Online Video Continues to Grow Despite the Economic Downturn

With all of the talk of limited budgets, decreased spending, and the general economic downturn, we thought it might be time for some good news. And fortunately, we didn't have to look very far.

 It's recently been reported that the expected growth rate for online advertising spending this year is 23%. Yep, the one place advertisers are continuing to spend money is online.

Now, you might think that with the tough economic times, advertisers would veer away from less traditional advertising (online video and overlay ads) in favor of more tried-and-true methods (TV and print). But James McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research told Fierce blogger Pete Wylie, that's just not true. McQuivery said he believes the recession will actually drive advertisers toward advertising on or around Web video because of its targeted and quantifiable approach.

Pam Horan, head of the Online Publishers Association, agrees. She told Reuters, "This ability to highly target the right consumers, and do it in a way that is very (cost) efficient, means that online publishers should continue to see significant advertising growth even in this difficult economic period."

And (more good news) it's not only online advertising numbers that continue to grow. The Wall Street Journal blog, MarketWatch, reports the number of consumers watching online video has almost doubled, from 32% last year to 63% today.

There's hope that this number will continue to rise. It's a well-documented trend that in times of economic hardship, people spend more on entertainment, especially the low-priced variety. Internet video, which is typically free or offered at a low-cost, may look even more attractive to consumers struggling to pay their bills.

Just Released from VideoBloom: New Analytics Module

You've created your online video. You've uploaded it with VideoBloom's super-simple technology. And now you need to know - is anyone actually watching it?

Well, we're happy to report, there's now an easy way to find out. We've just released our Video Tracking Statistics Module, a handy set of graphs, charts and maps that will tell you where people are watching your video, how much time they are spending doing it, and where their views are coming from.

We've broken up your stats into three easy-to-understand sections:

1. A video player URL chart. Find out how many video views are coming from each the URL locations you have your video embedded on. This info will let you better evaluate your distribution channels by telling you which locations are generating the most (or least) video views.

2. Viewer location map. See where people who are watching your Web videos are geographically located, displayed as points on a map. Using this information you can better understand whom your online videos appeal to, see if you're hitting your target demographic, and identify geographic regions that might be interested in your product or service.

3. Video Usage Details. The big daddy of your Tracking Statistics, this module tells you how many hits and views your online video gets and users' average viewing time. More specifically, it breaks video usage into:

-Page hits or the number of visitors that loaded the page where your video player is embedded.

-Video views, which is different than page hits. This number tells you how many people actually started watching your Web video versus just loaded the page. If you find there is a big discrepancy between these two numbers, you might want to think about changing your display thumbnail to something more dynamic.

-Number of completed views highlights how many viewers watched your entire video. View to completion rate takes those completed views and compares them to your total number of views to give you the percentage of people that are watching all the way through.

If you have low completion rates, you might need to spice up your video a bit.

-Average viewing time cites the average time in the video that viewers stop watching. The percentage of this metric gives you the average viewing time as a percentage of the total video time, or on average what percent of your video is watched. Again, a great way to help you tailor your videos for increased engagement.

Click to login to your account and see what your new stats look like.

Thank you and remember VideoBloom is your source for reliable and innovative video solutions.