8. Online TV

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Watching Coronation Street or the main evening news on your laptop or PC is getting to be big business in Ireland . Catch-up TV has still to celebrate its first birthday on Irish TV, but the numbers are already very impressive.

RTÉ Player had almost 400,000 unique users in January, more than a three-fold increase on its first full month of operation last May. The number of streams is also on the rise – hitting a record 1.6 million in January alone.

So what are we watching online? The top 10 streams since the RTÉ launch include The Late Late Show, news, Desperate Housewives, Operation Transformation, Flash Forward and The Frontline. RTÉ was one of the first broadcasters in the world to launch extensive international access to a version of its catch-up service.

Now that online TV is earning decent audiences, advertisers will start to use the medium more. Consultancy Billetts expects video advertising to rise and for consumers to interact more with such advertising.

Source: RTÉ, February 2010

Back to contents of State of the Net issue 16