Olympics: 65.8MM Chinese Uniques, 4.6 B Pages PER DAY!

ACNielsen's latest figures for Olympics viewership show some solid numbers globally, and astronomical ones in China. Here are the figures for average daily streamers by country:



Nielsen also reported that a colossal 65.8MM uniques within China are viewing pages across more than 250 sites. 4.6 Billion pages to be exact. Pretty heady stuff indeed!

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NBC's Online Olympic Ad Take: <$6MM

According to Mashable and WSJ, NBC's online video take is expected to be <$6MM. The estimate, sourced to eMarketer is widely reported to be rather small given the amount they expect to earn on TV and the $900MM NBC paid for the broadcast and online rights in the US.

But was it a lack of consumer interest, or NBC's choices that drove a smaller than expected take?

Here's what the WSJ said on that topic:

NBC limited its potential for ad revenue in a number of ways, industry analysts say. To provide a measure of exclusivity for its TV advertisers, it chose not to make available live video for some of the Games' highest-profile events. The network failed to distribute its videos widely on other sites, which would have boosted its audience.

Is $6MM actually a small number? All signs point to yes. CBS raked in $23MM for March Madness, according to the same Journal piece.

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NBC Olympics Internet "Ratings"

NBC viewership has been colossal for the Beijing Olympics, though my rosy estimates of earlier on on Internet's expected share of total viewings are off by a longshot. Here's a summary I found on TV Week:



The numbers for the web are impressive, but not colossal. Perhaps this is because the timing of events is basically overnight for the US, when we are asleep. And of course there is the fact that an event looks better on a 42 inch flatscreen than on a iPhone.

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Mobile Video's American Idol Moment

We all know how SMS voting on that first season of Idol got us started texting. Well, apparently NBC's decision to put 2200 hours of video online is paying big dividends for mobile video trial in the US. Check out this excerpt from ARS Technica:

Now that the games have started, NBC says that roughly 494,506 people requested content on their phones on Sunday and 476,062 on Monday—relatively small numbers when compared to the millions that are watching on the TV. The interesting part, though, is that it's the first time that about half of those users have ever tried to access video on their mobile devices. "To some extent, the Olympics are beginning to influence how people use new technology," NBC Universal research president Alan Wurtzel told the Associated Press.

The article later points to this NBC PDF which outlines the incredibly high usage of the online videos...online.

Since this is the first truly webbed Olympics, these figures are pretty damned impressive. Naturally, it helps that the events are occurring NOT at a convenient time for TV viewership, so if you wanna see em you gotta go digital. Making inconvenience into a driver of new media usage is a great idea -- the classic example of that Dilbertism - it's not a defect, it's a FEATURE!

All kidding aside, NBC has clearly got a lot of vision for digitaland using this sort of must-see TV to drive it is a great strategy.



Bravo, peacock!

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Freedom of Press in the Beijing Olympics? Not So Much...

Despite assurances to the contrary, reporters in Beijing say that their access to many websites has been blocked by the government in Beijing. Beijing assures us it is only dangerous and evil sites. Like Amnesty International.



IOC admits that they have a secret agreement allowing censorship. I guess that is a once-secret agreement. Click here to see Reuters video on this.



But never fear, the crack enforcement team at the IOC is on it. I am sure they will send a strongly worded memo. No word on whether China will let us read it.



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