eMarketer: $5.75 million for video ads on NBC's Olympics site

(Credit: NBCOlympics.com)

The estimated $5.75 million in video ad spending on NBC's NBCOlympics.com really isn't that impressive, market research firm eMarketer said Friday.

To put things into perspective, NBC's projected video ad spending for the year is $505 million, making the Olympics extravaganza only 1.1 percent of the total.

NBC's handling of digital Olympics coverage has been criticized. Network President Jeff Zucker has defended his decision to not air the opening ceremony live or to stream some of the more big-ticket events on the Web, choosing to restrict them instead to tape-delayed television.

Plus, as eMarketer pointed out, a partnership with Microsoft meant that prospective Olympics viewers were required to download its Silverlight software before watching any video of the Games, and required downloads typically mean fewer viewers.

"One might just award NBC's online presentation of the summer Olympics a bronze medal then," eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said in a release Friday. "As a signifier for future online events, the games set a high bar for the competition--establishing that major sports events, tournaments and professional leagues ought to offer an abundance of video content online, not just snippets."

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