If anyone needed any convincing about the power of web TV, the recent news that YouTube now serves more search queries than the Yahoo and Live search engines has certainly emphasised the point. Moreover, this reflects the continuing dominance of Google, which owns the video streaming site.
In November, YouTube received 2.79 billion search queries, more than the 2.62 billion searches registered on Yahoo and the 1.05 billion searches on Live. In this article, we will look at research, which further illustrates the growing popularity of web TV as a platform.
Recent research by Forrester Research has shown that watching web TV is now the fourth most popular online activity, ahead of downloading music and movies. Watching online video streams was common among 54% of heavy internet users studied by Universal McCann and Insight Express.
60% of internet users have watched videos online according to the Pew Internet and American Life project. Among these, three quarters of young adult Internet users aged 18 to 29 watch online video and approximately one in three of these said they did so every day.`
It is not just the young, however, who are watching web TV. A survey by BIGresearch has revealed the shock statistic that the average age of YouTube viewers in the U.S is 39. Similarly, data compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore and Quantcast revealed that those aged 35-64 constitute between 48% and 65% of audience figures for online TV.
Clearly, downloading is popular, but uploading is not as common. Just one in 12 people surveyed said that they had uploaded a video file to a video streaming site. Those brave enough to upload should be aware of production values, as 60% of viewers said that their favourite streams were professionally produced.
10 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute and here in the UK, a staggering 3.6 billion video streams are watched each month. 20 million people tune in to content on the site, far in excess of its nearest rival, the BBC, which draws in 6 million online viewers.
A new video and movie-streaming site, FilmOn.com is looking to capitalise on the growing popularity of online video streaming. Alki David, founder of the site does a good job of summarising the reason why web TV has become so popular:
“We’re trained to watch what’s on the box, but audiences are not fools and it doesn’t take long at all to change. The YouTube generation is a good example. You can seek what you want to watch when you want.”