Study: Most Click Away From Halting Video
- by Mark Walsh @markfwal, December 10, 2009
Nearly 7% of video streamed by top content-delivery networks is slow-loading, indicating that Web video still falls short of offering TV-quality viewing, according to new findings by video analytics firm TubeMogul.
The study was based on a sample of 192 streams over two weeks from CDNs including Akamai, Limelight, Edgecast, Panther/CD Networks and Bit Gravity. The companies collectively help to power video across thousands of sites, including popular video-centric properties like Metacafe, msnbc.com and ESPN.
TubeMogul also found that when users encounter mid-stream rebuffering (when the little progress wheel pops up), 81% bail out on the video. That means post-roll ads attached to balky video clips largely go unseen and views of halting stand-alone video ads are not completed.
"The technology just isn't there yet to have a TV-like experience," said David Burch, marketing director at TubeMogul. "And if it's an advertiser hosting video on a branded site or distributing it across the Web, people are just clicking away when they see that spinning wheel."
Among the five CDNs covered in the firm's analysis, Limelight performed best, with slow load times 4% of the time. It was followed by Panther Networks (5%), Akamai (8%), Edgecast (9.5%), and BitGravity (12.5%).
Regardless of quality, the popularity of Web video continues to grow. The average time Americans spent watching online video jumped 35% to three hours, 24 minutes in the third quarter compared to a year ago, according to the latest Three Screen report from Nielsen. The total number of viewers increased 15% to 138 million.
And speaking of slow, have you tried watching a video on the new Google-powered Vevo video music hub? The service owned by Universal Music Group, Sony and Abu Dhabi has been overwhelmed in its opening days, making videos extremely slow to load and play. In a blog post yesterday, Vevo acknowledged the problem and assured it was working on ensuring that the site runs smoothly. But as of today, it's still a slow-motion disaster.
Two different types of video: download and streaming. Most of the video coming from YouTube and other Flash based sites are merely downloading a file to a temporary cache in a sub-directory created by your browser. These big-ass videos (and "HD") are huge and most internal networks are ill-equipped to handle this type of quick file delivery - thus stuttery video (you've all pulled the slider back to the beginning to watch the video without stuttering - this indicates the data is now resident on your hard drive). True streaming, like Windows Media - is exceptionally elegant in that only the data you need to view those few frames are delivered while the stuff that hasn't played is still being delivered and the stuff that has played is being deleted. Think of it like a data film take-up reel. BUT, true streaming has always had issues on Macs, and you know that nobody screams louder than those damn iMoonies about compatibility - so now most folks use Flash. Blame it on Steve. If the whole world were on PCs and were using scalable bandwidth windows media - this would be a non-issue.
Millions upon millions of HD streams are served daily by the above CDNs and TubeMogul's sample is a whopping 192 streams?!? What if I took a survey for the next U.S. President of just 192 registered voters out of a voting population of 100 million+? Would you trust the results enough to write an article about who's going to win in 2012? Only if you were racing to make deadline...
Full HD on a premium service running with an Internet connection and computer that can actually handle the data load, should perform quite well.
"Full HD on a premium service running with an Internet connection and computer that can actually handle the data load, should perform quite well." I've been streaming video for 11 years and this is NOT the case - lets' examine why: "Full HD" - Ok, 320x240 video at VHS quality is about 300k, so "Full HD" is going to be between 1 and 1.5 megs of continual throughput. The face on the face of the matter is that sustaining a 1-1.5meg stream on a CDN is not a problem, but most people actually watch video at work or at home: DSL or shared bandwidth cable modem. This can vary depending upon how many people are doing what, but the odds are that you are not going to be able to hog a continual 1.5meg stream for 2 hours. At least not on the real world internet I logon to everyday. There's theory (Akamai, Limelight, etc.) and then there's practical application (Qwest, Comcast, etc.) Who do you think wins at the end of the day?
JA, I've read on other posts that it was "over 192 million" streams.
Mark, can you please confirm that your article contained a typo.
Hi all,
I think that rather than quibble over the bits-&-bytes, one is better advised to ponder the IMPLICATIONS of the study's findings:
People have little or no patience for slow videos, even when the video in question is of a non-commercial nature. I doubt anyone argues otherwise.
This bears heavily on how marketeers and advertisers need to treat medium.
According to our findings, based on the performance of thousands of product videos we've crafted for our clients to date, marketeers and advertisers are best advised to limit their videos to 60-90 seconds. The drop-off for viewer attention after this period is so obvious that there's little point in investing in crafting longer presentations - nearly no one is going to bother to watch so you may as well save your money. This also bears on where you should state your main selling points - NEAR THE BEGINNING!
Check out our blog for more tips on optimizing video for sales: http://blog.treepodia.com
Mike
@treepodia