New Online Video Consumption Statistics

*Video Consumption Up Heavily: comScore*
ClickZ News*
By Zachary Rodgers<http://www.clickz.com/experts/contact_author/index.php/11093_3608446>
May 24, 2006
The number of Internet users watching video online grew an impressive 18
percent between October 2005 and March 2006. That's according to comScore's
first ever analysis of U.S. Web users' online video viewing habits, drawn
from its new Video Metrix service.
In March, U.S. Internet users initiated a total of 3.7 billion video content
streams; and they watched an average 100 minutes of video content each
during the month, compared with 85 minutes back in October.
Men initiated 52 percent of those streams, women 48 percent; splitting
genders along roughly equal lines. But men spent far more time with the
content, averaging two hours of viewing time during the month, compared with
women's hour-and-twenty. Not surprisingly, males 18 to 34 were most
engrossed with online video, averaging 140 minutes of video consumption.
But while certain demographic sets consume more video than others, the
report's biggest surprise is that people from all ages and walks of life are
eating it up, according to Erin Hunter, comsCore's EVP of media and
entertainment.
"There are skews by age, but there isn't any group that's not doing it," she
said. "It's not just college kids. It's also the older demographic, and
clearly it's males and females both. In terms of content, we see
entertainment and sports and news all with pretty strong rates of
viewership."
Additional data from comsCore's Video Metrix service includes that 16
percent of video consumption takes place during prime time hours, and 22
percent on the weekend. Forty-two percent of Web users watch video on an
entertainment site, and about 33 percent watch on a portal. In a blow to
human resources managers everywhere, the workplace is the favored
environment for watching video. People spent about an hour a month watching
from work environments.
comScore's new Video Metrix service will provide customers with monthly
reporting on the demographics and video consumption habits of
U.S.-basedInternet users, presenting interactions with both content
and ads. The data
are drawn from comScore's existing technology and panel of 1.5 million
Internet users, though the video data comes from a smaller subset.