Now this is really interesting - Audi, as the exclusive sponsor of the live webcast of the Obama Inauguration on CBSNews.com, MSNBC.com, ABCNews.com and the WashingtonPost.com, got more then 70 million impressions on its preroll advertisement titled "Progress."(embedded above)! That is more then double the expected 30 million views, according to an Audi spokesperson Beet.tv has interviewed: ""Total impressions for our buy was double what we anticipated. ABCNews and MSNBC were the standouts with delivery that was almost 5X what we expected for ABCNews and double for MSNBC. Clearly, online viewing yesterday was on live streams and network produced coverage. MSNBC has comfirmed this is the most highly trafficked live event they have ever covered."

Moreover, CNN.com generated more than 182 million page views and served more than 36.7 million total video streams on Inauguration Day. Of the 36.7 million video streams, CNN.com Live served 26.9 million live video streams globally, shattering its all time total daily streaming record set on Election Day with 5.3 million live streams, according to Omniture SiteCatalyst data, Beet.tv. reports.

All this is interesting, since actual TV viewing in home of Obama's historical inaugeration (40 million) was less then Ronald Reagan's inaugeration, according to Nielsen. Obama's message of change also applies to the media industry and his inaugeration gives us a glimpse of the future of TV - and it's multi-platform. Now we're just waiting for the ad dollars to follow the eyeballs. 

Jay Baage