The second annual Emerging Video Services study, conducted by Leichtman Research Group, Inc., includes some fascinating findings:
- Online video usage is still very weighted to young males, ages 18-34 and the growth in online video overall was primarily among both young men and women.
- Across all demographics, people still spend twice as much time watching television as they do online, and “half of those who consume online video say they do it less than 10 minutes at a time. comScore talks about the average session as 2.8 minutes.”
So what’s the takeaway? Here’s what Bruce Leichtman had to say in an interview with NATPE News:
…online video is really a medium unto itself, and consumers don’t see it as a replacement for traditional TV, but rather for what it can do uniquely as a new medium. So it’s important that companies not see online video as just a replication of TV.
All of this is worth thinking about from a multimedia journalism perspective – online video may offer a terrific opportunity for news organizations to reach out to younger demographics, but probably not with the same old content they can get on the nightly news.
In addition, it looks like we’re not there yet when it comes to producing long-form content for the Web. As Leichtman says, “TV is a good place to watch TV.”
