Intel have just launched a technology, Wi-Di, that allows you to beam video from your laptop onto your TV with, wait for it, no wires. I’m not a gadget freak but even to me this is good stuff from a user’s perspective. A simple click of a button on your laptop is all you need to be watching anything from films and drama to a TED talk or video viral on your family friendly TV screen. All of a sudden video content from the web can be shared across the family and friends in your living room. Wi-Di is still in its infancy. It is only available in the US from BestBuy outlets on three laptop models – more details here from Mossblog of the Wall Street Journal in a short news clip (top video) – but the implications of developments such as this must warm the hearts of online video advertisers.

Indeed, they are probably already a pretty happy bunch.

Last week a video advertising survey demonstrated increasing confidence from media buyers. The Web TV Enterprise survey revealed that video advertising is now on over half of media plans and is worth 3 per cent of the UK TV ad market. As reported in a recent IAB blog:

“…over 40 per cent of media buyers now use video advertising campaigns to deliver incremental reach to TV, indicating that TV budgets are driving growth of the market.

The report also found that the number of campaigns being booked has tripled in the last six months, suggesting confidence among media buyers is growing….the developments demonstrate that the growing audience of professionally produced content on the web is beginning to have a significant impact on the market.

The research also shows that the majority of media buyers – 63 per cent – intend to allocate up to 50 per cent more budget to video advertising in 2010, with 13 per cent allocating more than 50 per cent.”

The increasing quality of video content on the web – YouTube content is now 80% professional – is already driving ad money. Developments like Wi-Di can only increase the viewing and reach of online video content and ad money will continue to flow this way. With broadcast/cable companies already struggling with DVR ad skippers and declining ad revenues the message is: adapt or die.

Tags: intel, online video, tv, video ads, wi-di

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Online Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.