137.4 million Americans watched Web video in December
Whoa, that’s a bunch of eyeballs.
This only brings me hope that one day we’ll see the end of the cable box. Will online video content ever overtake cable and satellite? Please, YES! Right now, at least 70% of the TV I watch from networks is time-shifted. About half of the total content I watch is streamed. What is the point of the cable box? Why not take control and serve ads? The cable box should be strapped to a rocket and sent into space as far away from humans as possible. My cable box is, by far, the biggest under performing electronic device I have (and I own a Blackberry Storm). It’s junk. It is only slightly better than a cinder block with wires coming out of it. It takes 3 seconds to recognize input, if at all. It often takes two or three tries to get the channel imputed correctly. Sound drops in and out. The picture often freezes. It drives me crazy.
Despite having achieved mainstream status a few years ago, the total audience for online video continues to balloon. And YouTube’s dominance in the category seems boundless, as the site delivered more than 10 times as many video streams as any other site in the U.S. last month.
According to the latest report issued by Nielsen Online, 137.4 million Americans watched Web video in December, a healthy increase of 10.3 percent versus the same month in 2008. Those viewers streamed over 10.7 billion videos during the month, representing an increase of 11.8 percent versus the same time period a year earlier.
While the number of streams per visitor showed only marginal growth, Web video viewers are watching longer clips on average; time spent (per viewer watching online video) jumped 13.2 percent to 193.2 minutes in December.
