Stats
Just Wow: YouTube Had 344M Global Uniques in Oct.
Not that you didn’t already know that YouTube commands an audience all over the world, but here are the numbers that prove it.
ComScore hasn’t given out U.S. video measurements since July (the delay is apparently because it’s in the process of expanding its video measurement techniques so it can measure ads vs. content, premium vs. user-generated content, and other distinctions). But venture capitalist Fred Wilson (who until earlier this year sat on comScore’s board) was able to rustle up some October worldwide numbers to prove a point he was making in a blog post about YouTube’s audience compared to oldteevee’s.
Never ones to let some online video stats pass us by, we’re republishing the chart here. So, what can we learn?
YouTube got 344 million global unique visitors in October. (Holy crap.)
YouTube’s audience is disproportionately European compared to the web’s worldwide audience. It gets 37.8 percent of its visitors from Europe, which has only 28 percent of the total web audience. By contrast, YouTube gets 22.5 percent of its visitors from Asia, whereas they comprise 40 percent of the total web audience. (Note that Wilson broke some countries out from their regions, so the chart’s percents don’t all add up to 100.)
Couple caveats here: comScore’s strongest and most consistent measurements are in the U.S. — and that’s what we’re used to seeing. Also, these are its “Media Metrix,” which aren’t specially adjusted for the way online video works like its “Video Metrix.” The video-specific measurements focus on number of streams rather than views, and include streams of embedded video around the web. Embeds comprise a significant portion of YouTube’s video views, and wouldn’t be counted in these numbers.
But unique visitors are still the way much of the web measures itself, and 344 million is a whole freaking lot of them.
Revenue, Schmevenue; Let’s Talk International Video Consumption
Dude, eMarketer, you’ve gotta make up your mind. Yesterday you’re all doom and gloom about online video revenue, and today you announce, “The Future of Online Video Looks Bright.” What gives?
Well, turns out this new report is more a compilation of research about video consumption from throughout the year. There’s a section about monetization, but it cites Strategy Analytics revenue forecasts rather than eMarketer’s own data. What eMarketer wants to talk about is video viewership — which is still on its way up, of course. The firm says says the U.S. audience for online video will hit 190 million by 2012, when viewers of online video advertising are forecast to reach 174.8 million in 2012.
It’s that recurring theme popping up again: When it comes to online video, traffic is always good, but there’s no money to speak of. But if we’re going to talk consumption, let’s talk consumption. Though its focus is on the U.S., eMarketer did do a valuable service in digging up some charts of international data.
StatShot: BitTorrent Loves Batman
The Dark Knight continues to cast its vengeful shadow over BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak, staying on as the most popular pirated movie. Other than that — there was only one new addition to the top 10 list: Elegy, a smaller film starring Ben Kingsley that came out earlier this year.
| Rank | Last Week | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | The Dark Knight |
| 2 | 3 | Tropic Thunder |
| 3 | 2 | Traitor |
| 4 | 6 | Max Payne |
| 5 | 4 | WALL-E |
| 6 | … | Elegy |
| 7 | 5 | Step Brothers |
| 8 | 9 | Taken |
| 9 | 8 | The Chronicles of Narnia: Price Caspian |
| 10 | 10 | Burn After Reading |
Video Ad Spending Growth to Drop Dramatically
Online video advertising is a shiny new toy in the marketer’s box of tricks. As such, people think its use will only increase and it will be more recession proof than traditional or other forms of online advertising. But eMarketer released a report today saying that growth in online video ad spending will drop dramatically in the coming year, falling to 44.9 percent in 2009 from 81 percent in 2008. That translates into online video ads reaching $850 million in 2009 from $587 million in 2008.
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While the growth percentages are still in the double digits, not as much is spent on video compared with other forms of advertising (search ads are already a $10.6 billion market and rich media ads are $1.88 billion), which means small changes have big impacts. The total market for online video ad spending will reach $4.6 billion in 2013. In August, eMarketer chopped its estimate for 2008 U.S. video ad revenue in half to $505 million and at that time had predicted that by 2013 those revenues would reach $5.8 billion. Read more of this story
NBA Gets Its Games Jacked
Jacked, the online real-time stats service that complements your TV sports viewing, has partnered with the NBA to provide the Jacked Sportstop to the league’s teams.
Jacked is meant to offer a two-screen experience for sports. So for example, a fan watching a Washington Wizards game on oldteevee will be able to sit down with their laptop as well and log on to the Wizards’ web site to receive a real-time stream of data such as stats, play visualizations, photos, and even chat option to talk with other fans.
The Jacked service will not appear at NBA.com, but instead will run on individual team sites and through Jacked.com. Ten teams have signed on to use Jacked, and another 15 have contracts in negotiations (the remaining five teams have not reached the contract stage yet).
Bottom Line: We’re All Watching More
Online Video Viewing Up 35.4 Percent Year-on-Year: Of 26,000 adults polled by Mediamark Research & Intelligence, 23.3 percent had watched online video in the past 30 days (which is actually a pretty low number as compared to data from comScore and others). In the same group, 3.2 percent said they’d downloaded a TV episode in the past 30 days, giving that segment an increase of 141 percent from 2007. (Variety)
88 Percent of U.S. Internet Users to Watch Online Video: See, here’s a way bigger number. eMarketer says the U.S. audience for online video will hit 190 million by 2012, up from 154.2 million in 2008. And viewers of online video advertising are forecast to keep pace, reaching 174.8 million in 2012, up from 129.5 million this year. (release)
Young People Watch More TV on the Web; 12 percent of U.S. teens and 11 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds watch online TV at least once a week, respectively, as compared to 4 percent of 35- to 64-year-olds, according to Knowledge Networks. Those 18- to 34-year-olds who watch online TV also spend 80 percent more time online than the rest of their demographic, and 1.25 hours per day more with all media. (release)
U.S. TV Viewing Hits All-Time High; Nielsen says the average American watched approximately 142 hours of TV per month in the third quarter, five hours more than a year ago. How is it that with the rise in online video, TV watching keeps going up, up, up? Well, the two are not mutually exclusive; some 31 percent of TV use is concurrent with Internet use, according to Nielsen. (release)
$32 Billion to Be Spent on Internet-TV-to-living-room Equipment by 2013: IMS Research says 300 million homes worldwide will have the ability to watch online video on their living-room TVs by 2013, up from 28 million in 2007. (IPTV News)
ComScore: NBC, Hulu Had Big Gains in October
We knew Tina Fey’s impersonations of former V-P candidate Sarah Palin helped boost the online video fortunes of NBC and Hulu, and now we know just how much of a bump each site got in October, when the election was in full swing.
According to comScore, Hulu went from 2.85 million unique visitors in September to 5.34 million uniques in October, for an 87 percent increase. NBC Universal jumped from 16 million uniques in September to almost 24.8 million uniques in October, for a 33 percent jump. Further, NBC’s online Saturday Night Live channel shot up 85 percent to 4.4 million visitors in October.
Of course, it wasn’t all Fey-lin’s doing. The Palin-Biden and Obama McCain debates were live-streamed during October as well.
The question becomes, how much of that new traffic will Hulu and NBC be able to hang onto now that the election is over?
Statshot: Dark Knight Rules (BitTorrent)
According to TorrentFreak, The Dark Knight was the most pirated movie of 2008. Ummm, hooray? Somehow I doubt Warner Bros. will include that stat on the DVD packaging. The movie’s been on and off the list of top BitTorrented films throughout the summer as people took video camera footage of the film in theaters or ripped it from screeners.
| Rank | Last Week | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | (new) | The Dark Knight |
| 2 | 1 | Traitor |
| 3 | 4 | Tropic Thunder |
| 4 | 2 | WALL-E |
| 5 | 3 | Step Brothers |
| 6 | (new) | Max Payne |
| 7 | 9 | The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor |
| 8 | 6 | The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian |
| 9 | 5 | Taken |
| 10 | 8 | Burn After Reading |
Over at TV by the Numbers‘ breakdown of the most DVRed broadcast TV shows, McDreamy and crew still dominate the list with 4.089 million viewers via DVRs for the week of Oct. 17-Nov. 2. As TVbtN points out, Obama’s infomercial ran during this week but does not appear on this list because of missing data.
Is the Web Hurting Guilty Pleasure TV Shows?
So, um, I watch Gossip Girl. But I do it on my laptop, when nobody else is around.
And as I read recently of complaints by Lipstick Jungle’s creators that its cancellation threats are unfair because much of its audience isn’t measured, I had to wonder if maybe they weren’t just whining.
Could the increasing number of options for watching TV shows that fall under the guilty pleasure category mean they are slipping in the conventional rating systems? Soap operas are some of CBS Interactive’s most popular online programming, I’ve been told. I’ve also heard concern from networks that younger-skewing shows just aren’t as economically viable these days, because their audience could care less about the TV. BitTorrent, YouTube, TV Links, iTunes — it’s all at their fingertips.
But I wonder if as online viewing goes more mainstream, this wouldn’t be a broader concern for shows that people prefer to watch in private or when nobody else is around. I don’t mean anything salacious, necessarily, I just doubt that I’m the only one who would rather not admit I know what Blair Waldorf’s latest blackmail scheme was.
Video Viewers Up 27% from 2007; as for the Money…
Some 76 percent of consumers watch video on their PC, says a new international study from IBM. That’s up 27 percent from last year, according to IBM’s second-annual survey of consumers in Australia, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and the U.S. The study is especially notable because much of the research on video viewing trends is restricted to a single country, usually the U.S. But how do IBM’s numbers about the consumption side match with current stats on online video revenue?
Besides online video on the PC, IBM also found more consumers accessing mobile video, with 32 percent responding that they have viewed video on a portable device or a mobile phone, up 45 percent from last year. But meanwhile, the recession threatens to wipe out mobile video’s miniscule market share and revenue, reports Broadcasting & Cable today.
And shh — don’t tell the networks, who are obsessed with web video being “additive,” but according to IBM, more than half of online video watchers say they watch less television as a result, with 36 percent watching “significantly less.” There’s a pessimistic study out today about ad revenue for TV, too. eMarketer says that between the shaky economy and the growth of online video, U.S. ad spend will decrease 4.2 percent next year to $66.9 billion.
And there’s also some bad news for iTunes. More than 70 percent of IBM’s respondents said they prefer to watch ads alongside their content rather than pay for it. That’s especially true in Japan, where 80 percent of respondents prefer ads. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar used dollar figures to illustrate the same point at our NewTeeVee Live conference last week; he said that the U.S. market for ad-supported premium video is worth $80 billion, whereas DVD sales and other transactions are worth $20 billion in the U.S. (here’s the video of his speech).
Contrary to common assumptions about online video advertising, IBM’s study found that pre-roll and post-roll ads are more popular than mid-roll interruptions and product placement. Unfortunately that section wasn’t described in more detail in the press release we have about the report. As for how the recession will affect spending on web video ad prices, TV Week has a report out today saying that while it will be hardier than other categories, prices are still expected to drop 10-15 percent in the next few quarters.
And finally, major props to IBM for producing a YouTube video to accompany its study! (Though it doesn’t really address the parts I’m interested in…ah well, we can’t have everything.)
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