ABC says iPad users have played more than 1.5 million episodes of ABC television shows since the iPad went on sale in early April, while more than 400,000 copies of the free ABC player have been downloaded.

Traditional :30 Spots

The advertising seen in ABC's shows for the iPad are currently the same kind seen on TV, but by the fall, ABC expects to offer advertisers interactive ads, of the sort featured on its web player, reports the Wall Street Journal. Five :30 spots are shown per hour.

The ads might have a bigger impact if users could actually stream the ABC app to their television sets, as Rob Walch, host of Today in iPhone  points out. "To me that has been one of the biggest frustrations with the iPad - people buy it, buy the AV connection kit and download the ABC or Netflix app and expect to be able to stream video to their television sets. But the only video you can stream from the device to the TV are Apple-created ones."

Eventually Apple may include that functionality in a forthcoming OS - or more likely, that functionality will be provided through a jailbreak, he speculated.

Heading to Mobile

Eyeballs are increasingly shifting to mobile devices and video is a popular activity to do on mobile. Recent Nielsen data shows that about 17.6 million people in the U.S. viewed video on their mobile phones in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from the 11.2 million who watched mobile video in the same quarter the previous year. On average, they watch three hours and 37 minutes of mobile video per month, writes The New York Times. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

That compares to the 153 hours of traditional TV Americans watch per month.