SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – The volume of downloads and views of content on user-generated Web sites like YouTube and MySpace will balloon to more than 65 billion by 2010 and swell revenues accordingly, a new report predicts.
Revenues from user-generated video, in the form of banner/skyscrapers, embedded video, Google Adsense, or branded pages and channels, will exceed $850 million U.S. by 2010, according to the high-tech market research firm In-Stat.
In just four years, the size of downloads and views is expected to be 1.1 exabytes of data, with more than 9.1 petabytes in uploads. (An exabyte, according to Wikipedia, is one quintillion bytes of information, or 10 to the power of 18. A petabyte is one quadrillion bytes, or 10 to the power of 15.)
About one-quarter of the user-generated content sites support mobile access, but more are expected to jump on board soon, the report says. While YouTube has the highest market share for videos, MySpace has the most visitors.
The user-generated business is growing in popularity and sophistication, the analysts said. “Democratization of media affords users the opportunity to express their opinions, rate content, and vote for their favourite videos,” says Michael Inouye, In-Stat analyst. “In addition, what may currently seem like ‘the Wild West’ is actually an industry that has started to see idiosyncratic ‘judiciary bodies’ and ‘rules of law’ imposed by each player within this market.”
In a related study, In-Stat found that the global market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, from reaching 13 million households in 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010. While online content aggregators are just starting to roll out video services, this phenomenal growth represents huge revenue opportunities, that report states.
