Earlier this week, I attended the BrightcovePLAY Conference in Boston. If you know anything about Brightcove, you know they have something to do with online video. As such, the conference talked a lot about online video, and I’m about to do a little of the same.
We’re going to do a fairly quick, informal poll. Raise your hand if you watch online video? Ok, keep your hand up if you have a smartphone or tablet device? And hands still up, how many of you watch video content from your smartphone or tablet device? Yep, that’s what I thought.
Current statistics state that online video accounts for 50% of all traffic on the internet (which makes sense, considering YouTube is the number two most-used search engine after Google). Those same statistics say that 25 million Americans watching online video also do so from their smartphone or tablet device. Consider this: In 2010, 31% of people own a smartphone, which is up from 23% in 2009. Currently, 8% of the American population owns some type of tablet device, and that is expected to jump to 27% in the next year as more companies release their versions across different operating systems.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that online video, particularly mobile video, is becoming increasingly important for video content generators. Fairly obvious, given the statistics I threw out, right? (Let’s hope so.)
It is no longer a matter of “I want to watch X when I get home”; it is “I want to watch X on my nearest screen.” It doesn’t matter if your nearest screen is a smartphone, tablet, PC or even TV – either way, people are transitioning from delayed gratification of watching when and where media is being pushed to them, but rather instant gratification of watching when and where they are pulling media to their (mobile) devices.
As a content-generator, that means you must work to limit or (even better) remove any barriers that keeps the user from getting to the desired content -- your content. Your mobile content.
Some things to consider: Does your site only render video in Flash? If so, that means you’re missing the nearly 25% of smartphone users that own an Apple iPhone and 75% of the tablet users on an iPad – I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly scream “edge case” to me.
Is your site optimized to be mobile-friendly? Easy to navigate with touch-screen controls? Adaptive bitrate streaming so you deliver the best quality video no matter if the user is on a 3G network or connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot?
This doesn’t mean that you have to change your desktop website experience that was built with a specific experience in mind. It means you can't just expect users to navigate your site as-is from their mobile device. Nor can you create one mobile version and expect it to work on all devices – different operating systems, different screen sizes, and different purpose.
I know, you’re starting to grab your calculator and your eyes are bugging out about how much that is all going to cost. Customization gets expensive. But what is more expensive? Losing out on your target demographic because your mobile experience is cumbersome or not available at all. (And there are great options available for customizing content for mobile devices – Brightcove just launched their new AppCloud platform this week.)
Bottom line? If your video content is not available when and where your viewers want to consume it, and if you don’t make it easy for them to do so, you lose the opportunity. Which means lost revenue.
We’re going to do a fairly quick, informal poll. Raise your hand if you watch online video? Ok, keep your hand up if you have a smartphone or tablet device? And hands still up, how many of you watch video content from your smartphone or tablet device? Yep, that’s what I thought.
Current statistics state that online video accounts for 50% of all traffic on the internet (which makes sense, considering YouTube is the number two most-used search engine after Google). Those same statistics say that 25 million Americans watching online video also do so from their smartphone or tablet device. Consider this: In 2010, 31% of people own a smartphone, which is up from 23% in 2009. Currently, 8% of the American population owns some type of tablet device, and that is expected to jump to 27% in the next year as more companies release their versions across different operating systems.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that online video, particularly mobile video, is becoming increasingly important for video content generators. Fairly obvious, given the statistics I threw out, right? (Let’s hope so.)
It is no longer a matter of “I want to watch X when I get home”; it is “I want to watch X on my nearest screen.” It doesn’t matter if your nearest screen is a smartphone, tablet, PC or even TV – either way, people are transitioning from delayed gratification of watching when and where media is being pushed to them, but rather instant gratification of watching when and where they are pulling media to their (mobile) devices.
As a content-generator, that means you must work to limit or (even better) remove any barriers that keeps the user from getting to the desired content -- your content. Your mobile content.
Some things to consider: Does your site only render video in Flash? If so, that means you’re missing the nearly 25% of smartphone users that own an Apple iPhone and 75% of the tablet users on an iPad – I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly scream “edge case” to me.
Is your site optimized to be mobile-friendly? Easy to navigate with touch-screen controls? Adaptive bitrate streaming so you deliver the best quality video no matter if the user is on a 3G network or connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot?
This doesn’t mean that you have to change your desktop website experience that was built with a specific experience in mind. It means you can't just expect users to navigate your site as-is from their mobile device. Nor can you create one mobile version and expect it to work on all devices – different operating systems, different screen sizes, and different purpose.
I know, you’re starting to grab your calculator and your eyes are bugging out about how much that is all going to cost. Customization gets expensive. But what is more expensive? Losing out on your target demographic because your mobile experience is cumbersome or not available at all. (And there are great options available for customizing content for mobile devices – Brightcove just launched their new AppCloud platform this week.)
Bottom line? If your video content is not available when and where your viewers want to consume it, and if you don’t make it easy for them to do so, you lose the opportunity. Which means lost revenue.
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