Conventional wisdom is that when people want to watch web video, they sit down at their computer, browse the Internet, click a play button and watch.
But recent statistics from Neilsen Company paint a different picture. A picture that shows a fast-growing trend of web video being watched on mobile devices (iPods, cell phones, etc.).
In fact, NBC.com had 1.8 million videos streamed to mobile devices last fall.
However, the most interesting part is what all of these mobile user’s are watching. You see, their viewing habits vary dramatically from what regular web viewers watch. On the regular web, people search endlessly for videos and prefer the short-form format (videos under 5 minutes).
But on the mobile web, user’s rarely search at all. Rather, they know exactly what they’re after and prefer full-length videos (up to 60 minutes and more). Sites like NBC.com and CBS.com break up these 60 minute shows into digestible segments…say six individual 10 minute segments for a 60 minute video. They’ve done this because they’ve found that users prefer to “snack” on these longer videos, as they’re pressed for time, but don’t want any less content.
So does that mean if you are currently producing short-form videos for the web (for example a video podcast), that you should start producing longer format content too, specifically for the mobile market?
Well, not exactly. The mobile market is still in it’s infancy. It’s estimated that less than 5% of all cell phone user’s actually watch videos on their phones. And as mobile-device viewership grows (and it will do so rapidly), user viewing habits may change as well.
But what it does mean is something I’ve said many times before; you should be focusing on video content and not just marketing messages. Do this and you’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone. The same videos you produce for the web, will be desirable on the mobile market too. Don’t do this and you’ll either have to produce separate videos just for the mobile market (who want content, not marketing)…or…be forced to exclude yourself from the mobile market entirely.