The Shift is On….at least in college

We’ve long expected the shift of TV advertising dollars to make their way online, but agencies and their clients have been waiting for the green light. Today, Move Networks released some data that makes a pretty compelling argument to, at least, begin spending a few of those TV dollars with your favorite video seller.

Its no secret that we’ve been high on Move’s quality for quite some time, but here’s some numbers that media buyers should consider while they work out their 2009 budgets.

For the college-age demographic, 70 percent have watched television online and 55 percent watch more than half of their television programming via the Internet. This survey of regular Internet television viewers points to the availability of a high-quality, high-definition experience as another factor for the rise in viewership.

“It all comes down to quality, to watching Internet television that doesn’t need to buffer, doesn’t stall and is in high-definition,” said Move Networks CEO John Edwards in a press release. “There is a growing number of consumers who want to watch their favorite shows where they want and when they want and on a number of different devices. Move Networks provides these on-demand capabilities without sacrificing the high quality viewing experience that consumers are accustomed to. Viewers expect to have a television experience and Move Networks delivers a TV-like experience, instant start, no buffering, high-fidelity every time.”

Looking forward, Move will be focusing on expanding the footprint of their technology beyond the PC and into mobile and set-top devices. Netflix, Sling and Move are three of my favorite companies making the digital living room and true convergence happen with products, services and technologies that make it worth cutting back on that cable bill, putting down the remote control, and picking up that mouse, iPhone, Blackberry, and yes, even your Windows Mobile enabled device to dial up your favorite content.

And a sidenote in our sidebar. If you are hungry for more than just TV on the Web, our friends at Tilzy.TV are doing some serious legwork (ok, just some heavy web browsing) finding some of the best new content created for the Web. Click the widget on the right and find out what else is on the Web beyond reruns, spinoffs and brand extensions (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)