Facebook, Twitter Provide Most Engaged Viewers for Online Video Content

According to a recent quarterly report from Brightcove and TubeMogul, online video streams from newspaper sites ballooned in the second quarter of the year, while streams from magazine, music label and artist websites slowed. Also, referral traffic from Facebook and Twitter is growing faster than from traffic from traditional search engines, and the viewers the social networking giants are delivering are quite engaged.

The report, titled “Online Video & the Media Industry,” broadcast networks remained the top media vertical for online video streams in the second quarter, its ninth straight with 406 million online video streams. This reflected growth of 25 percent from the same quarter last year.

Pure-play Web media properties were second with nearly 300 million video streams, followed by the newspaper vertical, which grew more than 65 percent to nearly 225 million streams, thanks to coverage of the BP oil disaster from April through June.

Magazine publishers saw their online video streams decline by 7 percent in the second quarter, breaking an eight-quarter streak of growth. The report also notes that the decreased streams on music label and artist sites could be due to the growing popularity of VEVO.com, a music video portal.

The number of unique viewers grew by an average of 2.81 percent per month in the second quarter, up from 0.05 percent per month in the first quarter of 2010. More unique viewers were watching 11.2 percent more videos per month.

Broadcaster sites observed a 3:01 minutes watched per view in the second quarter, up from 2:56 in the first quarter. Magazines also saw a small uptick to 1:21 in the second quarter. However, music videos (1:49), newspapers (1:22), online media (1:32) and radio (1:13) all saw declines in minutes watched per view in the second quarter compared to the first quarter.

Completion rates held relatively steady for all verticals except newspapers, which saw its completion rate drop to 33.05 percent from 41.23 percent.

Nearly 82 percent of video streams were found through direct traffic or navigation within a publisher’s own site. Of the third-party referral traffic, 64 percent came from Google, 11.9 percent from Yahoo, 4.3 percent from Facebook, 2.6 percent form Bing and 1.2 percent from Twitter.

However, if current growth rates hold steady, Facebook (48.31 percent average monthly growth) will surpass Yahoo within a year to become the second-heaviest source of referral traffic for video streams.

For all verticals, the vast majority of views were on-site, though newspapers (13.6 percent) and music videos (9.6 percent) saw the most views from off-site (embeds).

In terms of minutes watched per view, online media actually sees longer views off-site (1:45) than on-site (1:32), while the reverse is the case for all other verticals.

The study also notes that Facebook and Twitter generate the most engaged online video viewing audiences from media companies, followed by Bing, Yahoo and Google.

Sources:</strong

http://files.brightcove.com/brightcove-whitepaper-online-video-and-media-industry-q2-2010.pdf

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=135537&nid=118469

http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/google-searches-08-10/