A new online video index and quarterly research report (from video serving platform Brightcove and online video analysts TubeMogul), reveals some interesting trends and growth patterns for the online video industry. It’s not relevant for everyone, but it’s useful benchmarking for anyone interested in working with video online.

Amongst the Key Findings from the Q1 2010 Report:

Growth Trends

• Broadcast networks and pure-play Web media properties represent the fastest growing sectors for online video streams.
• Newspaper and magazine publishers have the greatest number of video players across online media properties.
• Newspaper publishers show the most growth in video production for online properties, followed by broadcast networks and pure-play Web media brands.

Engagement

• Online video content from broadcast networks attracts the most viewing time per video.
• Newspaper and magazine publishers garner the highest online video viewing completion rates.
• Consumers in the U.S. average more minutes of video watched per stream from broadcast networks and newspaper publishers, compared to their European counterparts who average more minutes per stream from magazine publishers and music labels.

Discovery

• Google generates the highest volume of referral traffic to online video content, followed by Yahoo!, Bing and Facebook.
• Compared to search engines and other social media sites, Twitter referrals generate the highest level of consumer engagement for online video content from broadcast networks, magazine publishers and music labels.
• Newspaper publishers see the highest level of engagement from viewers who find their content via Yahoo!.

Formats & Strategy

• In-stream video advertising is the dominant ad format followed by overlays, sponsorships, companions and player skins.
• Despite experimentation with other ad formats, 35 percent of survey respondents said in-stream video advertising produced the most revenue for their media business compared to other ad formats.
• For in-stream advertising, respondents said the dominant insertion point is pre-roll, followed by post-roll, player load and mid-roll.
• More than half of the survey respondents indicated that they would add sponsorships to their monetization strategy for online video this year.
• Close to 70 percent of respondents said that their media companies sell their own advertising versus using an ad network.
• While just over 10 percent of respondents said that they currently distribute ad-supported video content to mobile devices, more than 50 percent said that they will roll out ad-supported mobile video within the next twelve months.

Tags: Brightcove, online video, research, statistics, TubeMogul

Universal McCann’s annual social media tracker Wave has mapped key changes in consumer uptake and usage of social media platforms for the past four years. Wave 4, released recently, reveals dramatic changes in the way that consumers are using the internet to create and share their thoughts, pictures and videos.

The Universal McCann (UM) research study reveals that globally social networks are becoming the dominant platform for content creation and content sharing.

After four surveys of active internet users—those who use the internet every day or every other day—showing impressive growth for all types of social media, consumers are starting to focus their digital life around the likes of Facebook, MySpace and Orkut.

It’s not that consumers are cutting back on blogging or sharing images it’s just that they are increasingly opting to do it via their social network page rather than the likes of Flickr and Blogger.

76% of social network users, for example, upload photos, up from 45% in Wave 3, and 33% upload videos compared to 16.9% last time around.

The heavy and varied usage of social networks has proven that these sites are no fad. Not only have 96% of social networkers visited a friends’ social network page but nearly two-thirds of all active internet users have spent time managing their own profile.

Another key change to note has been the expansion of video usage, with significant increases both in the number of social networkers and bloggers uploading video but also in terms of the number of the active internet users watching audio-visual content.

Key statistics from the report:

• The total estimated global active internet audience is now 625 million people
• Mobile internet usage has now reached nearly a fifth of all active internet users. Seventeen percent now access internet on the move as well as at home, work or college
• Widgets continue to thrive with 34% of social network users installing them for their own use and 24% installing them to impress visitors to their profile page

Glen Parker, Research Director at UM EMEA, comments that “Social media is a very fast-evolving landscape and one that’s taking an increasingly important role in consumers’ digital lives. Brands that want to engage with consumers in these spaces need to understand how and where and why they are using the many different platforms that enable content creation and sharing.”

It’s All Going Social
UM concludes that every element of digital media is becoming socialised, providing marketers with new ways to engage a target audience like never before.

Wave 4 shows that social consumption of digital content is either already highly penetrated among active internet users or still growing rapidly. It also sheds new light on consumer motivations for social media behaviour. Through the research UM have observed that the desire to belong to something is as motivating as the desire to communicate and express one’s self.

UM believes that the engagement opportunities of social media are deeper than those of traditional mass media and that the power of social amplification is also much stronger.

The UM 10-step programme for successful social media marketing:

1. Listen to/observe what the target audience is doing in social media
2. Create a “social object” that is relevant to the brand and of genuine interest
3. Segment the target into tribes. Give them something they can join.
4. Allow them to engage via their preferred platform of choice—create multiple interfaces to your community
5. Make the experience better when shared
6. Optimise your content for sharing—particularly via newsfeeds and Twitter
7. Use paid-for media to get the ball rolling
8. Take advantage of extreme targeting offered by social networks
9. Make sure you have the resources to manage your community management and refresh the content.
10. Track the results and optimise where necessary

About Wave 4
UM questioned 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009 for Wave 4.

Download the study here.

Tags: flickr, key statistics, mobile internet, online video, social networks, Universal McCann, video usage, widgets