On Friday, I had a chance to cover the company that was covering the Olympics General Electric (GE). With the Olympics wrapping up last night, many people are issuing their thoughts on the coverage provided by NBC, but I am more interested in the advertising revenue the firm could see. My colleague Joe Hargett sent me a couple of stories looking at the results of NBC's revenue from video ads on the Internet; estimates were provided by research firm eMarketer. The coverage on the television was amazing and comprehensive, and I don't doubt that ad revenue from TV will be solid. However, it seems that NBC may have missed the boat on the Internet side of the equation.

According to the results, NBCOlympics.com generated just $5.75 million in video-ad revenue from the Olympics. In comparison, CBS Sports streams all of its March Madness basketball games, and makes $23 million in ad revenue. Why the disparity? NBC limited the amount of content that it put on the Web so it could drive viewers to its television coverage. This was done to provide exclusivity for NBC's TV advertisers, which cause it to keep some of the largest events of the Games off the Internet. This could have been a windfall for NBC. (Yes, this takes into account that March Madness is 3 weeks and the Olympics slightly more than 2.)

It is tough to question the desire to provide advertisers with exclusivity, but it was done so at the expense of money. I know that I caught quite a bit of the Olympics at home on TV (DirecTV had several Olympics-only HD stations beautiful), but I liked tracking the action at the office. Mind you, I wouldn't watch complete games, but every once in a while I would check the online medal count at Yahoo!. Why Yahoo!? Because NBCOlympics.com was a wholly inadequate site. I would have though that NBC could have done better. Let's hope that they can correct this by the next Games for their sake.