NBC/Universal might have shelled out $900mil for exclusive U.S. coverage of the Beijing games but it looks like they might have made their monies worth. The company says they raked in more than $1bil in ad sales for the games. While that $100mil might be what ‘The Dark Knight’ made in its first 12 hours it’s still enough to make almost every aspect of the games a great success.

One failing point however came from online ad revenue which accounted for only $5.75mil of the total. According to NBC the games official website NBCOlympics.com was a “research laboratory” to see how users consumed the product via the internet. It might be clear from their findings that when venturing into the digital world of the internet you need to be as fast as Michael Phelps on the home stretch. I’ve said it time and time again, people view televised events on their computer for one of 3 reasons: #1 They missed the show they wanted or are otherwise unavailable when it airs, #2 They want to re-watch the show, and #3 They want to be the first to see the live event not being showed on their TV for another 12 hours.

Maybe another Direct TV spot would have brought in more cash $.

Maybe another Direct TV spot would have brought in more cash $.

NBC made the decision in many cases to delay many of the events event online. This is a large part as to why Yahoo!, who streamed live events, received 4.7 million unique visitors a day versus 4.3 million for NBC.  That would have more than doubled their total, and probably their revenue.

Those on ‘Avenue Q’might say “the internet is for porn” but it’s more than just that. It’s for having everything you want at the type of your fingertips. If that happens to be porn then fine, but people can watch tv for regularly scheduled programming, you go to the web to search, discover, and find out the latest and greatest.

With this weeks Democratic National Convention the networks are presented with another time zone issue. After last nights opening day it’s clear the broadcast networks just don’t get it. More and more people will turn to cable news and to the internet to receive their content if it means having it live-as-it-happens and not live on the East coast but actually 3 hours past live for the people on the West coast.  As Yahoo! proved during the Olympics, if you want to increase traffic you don’t hold on to the news until it’s more convenient for you. The internet and it’s billions of users wait for nothing.


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