• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, December 11, 2013

The end-of-the-year studies are starting to arrive now in droves, like every year, like swallows to Capistrano, lemmings to the sea, YouTube content creators to kittens, journalists to the buffet table. The latest from Ooyala, the publishing, analytics and monetization company points out for what is officially the umpteenth time that mobile and tablet video views have increased wildly. By Ooyala's count they say, from September 2012 to Septemeber 2013 mobile and table views have bumped up —by  133%.

 Moreover, Ooyala says, as more long-form content becomes available, more people are watching it on mobile devices or tablet. The new data says those viewers spent nearly 60% of their viewing time on those devices watching content that was more than 10 minutes long…

 (Stray thought: You know what the online world is waiting for? A new version of “Laugh-In” or an improv group video event, filled with itsy-bitsy pieces, a veritable video snack. That could be popular on all platforms that could be watched for more 10 minutes, or closed down in a minute. Now, back to the story already in progress.)

 …and says Ooyala, increasingly, live video is the deal. This research says PC viewers  watched live content for a half –hour on average. Audiences with smart TVs or other OTT devices, upped that to 46 minutes. If I had to pick a sleeper trend—well, to me, it’s still sleeping—it’s live video, which at its worst can be the most skippable stuff there is, and at the best, can be riveting.  

 There was a story MediaPost referenced yesterday from a Website called TVNewscheck that reviewed the popularity of AP’s VideoHub service. While the wire service thought VideoHub would be used by print news organizations that would devise their own online newscasts, it ended up being used on Websites for print stories that needed a visual boost.  

 But as the article also points out, the real gold may be in live applications of that.

 “If you’re a broadcaster, what works live is action,” says Sue Brooks, AP’s director of video transformation (what a title!) in the story. “It’s guns and bullets — something unfolding in front of your eyes. What we’re finding is most successful in terms of live video is anticipation. People seem to be looking, more and more, at events where people are waiting for something to happen rather than it have actually happened.”

And randomly, one graphical squiblet in the study blew me away: “Many Ooyala publishers deliver 40%-50% of their video views to mobile devices on the weekends.”  The behavior makes total sense, but it’s still amazing to think about, and deal with.

pj@mediapost.com