By Jacqui Cheng | Published: August 25, 2008 – 01:06PM CT Via ARS Technica
The 2008 Olympic Games came to a close over the weekend, leaving many of us spectators feeling warm and fuzzy inside as we finished cheering on our favorite athletes. Despite the numerous concerns over China’s handling of the Olympics, the event managed to pull people in and get those from all walks of life excited about sports. Broadcasters were feeling pretty warm and fuzzy, too, after raking in mounds of advertising dollars associated with the Games. And this year, thanks to the Internet, those mounds were bigger than ever, although there’s still room for improvement…
…market research firm eMarketer Inc. said that it estimates NBCOlympics.com will only pull in $5.75 million in video ad revenue—”surely a passable performance for a bit more than two weeks,” says eMarketer, “but it represents only 1.1 percent of this year’s online video ad spending projection of $505 million in the US.” Even NBC now knows that its fears of cannibalizing the TV audience were over-exaggerated.
