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Worldwide, One in Ten Video Plays Happen on Mobile/Tablets, Ooyala Says

Ooyala released its Q1 Video Index this week, with more stunning statistics not only about the growth of video online viewing but particularly about the fact that viewing is happening  ever more so on tablets and smartphones.

In some places around the world an even bigger trend might be the amount of live video streaming that is happening on devices.

Let’s start with this: The share of tablet and mobile video grew 19% in just the first Q1 2013. Mobile and tablet video now account for more than 10% of all online video plays, the Ooyala study says. In the first quarter, last year, that figure was just 4%.

And here’s another creeping-up-on-you-stat:  Mobile and tablet viewers spend more than half their viewing time watching long form videos, which in this case means ten minutes or longer. Still one quarter of the time spent watching on tablets was for content that was an hour or more long.  Pretty clearly, worldwide, that tablet might as well be a TV and movie screen.   

Globally, desktop viewers watched live news, sports and special events for an average of 40 minutes per play.  On average, people streamed live video on smart TVs and gaming consoles for 45 minutes per play last quarter.

That’s nine times longer than VOD. Desktop viewers watched live video 13 times longer than VOD last quarter, tablet video viewers watched live video four times longer, and mobile audiences tuned in to live video three times longer.

Ooyala paid special attention to Pacific Rim nations for this edition of the study, because there, patterns are emerging faster, or just differently, than other places. In some places, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, viewers watch live video 20 times longer than on-demand video, across all device types. That’s far longer than in other places around the world, where the ratio is still a mind-boggling 12 to 1, using all devices.

Other quirks: Long -form video viewing made up 45% of the total time spent with online viewing in Malaysia. And in Singapore, live viewing averages 52 minutes per session, more than anywhere else in the region. 

Ooyala measures viewing habits of nearly 200 million unique viewers in 130 countries every month, so this is the view of the online video world pretty much from outer space. Still it provides a rather impressive view of the online world right now, which is changing and growing rapidly.

For the first time in the first quarter just ended, Ooyala said, that mobile (53%) and tablets (52%) beat desktop PCs (38%) in percentage of time spent watching long-form video. 

 “Cross-device measurement is critical for content owners and broadcasters as they move their premium content online” said Sudhir Kaushik, director of products, insights and optimization at Ooyala,  in a press release that accompanies the study. “Our ability to collect content and advertising data from each viewer on any device at any time and then process that information into insights in real-time is what differentiates us.”

pj@mediapost.com

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