Video Tail Getting Longer
June 7th, 2009 by Seth Kenvin
A couple of years ago, while researching whether & how to start Market7, one of my habits was to survey people on how much on-line video they watched. It was not scientific, and not really documented, but my recollection is that when asked about 70% of people had watched video during the prior month, and perhaps 30% in the past week.
One of my regular reads is the the eMarketer Daily, and last week included one with current answers to my questions from a couple of years ago. If my numbers were accurate, then the growth is amazing. 62% of us report watching online video at least weekly. It seems that the percentage of people who watch online video on a daily basis is about the same percentage I estimated a couple of years ago to be at least weekly.
What are we all watching? As more TV programming goes online, some of it is mainstream content, but relying again on my empirical evidence, based on what I check out and see my colleagues and others around me doing, much of it is more obscure too. You might even be watching me! If the numbers bear out this observation, it’s the realization of the long curve phenomenon for video. If we’re watching video made by just about anyone, that means everyone — enterprise, institution, community group, government office, start-up and more — we all have to consider how we present ourselves in video just as seriously as our web presences were planned a dozen years ago.
Here are some similar (& excessively modest) thoughts from one of the not-quite-mainstream (but not nearly as marginal as claimed) online video sources I watch regularly.
watch more than half of TV via internet. TV is on all day long anyway but it’s just news as a background to my activities. The good stuff is on the web!