The first video uploaded to YouTube nine years ago was an 18-second clip showing one of its founders visiting a zoo. It was a fitting metaphor for the site’s attempts to domesticate the still-wild internet, and typical of its low-budget, user-generated early content. Today viewers are spoiled for premium-quality choice. As the slickness of internet video has increased, so has the time people spend watching it. The average American spends around 4.5 hours a day watching television and, remarkably, close to an hour watching videos online, reckons eMarketer, a research firm. Advertising is following eyeballs. ZenithOptimedia, another research outfit, expects online-video advertising in America to rise by almost half, to around $10 billion, between now and 2016 (see chart).
