ComScore: 'Online Video Gains Momentum'

In its 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review whitepaper on prevailing trends and their implications for the future, ComScore reports that online video "continued to gain momentum, with an average of 179 million Americans
watching video each month."

Engagement levels also rose during the year, with viewers watching online videos more frequently. More than 88.6 million people watched online video on an average day in December 2010 (up 32 percent from December 2009), while viewing sessions totaled 5.8 billion for the month (up 13 percent).

Americans also spent a significantly higher number of hours viewing online video in 2010 versus the prior year due to increased content consumption and more video ad streams. The average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December, a 12-percent increase from last year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.

There was also good news about video advertising, which "now reaches 7 out of 10 Americans online, and nearly 1 out of 2 Americans nationwide each month. In December 2010, video ad networks served 5.9 billion ads, averaging 40 ads per viewer and 0.4 minutes per ad."

(Click on image to enlarge)

ComScore's 2011 projection:

Online video viewing continues to account for an increasing amount of consumers’ time online, as content options, quality and convenience drive people to this channel. Video ads will continue to offer advertisers an engaging venue to reach their target audience and will be an important aspect of the development of the online video industry. In 2011, look for cross media relationships to take center stage as the convergence of traditional TV and online video viewing continues to blur the lines between media channels.

ComScore is a leading online marketing research company. Download the full report here.

We Watched 33.2 Billion Online Videos in Dec.

American online video viewing continues to surge in popularity. December 2009 data from the comScore Video Metrix service shows that nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. A record 33.2 billion videos were viewed during the month.

The top outlet by far is YouTube/Google, with 13.2 billion video views.

Hulu ranked second with more than 1 billion videos viewed, an all-time high for the property, and representing 3.0 percent market share. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 561 million (1.7 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 551 million (1.7 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 539 million (1.6 percent).

Nearly 178 million viewers watched an average of 187 videos per viewer during the month of December. Google Sites (YouTube) attracted 135.8 million unique viewers during the month (97.5 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 59.8 million viewers (9.0 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 56.8 million viewers (9.7 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property.

This certainly bodes well for purveyors of videojournalism who were once worried that people wouldn't sit still long enough to enjoy videos on their computer screens.

Read more here.

Nielsen: Online Video Viewing Up 26% in Oct.

More good news, to corroborate the ComScore blog item below:

The Nielsen Company reported overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for October 2009. Year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 26 percent growth in total streams.

Click on the image below to see charts for "Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)" and "Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for October 2009."


AdvancingTheStory.com notes: "Facebook is now the third most popular place to watch video online in the world! It seems to me that this is another area of opportunity for news organizations to disseminate content to expanded audiences."

ComScore: Online Video Viewing is Booming

Mashable: The Social Media Guide reports that Hulu and Facebook are shattering online video records, according to the Web analytics firm ComScore.

While YouTube draws 125 million viewers per month (one billion views per day!), Hulu and Facebook are closing in with double-digit percentage gains that shatter their previous video-viewing records.

There were 27.94 billion videos viewed in October, up 7% from September. Out of that, Google/YouTube is still on top with 10.52 billion videos viewed.

The big mover in October though was Hulu. In September, the News Corp/Disney/NBC joint venture delivered 583 million views. In October, that number shot up by 31.8% to a total of 855 million video views. This is by far a record for the TV video website....

The biggest winner seems to be Facebook. In September, it had 31.18 million unique viewers. In October, that number skyrocketed by nearly 25% to 41.15 million uniques. Once again, this is a record for the world’s largest social network, and one that speaks to how powerful Facebook is becoming in the video space...

We urge newspapers that are still not convinced about the future of video, and pulling back on resources instead of investing in its future, to look at these eye-popping statistics:

* 84.4% of U.S. Internet users watched at least one online video in October.

* The average person watched 10.8 hours of online video in October.

As Mashable notes: "Online video continues to grow and the end is nowhere in sight."

Tell us, how much video do you watch every day? How much for business? For pleasure? How much at work? At home?

We still hear folks whining about having to wade through a lot of video swampland to get to the good stuff. It's faster to scan a page of headlines, and a few sentences of text, to decide what to read -- but committing to watching a video is a bigger investment of time and attention. We realize that, and that's why we created KobreGuide -- to help you find that golden needle in the haystack every day!

Can Online Video Ads Rescue Newspapers?

This report is music to our years, the good news we've all been waiting for.

According to the New York Times, Online Ads Are Booming, if They’re Attached to a Video

Excerpts:

News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television.

CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com... Video is currently the strongest ad format for WSJ.com....

A major reason is commercial. At a time when other categories of advertising dollars are shrinking, video ads are booming. News sites are adding more video inventory to keep pace with the demands of advertisers, and benefiting from the higher cost-per-thousands, or C.P.M.’s, that ads on those videos command.

The attention to video mirrors changes in how consumers are experiencing news. Major events — be it the presidential election or the death of Michael Jackson — bring a surge in video stream viewings by new users, and each time some of them stick around.

Augmenting the increase in video spending is the growing acceptance of pre-roll — the once-derided ads that appear before a video plays.

Some facts and figures:

* Among Web sites operated by newspapers, The New York Times, Gannett and Tribune each reach more than a million viewers a month with video streams.

* Video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008.

* Analysts predict video ads will be the “main channel” for major advertisers seeking to increase their online spending.

* News sites account for only a small portion of the 25 billion video streams counted by comScore on an average month. The firm reported almost 500 million video streams in its news and information category in September — still a substantial figure.

* Researchers project 35 to 45 percent growth for news video advertising for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014.

As one exec notes: “The Web is fulfilling this promise of being a medium where you can enjoy video as much as you can see it on TV. The difference online is, if you want to do something with it — share it, stick it on a blog, post it on a Facebook page, or mark it and save it — you can do all that. And that was never possible before.”

Clear message for journalism Websites. You want more ad revenue? Produce and publish more video!