Aye Carumba! Simpsons Ads Make Online Leap

It was bound to happen eventually. For the first time since video found its way to the Internet, old-media television shows such as The Simpsons and CSI are pulling in more advertising revenue online than through their television broadcasts, Bloomberg News recently reported (via San Jose Mercury News).

Perhaps that's not quite accurate — these and other popular TV shows still rake in more money from the tube through volume, but at least ad rates at television show streaming websites Hulu.com and TV.com are higher than what the networks charge. The Internet quite simply just offers a better business model for advertisers than television, as the article points out.

"Marketers, who are now considering commitments for the 2009-2010 TV season, are willing to pay more because TV.com and Hulu.com, owned by investors including News Corp., NBC and Walt Disney Co., provide committed viewers who actively seek out shows. There are fewer commercials, and consumers are twice as likely to recall Web ads, Poltrack said," citing Nielsen.

That's good news not only for advertisers, television producers and networks (NBC operates Hulu.com, for example), but consumers as well. There was a real concern that — as with newspapers — broadcast television would become unable to sustain a certain level of quality as ad revenue falls. What has happened, of course, is the networks now realize that viewers are in the driver's seat; now they're figuring out ways to monetize that power shift.

Numbers tell the story better than words: The most recent CBS broadcast of the NCAA basketball tournament (aka, March Madness) drew an estimated 17.6 million viewers, according to ratings firm Nielsen, compared to 7.52 million unique visitors to its Web cast. And while advertisers pay an average of $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time TV ad, they're now willing to pay $60 per thousand viewers for online streaming of The Simpsons.

As encouraging as that is for the suits in network television's corner office, an analyst quoted in the article warns that the TV-to-Web conversation could "cannibalize" their core business. But this begs the question: How long will this core business remain viable in the face of greater consumer choice?