the activity, the worry for UK broadcasters is the domination of Google sites, led by YouTube. According to ComScore, they accounted for 1.5 billion videos views in April, compared with the BBC's 47.5 million videos (in second place). ITV sites are in ninth place with 17.2 million views, just ahead of Disney sites in the UK.

There are still big question marks about monetising online video. Online advertising may be about to overtake TV advertising, according to Enders Analysis, but online video advertising (which is considered substitutional for TV ads) will only represent 1% of TV ad spend in 2008. Instead, 60% of online advertising is for paid search ads, which is 80% controlled by Google in the UK.

There may not be many answers yet but "build it and the money will come", seems to be the feeling. My prediction is that within 18 months, online TV viewing will be as accepted as broadband and the PVR. It might not be a huge revenue stream by then, but it will be a key part of the television vocabulary.