Online Video Facts That May Surprise You

Occasionally I get sucked into the Internets. You know what I mean. You start out looking at one random thing and, before you know it, hours later, you’re off on a tangent and discovering things you can’t get enough of. This week, stats about online video hooked me. I started reading some stats from comScore’s annual video matrix that was published in the spring and, well, they’re pretty compelling. Here are a few:

• The average U.S. Internet user watched 186 videos per month.

• 183 Million Americans watched a total of 33.9 billion online videos in the month of   May alone.

• YouTube, naturally, is the top dog when it comes to online video content viewed at 143.2 million unique viewers, with Yahoo! Sites coming in at 55.1 million unique viewers.

• Facebook is rocking it as an online video portal, coming in third overall, with some 46.6 viewers (only a million more than Microsoft sites.

• Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million.

• comScore calculated that video ads reached nearly half (44.5%) of the total U.S. population an average of 27 times in the month of July alone.

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major US networks produced in 60 years.

• From 2005 to 2010, Online video grew at a phenomenal rate of 910%, versus 114% for the Internet and 0% for TV.

910% growth? Oh yeah, video is everywhere. And now you know why I spent so much time checking this out. It’s an optimistic sign for our industry – and certainly our experience in the work we’ve been producing this past year back all this up. These ad spending stats from eMarketer back all this up as well.

And the world of video content production has changed significantly. Back in the day, the agency world (and thus my world), used to focus on the :30 spot. Today, there are less ads and more branded content. We see less advertising produced by creative teams at agencies and executed by motion graphics firms and more content produced by way of partnerships between advertisers and content producers. For consumers who live in a fragmented world and who are constantly bombarded with stimuli and messages of all kinds, one piece of content (e.g. that :30 spot) just isn’t enough. Smart marketers are adopting a strategy of enveloping their audience in a fog consisting of a variety of messages rather than hitting them over the head with just one message.

And the reason for the messaging has changed. The website has become the hub of a brand’s business operations and a significant place for brands to engage their customers. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media outlets are becoming equally as important, and viewed as a complement to a brand’s website. Thus, it’s critical that branded video content is created with these different venues and varying strategies in mind. Sometimes the content is developed for brand enhancement purposes, sometimes it’s to entice them to a site, sometimes it’s goal is to engage website visitors once they get to a site, and keep them there longer. And other times, it’s developed for lead generation purposes. And more goals mean more content.

I think the future of video content is pretty clear. I bet at T2 + Back Alley Films, we’ll just keep producing more of it and doing it less expensively. It only makes sense.