I’ve talked about Hulu’s potential plans to introduce a pay service, Apple’s patent request for ad injection into video downloads, and various other attempts media companies are making to make money and build revenue online. The biggest challenge is that right now, most streaming and download purchases aren’t replacing the income lost by declining viewership and DVD sales.
The CW is taking a drastic step in its hopes of building online revenue: they plan to play double the ads they are now after each segment, equating to effectively a full ad break in online streams.
The CW probably is the right network to try this experiment, as their target of a younger viewing demographic faces the most defection to online with tech-savvy youth. But four ads a break is unusual on the Web, and it doesn’t take much for people to start clicking to another location on a computer.
Would you watch a stream that had ad breaks of two minutes per segment?
SOURCE: AllThingsD (full story at Wall Street Journal, requires subscription)
Thanks Gary – that’s been corrected.
