The market for video streaming is showing explosive growth:

• IPTV subscribers will grow from 5m in 2005 to 70m by 2010
• Third of households (350m) will take video on demand services by 2010
• Broadband penetration continues to grow from184m in 2005, to 360m by 2010
• Global market for online video to expand ten fold by 2010 topping 130 million households

Source: Digital Lifestyles 2006 Outlook; In-Stat 2006: Informa telecoms Nov2005.

In the business world and at home, there is growing appetite for more immediate access to live content. Whether it is breaking news, the latest sports events, or important announcements from a Chief Executive, consumers expect more up to date information and are increasingly turning to the Internet to find it.

As consumers increasingly switch from dialup to broadband, they have instant and always-on access to video, music and games, entertainment and news, consumers now spend more time online in a week than they do watching TV*. The PC is rapidly become an all encompassing device with TV-like capabilities, utilising rich media formats.

Ad-skipping Personal Video Recorders, multi-tasking, Video on Demand, and a fragmenting media landscape have decreased the effectiveness of traditional forms of marketing, such as TV advertising. With consumers spending more time online the way that content is now viewed is now no longer in line with where the traditional advertising budgets were spent. Companies are now looking for new and innovative ways to reach large target audiences online, the success of viral marketing was the beginning with film clips and full length feature films now being streamed from sites all over the world.

Source: Juniper research 2006

There are a limitless number of opportunities for live content to be streamed over the Internet, either as one-off events, or as live broadcast channels