A few weeks ago comScore came out with some new online video stats that said:

• U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during March, 2008, representing a 13% gain from February, 2008 and a 64% gain from March, 2007.
• 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March, 2008.
• 73.7% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Now, I watch my fair share of videos every week. I’ve noticed my online video viewing used to only be the short YouTube variety but it’s considerably more now that Hulu has come along and supplemented what used to be “TV time” in the evenings.

What struck me recently is that I’m increasingly forgetting that I’m watching a TV when in fact I am. I’ve become so used to the online video experience that I have to remind myself that I’m not at a computer when I’m just watching a television. I don’t know how or when this transition occurred but it was like it just struck me one day when I realized these five things while watching TV…and I’m a little embarrassed by a few of them but here they are…

1. I was was expecting the screen saver to come on after 15 minutes.
2. I was expecting an instant message to pop up.
3. I wanted to have different channels open on multiple tabs.
4. I wanted to minimize the screen to do something else.
5. I double clicked a button on the remote control.

So what’s my self diagnosis on this? Well, for starters I am forced to admit that I’m a computer geek. There’s no denying it any longer. When I’m thinking about opening tabs on TV I know I’m stepping into geekdom. It appears I’ve transitioned into the multi-tasking, half attentive, mix-work-and-play kind of guy I never thought I’d be. I don’t know when this happened, but it happened. I also realize that I’m just now in a place that a generation behind me has been for a while already. They already spread their attention thinly between simultaneous mediums. I’m not assuming this is all good…but I think it is reality.

I don’t exactly know where this leaves us, but for me it’s been a realization of my own shift in video consumption and application. As online video continues to expand both in adoption and penetration, I expect others in my age range and older will come to some similar realizations if they haven’t already. The online video experience will simply be our video experience in the days to come. I think the need to even refer to “online video” will be antiquated within the next few years and perhaps at that time most of the things I wanted to do above will be commonly available in some fashion from the standard TV experience…except for screen saver and double clicking the remote control.

There’s lots of news today about a possible recession. The Federal Reserve made the biggest rate cut in 24 years today to head a recession off at the pass but the stock market isn’t really responding well so far. While a recession (or even the hint of one) will increase fears in many traditional sectors of media and marketing, I think new media marketers will benefit from this and here’s why….

• Blogs don’t cost anything to start.
• Online video is free. So is creating your own video channel on YouTube.
• Creating a Facebook group doesn’t cost anything.
• Recording a podcast costs next to nothing.
• A basic Flickr account to engage your customers is free.
• Twitter doesn’t charge to message the people most interested in what you are doing.
• AdWords only cost you something when someone clicks your ad (and you determine the cost per click.)

There will still be marketing in a recessed economy. There will still be marketers spending money in a recessed economy, even if there’s not as much of it. What marketers will be paying for, however, is not the use of the technology, the air time to broadcast it’s message, or the placement for ads. What they’ll pay for is help to use the new media well. When in the face of decreased marketing budgets new media will emerge as the cheaper option because companies will pay consultants (i.e. digital coaches) a few thousand dollars to teach them how to fish the new way. This may be the tipping point for new media marketing as marketers and advertisers give it a shot out of financial necessity rather than being convinced that it’s the right thing to do. Whatever the case, a recession is going to be good news for new media marketing. It’s bad news for traditional advertising and marketing, but Google was already telling us that.

I’ve been doing some research the last few days around online video usage by Americans. Earlier this year I came across these online video stats:

January 2007 Report: U.S. Online Video Viewers
(sources: eMarketer; U.S. Census Bureau)

• 2003 – 52 million (32% of U.S. Internet users; 19% of population)
• 2004 – 69 million (41% of U.S. Internet users; 25% of population)
• 2005 – 89 million (51% of U.S. Internet users; 32% of population)
• 2006 – 107 million (60% of U.S. Internet users; 38% of population)
• 2007 projection – 123 million (67% of U.S. Internet users; 43% of population)
• 2008 projection – 137 million (73% of U.S. Internet users; 47% of population)

Today I found these stats which show that by July of this year the actual American online video usage was far surpassing the late 2006 projections. In fact, the ComScore stats below show the actual online video views surpassing even the 2008 projections above….

July 2007 Report: U.S. Online Video Views
(source: ComScore)
Nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video during the month. More than 9 billion videos were viewed by online during July, 2007. 2.4 billion of the video views occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 390 million, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 298 million, and Viacom Digital with 281 million.

What’s the takeaway here? If you thought online video was a fad or even a slow trend it’s actually quite the opposite. Besides, you know when she’s jumping on board it’s full-fledged mainstream.

A new study out today shows that the top types of online videos people watch are. Here are the top five:

1. Jokes/funny videos
2. News/current events
3. Amateur videos
4. Movie trailers
5. Music videos

I wasn’t surprised by the top category because it seems like people are more likely to share the funny videos beyond anything else. The one that surprised me most was down the list at number nine: Full length TV shows. As almost every major television network is now providing most or all of their shows online, this is an interesting stat in my view and further validation that online video will only increase and the new Nano was a significant announcement as these videos get converted over to the iPod.

Here’s the rest of the list:

A recent report by the New York Times says the average online video duration is 2.7 minutes. The report also said that 75% of Internet users watch an average of three hours of online video a month and that YouTube had 2.4 billion video views in the month of July. Yes, billion. That’s a lot of video viewing. So what are the takeaways from this?

1. It’s a great time to do online video for your organization. People are already there looking for the good stuff. It’s not new anymore so you should have an easier time convincing someone that it’s a good idea.
2. Keep the videos brief because an unspoken expectation has now been established, namely that online video viewing is not a major time commitment. People are more likely to give you three minutes rather than five minutes.
3. The online video world will become increasingly competitive. It’s not enough to just do online video. It needs to be remarkable in some way to stand out from the other billion videos.

I saw an interesting eMarketer.com story about how the numbers of men and women watching online video are quite different. You can check out the full article but the two graphs below were especially interesting. Also, check out this quote from the article: “This year there will be an estimated 97 million females online in the US, compared with 91 million males. A clear majority.” Those are some incredible numbers (and a great reason why an Internet strategy should be important to you.)

Here are the graphs:

I recently pulled stats for some work we’re doing at White Post that cover the growth in blogs, online video, and MySpace. These are all really interesting and I’m going to let the numbers speak for themselves…for now anyway.

Worldwide Blog Growth (source: Technorati)
January 2004 – less than 2 million blogs
July 2004 – 3.5 million
January 2005 – 6 million
July 2005 – 12 million
January 2006 – 24 million
July 2006 – 50 million
October 2006 – 57 million

Worldwide Online Video Growth (source: ComScore via Reel Pop)
October 2005 – less than 25 million online video views per day
January 2006 – 125 million online video views per day
July 2006 – 700 million online video views per day

United States Online Video Viewers (sources: eMarketer; US Census Bureau via Business 2.0)
2003 – 52 million (32% of U.S. Internet users; 19% of population)
2004 – 69 million (41% of U.S. Internet users; 25% of population)
2005 – 89 million (51% of U.S. Internet users; 32% of population)
2006 – 107 million (60% of U.S. Internet users; 38% of population)
2007 projection – 123 million (67% of U.S. Internet users; 43% of population)
2008 projection – 137 million (73% of U.S. Internet users; 47% of population)

MySpace.com registered users (sources: MySpace, Blog Herald, Business Week via Joe Suh)
May 2004 – 2 million
April 2005 – 12 million
October 2005 – 33 million
January 2006 – 48 million
July 2006 – 90 million
November 2006 – 131 million
February 2007 – 160 million

On Monday I had the opportunity to talk to two groups about how understanding web 2.0 can help their organizations. The first group I spoke to were the good people at Katcher, Vaughn, and Bailey, a PR firm in Nashville (thanks for the invitation Steve). The second group was the marketing department and some editorial staff at Randall House, a publishing company here in town.

In both cases I gave an overview of the six categories of web 2.0…the “massive Volkswagon” acronym MASSVW. We also discussed some additional terms like RSS, wiki, AJAX, and tags. One of the things that seemed to get everyone’s attention were some stats about blogs and online video. You may find them interesting too if you haven’t seen any recently. Here’s the breakdown on both with the data I had:

Worldwide Blogs Count (source Technorati)

• Jan. 2004 - less than 2 million
• Jan. 2005 - 6 million
• Jan. 2006 - 24 million
• July 2006 - 50 million
• Jan. 2007 - 60+ million

Online Video - Average number of views per day (source ComScore)

• Oct. 2005 - less than 25 million
• Jan. 2006 - 125 million
• July 2006 - 700 million

I haven’t seen any more recent data than July 2006 but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Jan. 2007 online video views reached 1 billion per day.

So what does this mean for you? First, if you’re not one of the 60 million bloggers you might want to consider starting one. Blog writers are blog readers and the number of people who will read your blog is higher now that it’s ever been. Second, how are you using online video to help you? Are you creating opportunities for people to embed any video you put online? If you’re not, you are missing a tremendous opportunity.

One of the blogs I read daily is Micro Persuasion by Steve Rubel. He had an interesting post today about a little data mining he did with some web 2.0 terms like widgets, Second Life, podcasts, blogs, and RSS feeds. It was interesting to see that blogs are the clear front runner in popularity among these areas but the surge in Second Life interest was exciting as well.

What was noticeably absent from the list was any reference to online video. I did the same search as Steve did but dropped the RSS feeds and added YouTube. What I found was staggering. YouTube makes the other technologies look like nothing. I expected YouTube to be a contender with blogs but not trounce it the way it did. I was just telling someone today that there’s been a rise in online video interest over the last year. This data suggests that it’s not a mere rise, but rather a massive surge. So what’s the moral of the story? If you’re not thinking about online video right now you’re getting behind very quickly.

The web 2.0 landscape just got a little more interesting. In December I was talking to a friend who mentioned a project he was working on. That project turned out to be GodTube, the social media/online video/networking site looking to provide Christians and non-Christians alike with Christ-centered video content and the tools to connect with each other.

When I first went to the site my initial impression wasn’t very good. I knew it was in beta (and still is) but I couldn’t help but think “geez, this seems like just a Christian copy of YouTube.” After a little more time seeing the site develop and learning from my friend about some different avenues they would venture down, I saw the emergence of the areas that will distinguish GodTube from everyone else.

The primary difference between GodTube and any other online video site I’ve seen is the technology to let people connect with each other (for free) via the live video conferencing as well as the implementation of a very cool video email feature. To me, this is where GodTube truly separates itself from the pack (and not just in the “Christian sites” pack but the pack of all online video sites).

Having already played with the video chat feature I can vouch for the fun there. The ministry opportunities are endless too. Got a team going on a mission trip and want to video conference a few families in? Give the GodTube video chat a shot. Or maybe this will be the opportunity for people around the world to connect live for discussions on leadership principles or evangelism strategies. This has all the ingredients needed for a virtual classroom where you could teach or learn about an infinite number of applicable studies.

The video email feature is a great way to send a memorable email that will certainly get anyone’s attention. It provides all the benefits of sending a video to someone via email without sending a massive file to someone’s inbox. The recipient just clicks on a link to see the video.

I have high hopes for GodTube. I know it’s still in development but I think it’s off to a very compelling start with some exciting new technology.