How viable are UK online agents?

So the media behemoth that is Purple Bricks (the online agent) has recently announced it's latest figures and it really isnt very pretty. After amassing losses of £5.4m last year, which is already eye-watering, this year they have outdone themselves reporting losses of £12m.
Whilst online & hybrid agents (a misnomer in our mind as all modern agents are hybrid) have been the love crush of just about all UK mainstream media (after all, what paper doesn't like to give agents a good kicking every now and then) this raises serious questions about the financial viability of these platforms. When the hype dies down, how many of these will survive?
What I find particularly interesting is thay so many online agents have hung their hat on tackling 'extortionate agent fees' but how true is this? In sales, we are one of the cheapest real estate sectors on the globe with the average sales fee in the UK around 1.3% + VAT yet many other countries charge in the 4-7% range.
In the article below, again, interesting to see PB set their sights on Australia stating 'the structure of the Australian residential market is actually more readily suited to PB's model than the UK market'. Reading between the lines here I read this as meaning- agents charge much higher fees there so we can too!
So, are UK agents the rip off the online sector and media likes to repesent them as? Very simply- no. Especially when you consider a lot of these other countries have upfront charges and fee lock-ins regardless of sale and yet the vast majority of the 'traditional' market here charges nothing upfront and you only pay on success (another point online agents dont always make abundatly clear to sellers).
I have always seen value and a market for online agents but I can't see them ever getting a major market share without charging traditional fee levels to be able to support this position.
You can read the recent Times article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/16/purplebricks-builds-up-12m-loss-as-it-plans-second-home-in-austr/