Tag Archives: Yahoo Video

You Spend More Time Watching Online Videos Than Having Sex

laptop versus sex

If you’re an average online-video watcher, then today you’ll watch about 2 videos, and spend 6 minutes doing so. You’ll most likely be on YouTube, but if you’re watching long-form television on Hulu you’re probably skewing the average by watching for much longer per session/view.

People watching online video in the U.S. now watch more than three hours per month, according to new data from Nielsen Online. Studies suggest people, on average, have sex once a week. My sources on sexual frequency and duration are a bit sketchy here, so you can do your own digging.

So, friends, you’re probably watching online-videos for more time each month than you are having sex — depending, of course, on whether you’re one of those 2.7 minute “slam bam thank you mam” YouTube people, or if you prefer the longer forplay of “Hulu-like” engagements.

And I’m not sure all of that online-video viewing is going to help you in the sex department, but it’s a more reliable, albeit often less climaxic, alternative.

Check out Stephen Shankland’s “Online Viewing Clears Three Hours Per Month.”  Neilsen is the source. Do you know how silly that headline will look by the end of the year? First, we’ll have a more difficult time what’s occuring “online” versus “offline” as devices merge. Second, because that three hours will grow dramatically as people begin to consume an episode of Lost (which is, by my crude calculations, roughly the same time it would take to consume about 20 or so short videos on YouTube).

Here are some other notable points from Shanland, and a pretty chart so you can see that YouTube is dominating viewers and videos viewed. But this is going to change when we look at duration spent per site. After all, Hulu has longer-form content, and Yahoo’s 25 million users could, with a little prompting by Yahoo, start watching more video. Hulu has more ad inventory than it has sold, and one can only assume the ad inventory isn’t sufficient for Yahoo to compel its visitors to consume video. Or perpahs Yahoo visitors are busy enjoying display ads and drinking their Tabs or Mr. Pibbs.

  • March viewing rose 13 percent to 191 minutes.   Total video streams viewed increased 9 percent from 8.9 billion to 9.7 billion. And the number of videos per user grew 7 percent from about 70 to 74. 
  • If time spent is going up faster than videos streamed, that means a) we’re tolerating 2.7-minute YouTube clips, or b) Longer form content is skewing the average, and we’re continuing to expect our YouTube clips to be 2-3 minutes. I suspect the latter, but Neilsen and the Shankenizer aren’t saying. video share by website

The market share:

  1. Google’s YouTube continues to dominate the category, with 5.5 billion videos and 89 million people using the service in the U.S.
  2. Hulu is in second place with 348 million videos and 9 million users.
  3. Yahoo is in third place with 232 million videos, but it’s got more users than Hulu, about 25 million users.
  4. Revver is not ranking.

 

Tasty Butterfinger Channel on Yahoo Video

I noticed that my Cockroach prank video had a sudden surge on Yahoo Video, where I otherwise don’t get many views. Occasionally the kind editors at Yahoo Video will show one of my videos some love, but I’ve yet to get a recurring audience or much feedback. Perhaps the Yahoo folks will find the Attack of the Easter Puppy worthy. Either way, I can’t stop watching it. I think I’ll go play it on my AppleTV to annoy my wife.

attack of the easter puppy

Anyway, I did have a point here. I found myself impressed by the Butterfinger Comedy Channel… pranks, comedy, The Onion, consumer-generated clips, epic fails. All in one convenient, and well branded section.

Try it out the next time you need to kill 20 minutes in your boring job. Or at home if you’re unemployed. Or in the library if you’re homeless. And while you’re at it, you can think back fondly to my Butterfingers contest entry where I play a 38-year-old living with his mama and dad. Then there’s the ensuing Fox interview I did about it later.

Wow I drifted on this post. But it’s nice to have Google’s search and several years of online videos when you have no memory. Do you suppose Google will ever index your memories? Wait- I know that dude. Search fried brain cells.

Butterfinger Yahoo Channel

Will Yahoo Video’s Latest Evolution Work?

Yahoo Evolution and Reversal of Evolution

There’s news that Yahoo is reversing its web strategy, which was a reversal of a previous strategy. By reversing the reversal, the new reversal may reverse things (see NYTimes).

You see, Yahoo was an early trail-blazer in web video (its DNA was always more media than search), and has gone through a few evolutions.

1) Years ago, the technology company dreamed up plans for elaborate talk shows, sitcoms and other TV-type shows. But the expensive attempts to transport TV entertainment to the Internet “were all disasters,” said Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst for Global Equities Research.

2) Then it scrapped this model, and has acted as a distributor for audio, video and photographs from other media companies. There were some lower-profile exceptions, like “The 9,” which was reborn as “PopTub” on YouTube).

3) Now the Yahoo producers are identifying their biggest audiences and building short Web shows for those groups of people. Instead of producing TV, Yahoo now recaps TV in a daily show called “Primetime in No Time.” Yahoo says the two- to five-minute-long show has an average of 400,000 daily streams, making it one of the most popular recurring series made for the Web. Can web video about TV survive, and can it be done by a third party? We’ll see

So I jest about this third era being a reversal of a reversal, because Yahoo is smart to produce shows based on the interests of large audiences (as evidenced by their consumption of non-video content about a particular subject). If people like stamp collecting, they’re going to eventually want videos featuring their favorite stamps or, um, celebrity collectors. And we marketers were kinda trained to find an audience need/interest before creating a product. We marketers would rather sponsor someone that already has an audience, rather than someone with great “promise” that may some day attract an audience.

That’s so basic even a marketer can figure it out.