Of Interest to Web Publishers, Videos Continue Surge in Popularity

 

Updated June 30, 2010

Including advertisements, here are the results of studies regarding online video viewing and usage:

Short-form Videos – Website Magazine reports Metacafe commissioned a study by Frank N. Magid Associates, which shows 80 percent of consumers prefer short-form videos. That includes movie previews, music videos and television shows.

But it represents bad news for video producers. Twenty-five percent of respondents enjoy short videos more than the actual TV shows.

Fifty-five percent of Web viewers enjoy video advertisements as much or more than on TV. That’s a 3 percent increase over 2009 results.

In demographics, online videos are most-popular with 18 to 24 year-olds. Eighty-five percent of males watch Internet videos each week – a 15 percent increase over 2009. Sixty-eight percent of females count it as a weekly routine – 27 percent higher than last year.

Conclusions about short-form videos: Keep them short and break up long videos into short segments. Make them professional. Ads, before or after your videos, are OK.

Display Ads by Format – Probably most interesting to publishers is that comScore released its study, also according to Website Magazine. comScore’s May 2010 report, shows online ad-format preferences in the United States. The No. 1 preference is JPEG display ads – 42.4 percent of impressions. Flash and rich-media ads total 40.3 percent of impressions.

Display Ads by Size – comScore also reports Leaderboard ads (728 x 90) were No. 1, preferred by 23.1 percent of respondents.

Rectangles were most-enjoyed by 23.1 percent, which were followed by medium rectangles (300 x 250) at 18.3 percent, and buttons (120 x 90) at 14.7 percent.

Note: Popup and popup under ads had less than 1 percent of the impressions.

So, if you’re a Web publisher, videos are an increasingly important indicator of your relevance to Internet users.

Videos continue to be the online rage as 33.2 billion were viewed online by 178 million in America in December, 2009, according to research firm, comScore.

comScore says the Google sites were the most popular with 13.2 billion videos for a 39.8 percent market share, thanks to YouTube. It garnered 99 percent of Google’s viewers.

Here are the other rankings of viewed videos:

 ·         No. 2 Hulu -1 billion – 3 percent

·         No.3 Microsoft – 561 million – 1.7 percent

·         No. 4 Fox Interactive Media – 550.5 million – 1.7 percent

·         No. 5 Yahoo – 539.4 million – 1.6 percent

·         No. 6 Viacom Digital – 372.6 million – 1.1 percent

·         No.7 Turner Network – 366.9 million – 1.1 percent

·         No. 8 CBS Interactive – 297.2 million – .9 percent

·         No. 9 Megavideo.com – 210.2 million – .6 percent

·         No. 10 AOL – 209.9 million – .6 percent

This also means the 178 million viewers each saw an average of 187 videos.

In view of these numbers, it isn’t surprising that Google had the most unique viewers with 135.8 million. That’s 97.5 videos per person.

From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a valuable source of information in search engine optimization:

Thanks to a tip from Web Pro News, a video featuring Google’s Matt Cutts explains the problems/solutions of stale links on your site, Watch Video Here.