Online video use way less than you think
Posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 9:34 AM by Simon Smith | Comments (0)
In internet marketing, it’s a cliché that things never stand still. New technologies like Twitter get popular, and everyone rushes to exploit them for sales. Or trends like "viral marketing" and "social media marketing" become buzzwords that then turn into agency sales pitches and pseudo-expert speaking tours. (Which, judging by those past few sentences, apparently makes me bitter.)
That’s why it can be useful and clarifying to compare measurable data against the hype. While Facebook has become popular amongst users and grown in interest for marketers, for example, little data supports its use for either branding or direct sales.
A similar discrepancy appears to exist for online video. While it has no doubt proliferated over the past few years, the qualitative impression of this proliferation and use is vastly different from the quantitative reality.
Less than two minutes a day
At least, so suggests a new study from the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence. Rather than look at what users self-report about their video-viewing habits, the researchers conducted a massive study in which they actually observed users over a period equivalent to 952 days. Here are some of the most interesting findings:
- Computer video use is almost nothing compared to traditional television use: Average viewing time per day is just two minutes
- TV still gets the most viewing, even among younger demographics: This includes the 18-24 and 25-34 groups
- Computer use has, however, supplanted radio as the number-two media activity: Radio is now third and print media is fourth
- TV users still watch a lot of ads: About 72 minutes per day on average
This doesn’t mean that online video isn’t important and won’t continue to grow in importance. But it does mean that we should be wary of hype and self-reported stats, particularly when planning marketing budgets.
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