I know my online video viewing has already surpassed my TV viewing.  Nevertheless, according to a new report by The Diffusion Group (TDG) titled The Economics of Over-the-Top TV Delivery: How Television Networks Can Shift to Online Content Delivery, Americans will be watching more online video than broadcast TV by 2020,.

According to the report, Online video is still in its infancy, with U.S. viewers only watching 22 minutes of Internet-delivered programming a week [ML: This seems very low to me]. However, in 10 years, that will rise to more than two hours of online video a day according to TDG analyst Colin Dixon.

A survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers showed that more of us than ever before are choosing to watch TV shows on websites such as Hulu rather than on a TV. For younger folks, a full 83% said they watched some, most or all of their TV programming online.

This study, which was conducted by consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo, shows that the majority of Americans — 64%, according to the survey results — get at least some of their TV content online. Eight percent of the total said they watched most of their TV shows online, and 5% said they only watched television programs on the Internet.

Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts by guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan.Previously, he wrote about the State of Online Video, and 12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising.  In part 3 today, he examines how videos are found and consumed online. Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo , a producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company’s catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 110 million streams since 2006.

To try to understand—let alone guess—the future of video advertising, one needs to start by looking at the biggest trend in media over the past few decades.  In November 2006, Bear Stearns Cable and Satellite analyst Spencer Wang published a study called “Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment”.  While Bear Stearns has since beenacquired by JP Morgan and is now a mere footnote in business books, the study’s findings are more relevant than ever.  Let’s examine 8 key factors behind online video consumption

Some of the recent numbers being put up by live video events on the Web are giving TV a run for its money. Take for example the New Moon Premiere, which attracted 3 million viewers in total, a U2 concert on YouTube that reached 10 million, and the red carpet event for This Is It, which saw 1.8 million tune in.

Today, we have yet another big number to share, this time from last night’s Ustream (ustream) premiere of 50 Cent’s movie “Before I Self Destruct.” In total, more than 255,000 users watched at least part of the 90 minute screening, which included the hip hop mogul answering questions live from fans.

Jaroo.com is hoping to become the ultimate online video destination for kids. Launching with more than 50 popular TV series, and some 500 episodes available on demand, this kids-friendly service is hoping to stake a claim to the 9.5 percent of U.S. Internet users age 11 and younger in the U.S. Those Internet users are spending 63 percent more time online than they did four years ago, some 11 hours per month, according to Nielsen NetView.

Jaroo–from Canadian company Cookie Jar Entertainment–will feature 22-minute episodes–with 90-second commercial breaks–of “Inspector Gadget,” “The Adventures of Paddington Bear,” “Johnny Test,” “Super Mario Bros.,” “Zelda” and “Madeline” as well as the exclusive U.S. premiere of “Mona the Vampire.” Cookie Jar said it will add new episodes and shows daily.

Another month, another record. September saw more than 168 million U.S. Internet viewers watch some 26 billion videos, more than 40 percent of them on Google sites. That’s a whopping 10.4 billion video views–nearly all of them (about 99 percent)–on YouTube, reports comScore.

If you’re wondering, 168 million goes into 26 billion about 154 times, which averages out to a 5.13 video views every day per viewer. In August 161 million unique viewers in the U.S. watched 25.6 billion online videos, and those both were record performances for the industry. Microsoft sites, which finished in second place in August, slipped to sixth place in September, behind Google, Hulu, Fox Interactive Media, Viacom Digital, and Yahoo! sites.

When your website first reaches a million visitors, it’s a great milestone. However, one billion views per day can only be attained by the selected few, and YouTube is now one of them.

According to the official blog, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is serving “well over a billion views a day”. That’s at least 11,574 views per second, 694,444 views per minute, and 416,666,667 views per hour. Imagine the web server farm that can withstand that much traffic, and then remember that YouTube is just one of Google’sGoogleGoogle many properties.

Obama’s Long Primary Season Prepped Him for the Win

Barack Obama beat John McCain by a narrow margin in the popular vote and a hearty margin in the electoral college. But what about the online video vote, where it all comes down to the number of views? There the margin was somewhere in between, with Obama pulling in nearly 900 million views compared to McCain’s 550 million.

That’s according to divinity Metrics, a video analytics startup that measures the spread of videos for marketers and content producers. CEO Rajeev Kadam noted that Obama’s video view lead was built up, in part, by the long Democratic primary race, where he was fighting Hillary Clinton in person and on the web while McCain sat pretty as his party’s chosen candidate. (Sorry, but you’ll have to click on the graphs above to see them in full size; they’re too wide for our column.)

The firm measured views across more than 200 video sites dating to July 2007, finding 64,092 total videos related to McCain and 104,456 total videos related to Obama. McCain’s campaign posted 376 videos and Obama posted 1,982 videos. The biggest viewership peaks for both appear to be around the time the Dow plummeted, in the thick of the election.

The popularity of online video services has grown significantly with women and adults over age 35 in the past six months, and is helping close the age and gender gap in the online video audience in the US. Since late 2007, the percentage of female internet users ages 12+ who have streamed a video online in the past 30 days has grown from 45% to 54% – an all-time high for this demographic that is nearly equal to the percentage of men (58%) who have recently streamed video content. The percentage of adults age 35-54 who have recently streamed video online has also risen from 49% to 60% since December 2007, according to recent research from Ipsos.

A recent study by The Nielsen Company, showing US video and TV usage across three screens, Television, Internet and Mobile devices, reports that screen time of the average American continues to increase, with TV users watching more TV than ever before, while also spending 9% more time using the Internet from last year.

At the same time, a small but growing number of Internet and mobile phone users are watching video online, as well as using their cell phones to watch video.
As of May 2008, more than 65% of U.S. homes receive digital cable and satellite combined. These digital TV homes receive nearly 160 channels. In addition, 25% and 35% of U.S. homes have DVR and Video on Demand respectively.

divinity Metrics has launched a weekly chart that tracks not only the views of online video from 20 top US brands but also the ‘health’ of them. By using VMI – Video Marketing Index, dM ranks the validity of each video for its marketing value by analyzing the video’s views, comments, ratings and other consumer reactive data points.

You can check out the latest chart here – divinity Metrics Brand20 Index

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%.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 48% of internet users have been to video-sharing sites such as YouTube, and the daily traffic to such sites on a typical day has doubled in the past year. The basic findings in a national phone survey show:

• In December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
• 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site the day before they were contacted for the survey. A year ago, only 8% had visited such a site the previous day.

Though YouTube usage generally increased in 2007, according to Harris Interactive, reports eMarketer, a solid majority of YouTube users surveyed said they had visited only once or a few times.David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer, concluded “The fact that younger Internet users are far more likely to be regular visitors to video-sharing sites points to a fork in the road… marketers looking to target the under-30 demographic can more reliably find them on these video sites… (while) TV broadcast and cable networks… (can) bulk up their online offerings…”

From Kenradio.com

61% high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study, according to a new study by Horowitz Associates. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows. Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.

NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online. While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content. The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV. 18% of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%). Conversely, 13% Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV.

According to the latest Horowitz Associates report, Broadband Content and Services 2007, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis, compared to 45% and 71%, respectively, in the 2006 study. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews/trailers, music videos, and previews/segments of TV shows.

Weekly viewing of full episodes of television shows doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis.

NBC and ABC are the networks Internet users mention the most frequently for online TV content, with Grey’s Anatomy being the most often mentioned TV program viewed online.