Friday, June 15, 2007

Google Ahead in Online Video -- For Now

YouTube continues to be the king of online, according to a new report from comScore. The study of video watching habits in March says Google's video properties generated nearly 17 percent of the 7 billion videos watched online. Beyond Google the market gets quickly fractured as only four of the biggest video sites garnered more than 5 percent of market share.

This proves video is still wide open and that newcomers (hello Joost!) have ample opportunity to become market leaders. Remember also that just as Google isn't a content owner in the search business, their videos are all owned by other people, so if YouTube irritates the upload crowd, the market could shift swiftly. While searching the internet is always free, Google's ability to stream and index video is tentative.

The people who watched videos online (70 percent of all online users) averaged more than two hours of video watching during the month, so there's still a long ways to go in catching TV and movies in importance. As much as I'm a believer in being able to choose your online viewing, I doubt the medium will ever be the primary video experience.

Of all those hours of video watching, I'm guessing that there were only a few minutes per person of advertisements. Once video advertising can generate the per viewer/per hour rates of TV, we're looking at a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

Posted By John Gartner at 10:08 AM
Permanent Link: Google Ahead in Online Video -- For Now | Comments (0)

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