Revenue from the global advertising server market will reach nearly $185 million in 2013. At $79 million North America represents, by a significant margin, the largest regional market for video ad servers with the runner-up, Asia-Pacific, expected to deliver about $55 million in the same year.
The resulting data are part of new additions to the latest ABI Research video-on-demand market study. New to the report are sections dealing with ad servers and ad splicers.
"Video-on-demand has always been a killer app," says industry analyst Zippy Aima. "But the new driver for this market is consumer desire for more interactivity and more flexibility in what they can do with their video content. Start-over TV, catch-up TV, and similar features are the new benchmarks for VOD uptake."
Broadcast continues to dominate the overall market, followed by cable and telco offerings. Although slightly slowed by the recession, growth in all segments has continued at a relatively steady pace.
"It's not that vendors aren't seeing demand for or implementation of the technologies," Aima notes. "We are, after all, talking about television entertainment."
Nonetheless this is a very competitive market, with many vendors. Differentiation is about feature-sets, but budgets for upgrading content delivery platforms have shrunk.
Aima would not be surprised to see some consolidation in the market over time. There is room for acquisitions because there are so many players in the market. On one hand that's good because it fosters competition and innovation, but on the other it limits the market available to each.
We may not only see bigger vendors absorbing smaller ones, but also non-video-server vendors moving to add video server offerings to their portfolios.
