Advertising.com have released the results of research conducted during the first half of this year to gather information about online video usage and consumer response to video advertising. 36% of the 500 users surveyed said that their online video usage in 2007 increased since 2006 while 47% said it has remained the same. Over 62% reported viewing streaming video content at least once a week.
Viewer Demographics
31% of the viewers who stream content are young adults aged 18 to 34. 69% of their online video streaming occurs at least once a week. The surprising majority, 69% of online video viewers who responded to the survey were adults aged 35 and over. However, only 47% of them view streaming video more than once a week.
Over 95% of users stream video from their home computers. Only 4% view video at work, and 1% at school. This is significantly different from last years’ numbers and the percentage of users accessing social networking sites from work. This may be due to the inability to hear sound clips on the PC at work or while in school and increased awareness among employers who block video sites such as YouTube.
Popular Content Categories
The older demographic who now form the majority consumers of online video have boosted the popularity of news, movies and sports clips. Music videos are still the most popular category with young adults, but have fallen in overall popularity, as can be seen in the graph below:
The change in popularity of content categories could also be attributed to the greater variety of available content and increased user awareness of this content through ads on traditional media. For example, users find out about the availability of TV shows online through ads directing users to the shows micro-site on TV channel’s site at the end of the programme.
Online Video Activities
The most popular online video activity is forwarding a clip to a friend. Consumers who view more clips per week also tend to aid viral promotion by forwarding more videos to their friends. Much fewer consumers create video content to post online. Younger consumers tend to be more involved in both of these activities, especially in uploading videos, which is done by 15% of 18-34 year olds, but only 2% of users aged 35 and over, as can be seen in the graph below:
Video Advertising
The final part of the survey discussed advertising preferences. 94% of consumers indicated they would prefer to view video ads than to pay for content. However, 63% said they would prefer online ads to be shorter than TV ads. At present 35% abandon ads before completion.
