Although Online Content Aggregators are in the early experimentation stages of rolling out video services, they will have some dramatic revenue-generating opportunities in the next five years, reports In-Stat.

The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010, the high-tech market research firm says.

"AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple, major Broadcast TV networks, Pay-TV services and local TV stations are all working on ways to blend their video assets with personalized TV services," says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst.

He said the future of television is slowly being defined online, where the big Internet portals are finding ways to blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen during the course of a typical day.

In-Stat said that the worldwide broadband households will more than double between 2005 and 2010, growing from about 194 million in 2005 to more than 413 million by 2010. And of all broadband households today, 12.8% are already regularly viewing professional content via Online Content Aggregators.

The report said that the traditional broadcast TV networks are finally figuring out that they need to capitalize on ‘all this personalization stuff’ or they will have deep trouble ahead.