Desensitized to Online Video Growth Data and Predictions?

December 20th, 2007

We read just about every online video analyst forecast, which can tend to make even the biggest data wonk fish-eyed after awhile. I know at times I find myself seeing the numbers but somewhere between my eyes and my brain the signal simply becomes “tons.”

comScore put out a press release on 11/30/07 called, “YouTube Continues to Lead U.S. Online Video Market with 28 Percent Market Share, According to comScore Video Metrix” containing great data about the growth of online video. Admittedly, this is one of those cases where for me, the numbers fell into the “tons” translation.

September 2007
- 9 billion videos viewed online
- 2.5 billion viewed on YouTube alone (28.3%)
- Nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched a video online
- The average online video viewer consumed 68 videos, or more than two per day (this is the most interesting stat for me).

To battle this numbers fatigue, I decided to dig up an old report and see how the analysts fared in their predictions. Heck, maybe I could spice up my data life and put the wow back in the growth figures of online videos. So I pulled an In-Stat report from July 2006 titled, “User Generated Content – More Than Just Watching the YouTube and Hangin’ in Myspace.” (I swear on my life this is the actual title. Maybe it wasn’t cheesy way back in July 2006?)

I was checking out these predictions:

If we annualize September 2007 views, we’re already at 108 billion views. So even with a huge range between the expected and optimistic forecasts, only a year later the In-Stat figures are crushed. I found my WOW!

Entry Filed under: Video Analytics, Video Viewership