The huge popularity of online video

No wonder nothing gets done these days, we’re all watching online video. According to research by comScore, reported in the New York Times:

“178 million United States Internet users, or 83.5 percent of the total American Internet audience, watched some form of video online during April.

YouTube dwarfed other competitors, dominating the attention of 135 million Web surfers, who watched more than 13 billion videos on the service. Hulu, which offers videos from mainstream media outlets, including ABC, Fox and NBC, was a distant second streaming 958 million views during the same period.”

There are only so many videos of Auntie Mabel getting drunk at Cousin Geoff’s wedding and making a pass at the minister that anyone wants to watch. User generated content is king right now, but saturation point isn’t far off.

The next great wave of online video will be professional video – from brands and content owners. Some content owners and brands are doing this already, but there are a lot of people who haven’t joined yet. YouTube may lead the pack at the moment but other platforms and channels are multiplying like rabbits, so it’s not just YouTube content owners have to worry about.

The key to succeeding in this exploding market is simple: get good at exploiting all the relevant online web channels now. This thing is getting HUGE.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 11:21 am and is filed under Blog, Distribution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.