Nearly a year ago, U.S. based ABC TV network started hosting its hit shows for downloads on www.abc.com. Rival network NBC Universal followed ABC and as expected, was soon joined by all the other major broadcasters! Today, ABC (followed by NBC) which stream complete episodes of its top streams, attract far more viewers than the others. With the other networks fighting for e-attention.

Suddenly, the fight for TRP's extended to Internet eyeballs !

Google & The Future Of Small Agencies
Google's ever-increasing sales - currently nearly 100% from online advertising - is expected to cross $12 billion in 2007? Yet, the world's top 4 advertising/media buying networks (WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic & Publicis) contribute less than 7% of Google's annual turnover.

Most of this $12 billion ad revenue is from miniscule businesses. (Note: As much as 90% of Google advertisers employ less than 10 staff members.) And no "established" ad network will be, even remotely interested in this client profile.

These small clients are typically serviced by small, local ad agencies with a focus on print classified & display ads along with local FM. With broadband becoming a reality, a part of the ad budgets of small clients will gradually (increasingly?) shift to online ads. This will have an adverse affect the future revenue of small ad agencies worldwide - unless they come up with some unique service in the field of online ads.

To paraphrase the words of Bryan Todd (co-author of "Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords: How to Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes") : the brilliance of Google's business model is that it hardly draws revenue from the ad world, but draws revenue from everywhere else in the world !


The Next Step
Q. What would any major TV network do if their viewers started creating online communities for their favourite programs on social networking web-sites? (Especially if the largest social web-site is owned by a major competing network.) A. Create their own social networking web-site.

That's exactly what U.S. based broadcasting major NBC Universal is in the process of doing. After all, why should NBC encourage its viewers to create online communities for 'The Office' on MySpace.com which has the same owner as rival network Star TV?

What remains to be seen is how much time television fans actually spend on such social networking sites.