3 Out of 4 U.S. Internet Users Streamed Video Online in May
Average American Video Streamer Watched More than 2.5 Hours of Video Online — comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its comScore Video Metrix report for May 2007 …
Context & Ripple Effects
comScore has spent mid-2007 building out its measurement franchise beyond search: it released qSearch rankings in April and June, launched Widget Metrix in June to track widget usage, and put out global traffic figures showing 772 million people online worldwide in May. The Video Metrix report extends the same playbook to a new category, giving online video its first regular, branded audience yardstick.
The May 2007 finding — three-quarters of U.S. internet users streaming video, averaging over 2.5 hours each — matters because it sizes online video as a mass-reach medium rather than an early-adopter niche. The pickup on outlets like WebProNews shows the numbers travelled widely among the trade press that ad buyers read.
First-order effects
- Media buyers gain third-party reach and time-spent data for online video, letting publishers price pre-roll and in-stream inventory against measured audiences instead of anecdotes.
- comScore's Video Metrix becomes the de facto scoreboard for video properties, and sites competing for ad dollars now have to show up in its rankings.
Second-order effects
- Rival measurement firms face pressure to field competing video-audience products, opening a contest over whose panel methodology defines the medium's currency.
- Content owners and broadcasters see a mainstream-sized streaming audience and have stronger internal cases for putting more catalog online rather than treating web video as promotional scraps.
Third-order effects
- If viewing hours keep compounding from this 2.5-hour baseline, online video shifts from a supplemental buy to a standard line item alongside television, forcing agencies to plan cross-screen campaigns.
- Audience measurement becomes a contested commercial battleground in its own right, with whoever owns the video numbers shaping how the whole ad market values the format.
The trend: Audience-measurement firms are converting online video from a novelty into an ad-buyable mass medium by attaching hard reach and time-spent numbers to it.