Hope For Haiti Now By The Numbers: Wide Online Distribution Didn’t Add Up

Image by [ebarrera] via Flickr

The amount raised by the Hope For Haiti Now telethon stands at more than $61 million, organizers announced late Monday, up from the preliminary figure of $58 million and likely to keep growing as proceeds from multimedia sales and more donations come in. Nielsen Media Research estimates that more 83 million viewers turned in at some point during the two-hour live event, with a “gross average audience” of more than 24 million U.S. viewers.

But the numbers for online and mobile streams aren’t as high as you might think—especially for an event with record online and mobile distribution, including some of the world’s busiest video sites: 1.9 million video streams served during the live broadcast; 5.8 million total streams, including 150,000 mobile, throughout the weekend with archive video on MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) and other sites. The iPhone app was downloaded more than 100,000 times. (Organizers compiled the numbers using data from Omniture (NSDQ: OMTR), Akamai (NSDQ: AKAM), and participating sites and carriers.)

It’s hard to find the right recent comparisons. CNN alone reported 7.1 million simultaneous unique streams at one point during President Obama’s inauguration and 4.4 million live video streams during Michael Jackson’s memorial service. (That’s not the total for either day.) Both of those were daytime events, though, occurring when people were more likely to be away from their TVs and reliant on online or mobile. The telethon was on a Friday night, when they’re more likely to watch on TV—as has been illustrated so often in the way online March Madness numbers dip as office hours end.