Mobile & Social Traffic Drive Online Video Popularity

Written by Steve Donohue

Tuesday, November 18. 2008 at 08:00 AM EST Post a comment

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The number of people checking out videos online has jumped 27 percent in the last year, with mobile video usage and traffic on social-networking Websites driving increased adoption, according to a survey released Monday by IBM.

Although sales at paid download services such as Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iTunes store and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)'s Video On Demand store continue to increase, 70 percent of respondents in the global study said they prefer advertising-supported content over paying for their favorite TV programs and movies.

About 76 percent of consumers say they have watched video on a PC, up from 27 percent last year, and 32 percent say they have viewed video on a portable media device or mobile phone, up from 45 percent in the 2007 survey.

At close to 40 percent, the survey found that the United States has the highest adoption rate of online video sites such as Hulu.com and YouTube.

Other noteworthy findings:

• About 45 percent of consumers say they watch videos on their PCs at least a few times per month.

• More than 40 percent of mobile phone customers worldwide subscribe to Internet data plans.

• About 60 percent of consumers spend time on social-networking Websites such as Facebook.com and MySpace.com.

• The popularity of online video is beginning to impact TV consumption, with more than 50 percent of respondents who have watched video online saying that they watch "slightly less" and 36 percent saying they watch "significantly less" TV as a result of their Internet video viewing.

• Mobile video usage is on the rise, with interest from consumers more than doubling since last year to 55 percent.