Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

I'm not sure why, but the television networks are surprised at the success of their online advertising campaigns, as they've already fulfilled the initial buys by most advertisers. Some buyers also expressed surprise at new ad inventory being available.

The reason ad inventory online is available is because more people are viewing TV shows online than expected; so once the impression level is met, the networks take the advertising down - something they can't do on television.

Of course the problem advertisers have is the online market for streaming television shows is so new, there's really no roadmap to follow on how much inventory to buy, or how much ad spend should be transferred to digital platforms.

Another problem is it's a new issue to have to take the effort and time to put a portion of ad spend on different platforms. The existing bureaucracy will have to change and be much more flexible in response to this rapidly changing reality.

Although Nielsen Online doesn't track the number of television episodes streamed on the Internet, it does measure unique visitors to a website, and the network websites have been growing pretty strongly.

ABC (DIS) is the leading site for the major networks, garning 10.6 million unique visitors in October. NBC (GE) is second with 8.1 million, CBS (CBS-A) was third with 6.1 million, while Fox (NWS-A) was fourth with 3.4 million.

With the networks syndicating across a variety of web sites, and Fox with its numerous web properties, it's hard to know if the numbers above are really an accurate depiction of the success of the streaming TV shows.

The joint venture between Fox and NBC to stream their TV shows online called Hulu, is looking like a great move from the advertising standpoint. The professional online video market is going to do nothing but grow for some time ahead.