Americans are watching more and more online video, especially on tablets and smartphones. A report released this week by ComScore Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) found that more than half of all Americans watched video online during October, watching at an average rate of about 40 minutes per day (21.1 hours per viewer per month).
Meanwhile, the latest VideoMind Video Index Report from video platform provider Ooyala finds that tablet users logged an average of 30% more viewing time per video than desktop users and were more than twice as likely to finish watching a video. And most of those viewers were using an iPad; Ooyala says 97% of videos played on a tablet in October were on an iPad.
Apparently the ability to watch video on the go frees viewers up to watch more, even if they can’t see the video on a big screen. The report says that smartphone users were twice as likely as desktop users to watch 75% of a Web video.
So what exactly are we watching online? ComScore says Google sites are by far the most popular. Facebook is a distant second, possibly reflecting the fact that many Facebook users find it easier to upload to Google’s YouTube and post a link on Facebook that to upload to Facebook directly. ComScore says 161,000 viewers watched video on Google sites in October, compared with just 60,000 on Facebook. Almost 21 million content videos were viewed on Google sites, versus 346,000 on Facebook.
