YES - Stuart Bailey, Head of trading, Carat Digital
There is room, but new entrants will need volume and quality. As long as their video content is being consumed in numbers, they will have a place in the market. Quality of content does not mean it has to be long form, although this helps; there is also a place for short form, as long as the quality is high enough for the advertiser to align its brand with it.
Most VoD spend to date has come from TV budgets, which has made it harder for non-broadcast sites to maximise their video inventory. But, as the market grows, this will widen the catchment area of quality video to other non-broadcast players.
With consumers becoming jaded by traditional online formats, we need new advertising opportunities. We don't yet know
VoD's full potential, but we do know video is one of the few online commodities people will pay for. Anyone who can provide quality and volume in VoD will be able to take advantage.
NO - Damien Hodge, Head of online investment, MediaCom
At the moment, we have a number of sites with huge audiences but little video content, and vice versa.
Traditional media owners often do not have exclusive digital rights, so production companies are looking to monetise content themselves.
So we have an increasingly fragmented VoD market with few exclusive deals and a number of platforms
providing very similar content.
Content providers are currently hedging their bets and are active on most of the major players, so whoever can develop an intuitive user system, with a smooth, high-quality picture, will inevitably attract more users.
This means more potential revenue and, as a result, more content.
Once this content consolidation happens, weaker players will not survive and we will be left with a few big players. The market is simply not big enough to support multiple players.
NO - Nigel Walley, Managiing director, Decipher
There are too many services in the market and not enough demand, so many are destined to fail.
Access to good content is a basic, entry-level requirement for success. Beyond that, we are not yet sure what constitutes competitive advantage. We are coming to believe that functionality and, in particular, the ability to integrate with other TV systems in the home will become key.
This puts SkyPlayer in a good position, because it is reasonable to expect it will begin to talk to my Sky+ box via my home network at some point. But who else is in a position to integrate an online player with the wider media infrastructure in the home?
Demand for PC-delivered on-demand content will peak in a couple of years, and then fall as on-demand is delivered directly to the TV. This is a problem for most broadcaster-owned sites, which have no means of delivering more integrated functionality.
YES - Dave Katz, Head of trading, Media Contacts
VoD consumption will increase, so there is plenty of room for more places to watch such content. In the year to March 2009, according to Hitwise, UK traffic to online video sites increased 41%.
A range of factors will ensure consumers will want to watch more video online. Internet connection speeds will continue to rise, improving streaming quality; player technology will improve, enhancing the user experience; the range of content will increase; integration with traditional devices (such as TVs) will ensure watching is easier; and films/sport will be available to buy on demand, further driving the market.
In the US, traffic to video sites has continued to rise in the last two years. Research firm eMarketer predicts this growth will continue at 3-4% a year for the next four years. As trends in UK internet consumption have often followed those in the US, I feel this is an easy question to answer.