Online video usage up – but what are we watching?
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Written by Atila on November 3, 2007 – 4:24 pm
As USA Today would put, “We’re watching TV on our PC’s.”
Daily usage of online video is up by 56 percent over the last year, according to research reported by TelecomTV.
The survey said 9 percent of Americans watched online video on a daily basis last year; today 52 per cent of 12- to 64-year old Americans watch online video at least once a week. Eighty percent of the 18- to 24-year old male demographic watches online video at least once a week, according to the survey. The corresponding figure for females in that age group is 53 percent, a smaller percentage, but still a significant number.
And what are they watching? It’s not just movie previews anymore, but online video news and weather reports, the study says.
Oh, yes, and idiotic home videos on YouTube. But they’re also watching humorous and well-crafted video blogs like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom, whose principals we met this week at a conference in Israel (lovely and talented folks, all of them).
Fueling the growth is the jump in home wireless networks, now in one of every three U.S. homes, up 156 percent in two years.
But wait, what’s Internet TV? Rocketboom is available on TiVo. MSM are putting episodes online. And what’s that doing to the way TV viewership is measured?
Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe says: “As convergence takes place between TV and the Internet, the nature of what is classed as online and offline will also have to change. The question is, is someone online when watching TV over the net?”
We’re going to be thinking and writing a lot more soon on the nature of InternetTV. And what it means when ITV “graduates” from the little screen (laptop) to the big screen (plasma/LCD) and James Bond is available on the little screen (iPhone or something like it). It’s enough to make your head spin.
