Ooyala’s “Q1 2014 Global Video Index” makes a strong case why support for mobile and tablet video consumption “is clearly becoming mandatory for any company in the video business.”
Mobile and tablet video consumption skyrocketed 532 percent higher year over year in 2013. Growth continued through 1Q 2014, with mobile and tablet video viewing representing 21 percent of all online video plays, up from 3.4 percent in 2012 and just over 9 percent in 1Q 2013. For publishers of video content, the strong growth in smartphone and tablet video viewing represents “a trend in missed ad revenue,” Ooyala highlights in a press release.
Mobile Video Viewing
While increasing at a rapid rate in the U.S. and Canada, Ooyala found that the ratio of mobile to all online video plays is rising even faster in Europe and Latin America. “This growth,” Ooyala asserts, “underscores the need for broadcasters and publishers to prioritize mobile strategies, and demonstrates the burgeoning opportunity for advertisers to reach device-specific audiences anywhere, on a massive scale.
Also among the highlights of Ooyala’s “Q1 2014 Global Video Index”:
- Despite Android’s greater smartphone market share, iOS still dominates viewing in terms of smartphone video plays;
- While the majority of plays on tablets were short-form videos, viewers clocked 48 percent of their overall viewing time watching videos of 30 minutes or more;
- Viewing time of live video on connected TVs was more than 11 times more than video-on-demand (VOD) content;
- Tablet viewers spent more than three quarters of their time (77 percent) watching videos of at least ten minutes in length.
As Ooyala notes, iOS has been the perennial leader when it comes to mobile and tablet video viewing. Android is catching up, however.
“With Android’s growing footprint, and better tools for supporting video playback across the Android ecosystem, Android is gaining momentum as a video device. In some regions it beat iOS, in terms of the number of videos streamed on each platform.”
That said, Ooyala’s geographic break-out of data shows that “the Asia-Pacific region is overwhelmingly Apple-centric, with 82 percent of video views occurring on iOS devices.” The situation is similar in the U.S., where iOS smartphone video views accounted for a 60 percent share.
Commenting on its latest report and market data, Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher stated, “The statistics in our Global Video Index continue to affirm our belief that mobile is in large part the future of video and TV consumption.
“We see the acceleration of mobile video consumption happening globally, as consumers in every region adopt mobile and tablet video faster, and interact with it longer. These insights validate the tremendous opportunity for broadcasters and publishers to tap into additional multi-screen revenue streams, grow and maintain loyal audiences across all devices, and build a fundamentally better video business.”
