Visible Measures Blog

A recent report by IDC predicts that Internet video advertising will increase over sevenfold during the next four years, from $500 million in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012. Obviously, this is huge and great news for the industry. The author says that one of the reasons for the boom, besides the expansion of broadband connections, is that people are starting to recognize the beauty, simplicity, and accommodation of Internet video compared to television.

This is what we’ve thought all along. Internet video is a beautiful thing. You can watch it whenever you want. This is a simple statement, but, when you think about it, it’s a bit mind-blowing. For over fifty years, people have been chained to the capricious whims of their television – in the 50s it told us when to watch the Honeymooners, in the 60s it told us when to watch Andy Griffith, in the 70s it was Charlie’s Angels, in the 80s it was The Cosby Show, in the 90s it was Seinfeld, and now, in the first decade of the new century, Internet video has begun to brake that chain.

Slowly, many of our favorite shows are moving online. Last week, the New York Times highlighted the struggle of cable operators keeping their money makers, like The Daily Show, off the Internet in their entirety. This week, TechCrunch celebrated the arrival of full streaming episodes of the Daily Show -- and the Colbert Report -- on Hulu. So now we can watch The Daily Show from start to finish online, whenever we want. That’s a beautiful thing.

Southpark is available whenever we want through Southpark Studios. The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Office, 30Rock, and hundreds of others are just waiting for us to jump onto Hulu and give them a spin – whenever we want. Hulu’s tagline, in fact, is “Watch Your Favorites. Anytime. For Free.”

This is the beauty of it all: freedom to watch what we want, when we want, for free.

Give people what they want and they’ll come in droves. Internet video is doing this. And we’re happy to be measuring every moment of it.

On with the show!