Vancouver Winter Olympics – mobile is a winner
Submitted by Editor on 19 February, 2010 - 12:00.
UPDATED: 02 March, 2010
Mobile is a Winter Olympics winner for US broadcaster NBC. The stats show it received more mobile visits by the opening ceremony than for the entire 2006 Winter Games and after 17 days had attracted more than 2.5 times the mobile visits at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
The US broadcaster NBC said in a statement:
"NBC Olympics Mobile platforms (Mobile Web Site and iTunes App), through the full 17 days of the Games have amassed 87.1 million page views, 52 million more than the total number of page views for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (34.7 million).
There have been two million mobile video streams in the17 days, more than six times the total number for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (301k).
By the time the Opening Ceremony broadcast started at 7:30 p.m. on Feb 12, NBC Olympics Mobile already generated more page views than the entire 2006 Winter Games (1.0 million).
UPDATED: 22 February, 2010
It is official – mobile is a Winter Olympics winner for NBC. After hinting last week that mobile was doing excellently NBC has released the stats showing more mobile visits on the first night than for the entire 2006 Winter Games and eclipsing the 2008 Summer Olympics total by just over half way.
The US broadcaster NBC said in a statement:
"NBC's Olympics Mobile platforms (WAP site and iTunes App), through just 10 days have amassed more than 54.3 million page views already surpassing the total number of page views for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (34.7 million) by 56 percent.
There have been 1.3 million mobile video streams in just 10 days, more than four times the total number for the entire 17-day Beijing Games (301k).
By the time the Opening Ceremony broadcast started at 7:30 p.m. on Feb 12, NBC's Olympics Mobile had already generated more page views than the entire 2006 Winter Games (1.07 million)."
UPDATED: 22 February, 2010
Thanks to Terence Eden for including this post in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists, a weekly roundup of the very best in mobile and wireless blogs.
POSTED: 19 February, 2010
It looks like the Winter Olympics is already turning out to be a major event on mobile. In this TV interview with CNBC SquawkBox, Jeff Zucker President & CEO of NBC Universal is very bullish about mobile so far – though falls short of giving any actual figures. Thanks to Nielsen's Eric Puterbaugh for bringing this video to our attention.
The video covers all manner of things, so if you don't want to sit through the whole thing plus the advertisement at the beginning, here's a quick transcript of the important bits:
The mobile applications have really exploded. Obviously we are in a different world than we were four years ago, even two years ago.
All of this is telling us that people are consuming events like the Olympics in all manner of new ways. We are seeing great success across all of our platforms - broadcast, cable, online, mobile - it has been incredibly exciting and we are learning from all of that. It will continue to be useful as we roll out programming for events over the next few years. The unique visitors to our Website and the mobile usage have been tremendous."
The particularly interesting thing about the Olympics is the impact that it will have on mobile Web/marketing in Canada. While the business is already in good shape with plenty of big brands investing in mobile, we want see how much of a testosterone boost the event brings. For the state of play see brand-new The insiders' guides to mobile Web marketing in Canada with all the latest stats, the top mobile sites and all the brands, agencies and publishers that are leading mobile innovation in the host nation of the Winter Olympics.
Comment below or email editor (at) mobiThinking.com.
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The growth in mobile video streams (Vancouver vs. Beijing) is truly remarkable, 560% in just two years. To me, this proves that there is consumer demand for video on mobile phones.
So what has changed in the past two years? The availability of affordable flat-rate mobile data plans and smartphones with big screens and high-speed data capabilities.
Bell Canada reported that their live streams from the Olympics were also very popular.
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