TV advertising’s lit­tle broth­er, the online video ad is grow­ing up fast and looks set to take on its big­ger, old­er sib­ling in a war that looks set to change the way adver­tis­ers talk to con­sumers forever.

The online video ad mar­ket is cur­rent­ly worth a tidy $8.4 bil­lion, and while experts pre­dict­ed a bumper year for the TV ad mar­ket in 2012, the real­i­ty has proved to be very dif­fer­ent – although it is still worth $70 bil­lion. A lack­lus­ter per­for­mance of just 2% growth in 2012 has left the mar­ket in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion and wide open to attack from its more vig­or­ous and respon­sive online equivalent.

With over 4.6 bil­lion online video ad min­utes watched by 180 mil­lion users in the US alone, the top five net­works includ­ing Google, San Fran­cis­co-based BrightRoll, Hulu, Adap.tv and Tube­Mogul streamed around 1billion ads each in June 2012.

These impres­sive fig­ures come on the back of a recent announce­ment by the New York Times that TV view­ing by young adults is at an all-time low. Those seek­ing jobs in dig­i­tal or social media would be wise to bear these fig­ures and these com­pa­nies in mind when plan­ning their next career move.

The Rise and Rise of Online Video Advertising

From hum­ble begin­nings, online video adver­tis­ing is now set for huge growth, with sig­nif­i­cant shifts in when and where it shows with­in con­tent. The pre-roll video ad remains the bench­mark solu­tion and retains the lion’s share of the mon­ey, but oth­er func­tion­al­i­ty such as inskins are also prov­ing pop­u­lar. This dynam­ic and fast-grow­ing sec­tor will pro­vide plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for tal­ent­ed and cre­ative individuals.

Google’s dom­i­na­tion of the mar­ket is not sur­pris­ing giv­en that the World’s third largest web­site – YouTube – pro­vides almost all of the video con­tent on its prop­er­ties. Google showed 1.4billion video ads in June 2012, with BrightRoll stream­ing 1.38 bil­lion, Hulu show­ing 1.32 bil­lion, Adap.tv stream­ing 1.14 bil­lion ads while Tube­Mogul streamed an equal­ly impres­sive 1.04 bil­lion adver­tise­ments. Between them these com­pa­nies reached between eight per cent and 53% of the entire US population.

Research Sug­gests a Down­turn in Spend­ing on Airtime 

The swag­ger dis­played by the TV net­works in ear­ly 2011, when they were charg­ing 25% above their nor­mal rate for air­time, has been replaced by a more som­bre mood, as con­sumers refuse to spend and a down­turn in man­u­fac­tur­ing in oth­er parts of the world led to belt-tight­en­ing by com­pa­nies who would nor­mal­ly plow a large part of their bud­get into advertising.

Still very much the baby of the fam­i­ly, online video ad rev­enue is catch­ing up – and quick­ly. A joint report issued by the Inter­ac­tive Adver­tis­ing Bureau (IAB) and glob­al accoun­tan­cy firm Price­Wa­ter­house Coop­ers (PwC) indi­cates that online video ad rev­enue increased by around 15% in the first quar­ter of the year com­pared to the same peri­od in 2011. Not quite the 24% jump expe­ri­enced between the first quar­ter of 2010 and that of 2011, but 15% is still pret­ty good going and job seek­ers only have to have a look on mediajobs.com to see how many dig­i­tal and social media jobs there are out there, which indi­cates this is a boom­ing sector.

As more con­sumers con­duct larg­er pro­por­tions of their lives online, switched on mar­keters are invest­ing big­ger por­tions of their bud­get in cute inter­ac­tive solu­tions pro­vid­ed by these net­works to reach their dig­i­tal­ly con­ver­sant cus­tomers. With pre­dict­ed dou­ble-dig­it growth in the mar­ket it cer­tain­ly looks like the Inter­net is attract­ing con­sumers and the sub­se­quent adver­tis­ing spend that fol­lows and job seek­ers should be watch­ing with interest.