Video Sharing Market
Increased broadband penetration, combined with the rise of consumer generated content and the proliferation of webcams, cell phones, and home video cameras have firmly entrenched online video viewing into the habits of entertainment seekers in the United States. So begins the online video sharing section of the Hitwise report.
Like MySpace and Photobucket there is one dominant player in the video sharing market and that is YouTube. Hitwise data shows that:
- The market share of visits to YouTube increased by 249% in the six months from March to September 2006, and in September 2006 it was the 26th most visited website by US Internet users.
- The market share of visits to Google Video increased by 170% between March and September 2006, while visits to Yahoo! Video were up 13% and visits to Metacafe increased by 133%.
I find it interesting that Google video has increased its market share in the last six months. Google recently purchased YouTube and it will be interesting to watch whether Google wants the number one and two players in the video sharing space, or whether they will look to consolidate Google video and YouTube into one destination video portal.
YouTube and Mainstream Media
Continuing on the Google/YouTube synergy, Hitwise shows that 18.1% of YouTube’s traffic in September 2006 came from search engines (and I am sure that a significant portion of that came from Google). The amount of traffic coming from the search engines shows that there is a marketing opportunity for bands that are looking to generate buzz around their products video. Because the vast majority of Internet users view videos at a portal like YouTube or Metacafe and not on branded websites, if marketers are looking to reach consumers via video, these videos need to appear on these video portals.
Putting a video on YouTube does not mean that you users will never visit your web site. The opposite is in fact true, in that YouTube can be a terrific source of targeted traffic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the television and movie markets. For the week ending October 7, 2006, Hitwise shows that 3.3% of all traffic from YouTube went to Television related web sites with the Cartoon Network, Disney and ESPN being the three most visited sites.
For the same period, 1.1% of YouTube’s downstream traffic went to movie related web sites with The Internet Movie Database being by far the most popular destination for YouTube users.
That YouTube is able to drive so much traffic to movie and television related web sites is very good news for the other companies in this space. Movie and television companies are some of the biggest spenders of advertising dollars and if they perceive that video portals are driving interested, targeted traffic to their web sites, then the advertising will flow towards the portals, increasing all their values.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Nov 16th, 2006
