No surprise we saw record numbers for online video viewing during yesterday’s Inauguration. But while it was a banner day in terms of traffic and innovation, it also showcased the utter inability of media to monetize the massive amount of video being delivered.
From my personal experience, just about every site appeared to run into issues between 11:45 AM when Akamai reported peak traffic of 5.4 million visitors per minute for news traffic and 12:15 PM when Akamai served more than 7 million peak concurrent streams suggesting there may have been some backbone scalability issues.
That said, the numbers are no less impressive. CNN’s Facebook integration offered maybe the best online video experience I have maybe ever had. Not because of the quality, which even aided by Octoshape’s P2P app dropped several times, but because of the social viewing experience which really showcased the power and potential of online video as compared with traditional television.
Facebook saw an unprecedented peak of 8,500 status updates per minute at around 12:15, thanks to the CNN partnership, prompting one of my friends to wonder if this is the end of twitter. (In Twitter’s defense it held up very well, and Deep Focus’s Tweet The Inauguration offered a great digital companion for those watching on broadcast TV.
Qualitywise, the Move Networks powered CBS affiliate player offered the best experience, with multiple HD streams though CBS admittedly had some issues at peak times.
The field offered relatively generic players for streaming television coverage so there’s not all that much to say about them other than hopefully they figure out how to monetize this soon.
The $25k branding integration B&C reports Sony Pictures paid Hulu to run pre-roll for Paul Blart: Mall Cop against the inauguration probably didn’t do much to cover the cost of content delivery. Sites running only pre-roll against hours long streams are losing money the longer their viewers watch.