TV's Big Ad-Sales Bazaar Inspires an Online Copycat

It may be the biggest week of the year in television: five days in May when television stars and network executives converge in New York to tout their hot new shows for advertisers. Now, online video wants its turn.

This April the biggest online media outlets—including Google and its YouTube site; Yahoo; Hulu; AOL, and Microsoft—are planning a two-week event in New York. Each company will take a different day to woo advertisers by presenting different marketing opportunities such as revealing plans for coming video programming. Coming as more companies are creating more original video programming specifically for the Web, the event signals an intensifying effort by the online video world to challenge television.