Study: Web-to-TV could reach $3 billion in revenue

Consumers in the know are already turning to online video. Very soon, most consumers will be logging on to the Internet to watch their favorite programs and that could drive up to $3 billion in revenue for Web-to-TV streaming services by 2013.

by Kristina Knight

The report, "Web-to-TV Video Changes Everything", finds that already about 40% of young, adult households in the US are watching video on TV once each month.

"Once Web-to-TV video becomes simple and convenient, mass consumer adoption will follow quite rapidly," says Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. "Our primary research shows that users want a variety of their consumer devices to enable a web-to-TV video experience."

In-Stat analysts have also found that 25-34 year olds are also using gaming consoled to watch streaming video (29%); they estimate that more than 7 million broadband households will use PCs to stream Web-to-TV content. 24 million consumers are expected to log on to streaming services in the next five years.

Just how much time are consumers spending with online video now? According to the latest comScore research, consumers averaged watching just over 5 hours of online video in the month of March, with most of that content consumed through Google sites (40% share). However, Hulu is also making steam and appeared in the top five for the first time (2.6% share). Fox Interactive, Yahoo Sites and Microsoft Sites were also in the top five.