• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, July 1, 2013

Lean back and watch – that appears to be the surprising attitude of many smartphone and tablet owners who make up an increasing share of overall video viewing. Streaming media platform Ooyala says that video views to devices in Q1 rose by 19% over the previous quarter alone, now accounting for 10% of all views. Ooyala samples streaming media to over 200 million unique users worldwide among its partners (including Food Network, TVGuide, ESPN, Dell, the Times and Telegraph. The company says video growth on tablets (now between 5% and 6% of all views) and smartphones (more than 4%), is on the same curve as last year when their combined total share doubled between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31. In Q1 2012, mobile devices had only a 4% share.

When it comes to hang time, live streams far outdistance video on demand, Ooyala finds. On tablets the time spent on live video was 16 mins. per play on average, four times longer than the time spent with on demand video.

While larger screens do command longer video session times, the attention span for video on smartphones and tablets is surprisingly long. 53% of smartphone video views and 52% of tablet views were 10 minutes or longer in length, compared to 39% of desktop views and 71% of connected TV/game console views. And 40% of smartphone views are of video 30 minute or longer in length. For the longest forms of video, 60 minutes or longer, tablets beat all other platforms, with about a quarter of all video views for these formats. The metrics suggest that tablets have emerged as important portable TV experiences.

Ooyala also notes that the longevity of device-based video viewing should encourage publishers to evolve their monetization models away from simple pre-rolls. “Video publishers have more opportunities to place targeted mid-roll ads within their content," the report states. In fact the levels of viewer engagement across desktop, connected TV/game consoles, tablet and smartphone were remarkably similar in Q1. Once someone had elected to start a video on any screen, almost half continued past the halfway point in the stream. The smartphone video completion rates (33% completed) were actually closer to the desktop (38%), while the tablet (42%) was closer to CTV/GC (47%).

The full report is available from Ooyala. The metrics only reflect performance among the company’s own platform customers and are not necessarily representative of the Internet as a whole.