Online Video A Big Hit In US
Online market research firm eMarketer projects that 154 million people in the US will download or stream video content on the internet at least once a month in 2008.
David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst, and author of the Online Video Content: The New TV Audience reports, said: “From the video provider’s perspective, online video is not scalable, which means that the more people viewing video at a website, the more it costs that site to serve video and/or the slower the video gets served.”
The situation is the same in the UK, said eMarketer. As viewers demand full-length TV shows, TV networks like the BBC are best positioned to fill the need.
Recent figures from the BBC revealed that up to 500,000 programmes are downloaded or streamed from the BBC’s iPlayer every day, while over 17 million were streamed or downloaded on-demand in the application’s first seven weeks.
Leichtman Research Group recently reported that online video viewing in the US grew last year, with 31% of US adults online at home saying that they view online video at least weekly (see US Online Video Viewing Grows).
Meanwhile, Solutions Research Group found that nearly 80 million Americans (43% of the online population) have watched one of their favourite TV shows on the internet, up from 25% a year previously.
A full 20% of the American online population said that they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, ahead of the 14% who say that they use cable video-on-demand offerings.