Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Friday, July 10, 2009 at 10:35 AM PT

Blogs, Not Email or Search, Drive Video Views

Remember the days when Numa Numa was passed around as an email attachment? People don’t find online video like that anymore. Blogs and other web sites with embedded video and links are the single largest referrer of video views, according to TubeMogul. They even top direct navigation on video sites, for instance through a channel page, search or a related videos list. Seeing a mention on a gossip blog, an out-linking news site, your friend’s online journal or maybe even little old NewTeeVee is the main way people find video.

I was especially surprised to see that email referrals count for only 0.38 percent of video views — links sent via email or instant messenger surely must be a big reason people watch videos. That may indeed be true, though it’s not reflected in the data, because TubeMogul notes that it can only accurately measure click-throughs within web browsers. It has difficulty tracking clicks from software.

TubeMogul’s account of the changing nature of video discovery, first reported by Beet.tv last night, also paints a disappointing picture for video search engines. They only account for 0.35 percent of video discoveries — and they’re pretty much all browser-based, so there’s no undercounting here.

Social networking sites like Twitter, which are a quickly growing source of traffic to video and other sites, only account for 2.01 percent of video discoveries, according to TubeMogul.

YouTube itself is the second-largest search engine in the U.S., according to comScore. Within TubeMogul’s research, clicks from YouTube searches count as discovery through a video site, not a video search engine. But TubeMogul says blogs (just by a smidge) outsize that activity as well.

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Topic: Online Video

Comments (2)

thank you! I really liked this post!

machoman — 12:41 AM on August 9, 2009 Reply
Nice Post! Thanks. It sounds like I need to beef up my blog. I use CoVideo to record my videos. http://www.covideo.com

Blogs, here I come.

Brett — 7:40 PM on September 9, 2009 Reply

Linkbacks (6)

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What to read on the GigaOM network — 11:06 AM on July 10, 2009
[...] Blogs, not email or search, drive video views (NewTeeVee) How utilities can avoid “driving off a cliff” with home energy tools (Earth2Tech) Take advantage of Twitter search operators (WebWorkerDaily) A first look at Lenovo S10-2, S12 netbooks (jkOnTheRun) Chrome OS, the wall of Windows apps, and Google’s stance toward Microsoft (OStatic) Mac Quicken set for 2010 release (TheAppleBlog) [...]

What to read on the GigaOM network | Tech… — 1:00 PM on July 10, 2009
[...] like Engadget and Gizmodo picked it up — supporting TubeMogul’s findings about how blogs drive video discovery. It’s now reached over 660,000 views (an early teaser picked up close to [...]

Office 2010: The Movie Brings the Sexy Back… — 2:30 PM on July 14, 2009
[...] like Engadget and Gizmodo picked it up — supporting TubeMogul’s findings about how blogs drive video discovery. It’s now reached over 660,000 views (an early teaser picked up close to [...]

Office 2010: The Movie Brings the Sexy Back… — 2:47 PM on July 14, 2009
[...] — people couldn’t wait to tell their friends,” he said. And for those who follow how blogs drive video views, he credits The Consumerist with being the first blog to pick up the video — in its first day [...]

Dave Carroll Continues His United Breaks… — 11:58 AM on August 18, 2009
[...] — people couldn’t wait to tell their friends,” he said. And for those who follow how blogs drive video views, he credits The Consumerist with being the first blog to pick up the video — in its first day [...]

Dave Carroll Continues His United Breaks… — 12:31 PM on August 18, 2009