Time For Some Astounding Online Video Viewing Numbers
By Mark Levy CEO of MaxxoMedia
About 10 years ago, I was running a small Internet development firm in Santa Monica, CA. We produced a number of the early movie and TV show websites for the studios. We could tell then viewing of video online would be huge as soon as bandwidth opened up. Back then, people would download a 30 megabyte QT video file that portrayed a postage stamp sized, two-minute long video through their 14.4 baud dial-up modem. For some it would take hours to download; people left their computers on overnight. Well, times have certainly changed.
Today bandwidth runs like water through the tap, and watching TV and user-generated video online is getting bigger and bigger each month. A recently released Digital Life America study says that nearly 80 million Americans (43% of the online population) have watched one of their favorite TV shows on the Internet. That number is up significantly from 12 months ago when that figure was just 25%.
It’s pretty amazing that more than 20% of the American online population said they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, and that’s ahead of the 14% who say they take advantage of cable’s video-on-demand offerings.
Nearly 50% of the people surveyed went online intent on finding a specific TV show, news or sports program. Of the major network sites, abc.com received the highest user experience score among those who streamed a TV show, followed by fox.com. Viewers came out strong for top network shows including “Heroes,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Ugly Betty,” “Chuck,” “CSI” and “House,” “Kitchen Nightmares,” “Smallville” and “Gossip Girl.”
Time-shifting of programming, essentially recording the show to watch a more convenient time, is also growing. Those who viewed one of the leading 20 primetime shows in the past 24 hours were asked to identify the source of viewing. Among 18-49 households with a DVR, a remarkable 55% of the leading 20 shows were time-shifted. The report also found that if a household has a DVR and broadband, DVR is the preferred means of time-shifting. DVR users are becoming more aggressive in skipping commercials. Nearly 65% say they “always” skip commercials — up over 10% since year ago.
While TV viewing is increasing on the Net, viewing of video in general and user-generated video specifically is on a steady rise as well. A recently released comScore Video Metrix service report revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December 2007.
This represented the single heaviest month for online video consumption since they initiated its tracking service. YouTube.com saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.
Speculation is that the prolonged writer’s strike is key to the recent online shift and increase. Erin Hunter, comScore EVP of media and entertainment says, ” It appears that online video is stepping in to help fill that (alternatives for fresh content) void.”
Here are some other astounding numbers from December 2007:
* 77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer).
* 40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer).
* Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34% gain since the beginning of 2007.
* The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
* The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos.
Clearly online video is coming into its own. The implications are huge for the networks and the brands that have for so long depended on finding you in your comfy chair at 8p on a Wednesday night.
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