Internet Video Use for July 2008 Staggering

An article in yesterday's Podcasting News gives us some useful data in promoting and calling for participation in UA's iTunes U and YouTube channel. "75 Percent Of Americans Watching Online Video," (Sept.10, 2008, by James Lewin) summarizes data reported by Internet analyst comScore [see Press Release: YouTube Draws 5 Billion U.S. Online Video Views in July 2008]

Now that the credits are duly attributed, here's some of that interesting data. Note that this is for July 2008, not for the past year! The comScore Video Metrix service reports that Americans viewed more than 11.4 billion videos for a total duration of 558 million hours during July 2008 and that YouTube.com accounted for more than 98 percent of the 5 billion videos on Google-owned sites. Lewin included these bullets in his Podcasting News piece.

• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer)
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

BTW, I don't think iTunes and iTunes U are included in these figures since they are not on the Net and selling advertising on web pages.

Should this mean anything to us at the UA? Glad you asked, because it seems to me that this data tells us that the audience that we are trying to reach is going to find us on YouTube. UA programs, departments and colleges certainly can take greater advantage of our YouTube channel to reach high school and undergraduate students, their parents, and Arizona residents.