In the report “Mobile Entertainment: The Rise of the Very Small Screen” eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson claims that 3 million people in the US will watch mobile TV next year and the number will grow to 15 million by 2009, and this will result in a growth in mobile video ad revenues of $25 – $50 million in several years.
However, Wendy Davis disagrees that people will be all that keen on mobile ads:
Consider: people are fast becoming accustomed to TV shows without ads–both at home, thanks to DVRs, and on-the-go, thanks to iTune’s pay-per-download service. In the two months since Apple introduced its video iPod, consumers have downloaded more than 1 million videos of shows like “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost.” All ad-free. And just this morning, Cingular Wireless announced a new agreement with the ad-free HBO to stream video clips of shows to cell phones.
While people are likely to prefer free content without ads, they recognise that it is unlikely…and several studies have shown that many people would prefer to have free ad-supported content rather than have to pay for it. I do agree with this comment though: “any such ads will have to be as entertaining as the shows themselves to succeed”.
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