Let’s get down to the basics-according to comScore there are currently about 13.5 million people watching online video with an average of 17 hours each per month. Granted, this is a pretty broad statistic, but now you know you have the opportunity to reach millions of viewers with your online video. Now you just need to figure out how to target the right audience for you.

Getting to know your audience is like dating. You have to go out a few times before you can determine whether they like what you have to offer. Vice-versa, you have to gather info from them to determine if they are a good fit for you. It’s the same process with publishing online video, but unlike dating you can’t meet every person watching your content to determine what content is appealing to your audience.

More and more of you publishing online videos face the same problem of not really knowing whether your audience is even watching your content. Fret no more my friends-LVP has a fully comprehensive solution to help you gather the data and information to determine what content is most effective.

With LVP analytics you can really start to understand the extent of your reach to your audience. By having the ability to evaluate your performance you can really start to extend your scope and delve into strengthening your viewership.

 Even knowing what devices your audience is using to watch online video is important. Having this knowledge will help you determine what devices you need to push your content out to.

Reelseo conducted a survey of 1000 people and found that 68 percent of people watch online video on their laptops, 52 percent on their desktops, and 17 percent on a mobile device such as iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc. They also said that over the course of the next year to expect the mobile video consumption to increase by at least 20 percent.

With the growing trend of mobile video consumption also comes the need to have the right set of tools to accomplish this. With that being said, LVP offers a complete mobile solution to optimize transcoding for mobile devices along with many other video publishing features. You can also use our open APIs to create mobile apps and sites. Another great feature is the smart device detection utilities. As you get to know your audience, you can fine-tune your delivery using our tools.

Knowledge is power. The more you know about your audience, the more success you’ll have with your online video publishing. Let us help you keep it simple and stress free! You have enough on your plate-LVP provides all the tools to help you target the right audience for you.

Drop-Off report: Available now, this report illustrates how many viewers/views each section of the video has at any given moment. This will help publishers discover if there is a section in the video that has a high percentage of viewers leaving.

Attention Span report: Coming soon, this report describes how long a video is watched in terms of percentages. For instance, let’s say you are a publisher with a 5 minute long video and you want to find out what percentage of the audience watches more than 4 minutes of that video, what percentage of the audience watches 3 minutes or more, etc, so forth and so on. In other words this report shows you how long any given video captures the attention of the viewer. Hence the name “attention span”.

Geographic report: Coming soon, as the name suggests this report illustrates where viewers are located.

Armed with these reports publishers can gain a deeper understanding of their audience’s viewing behavior and will be able to consider better ways to keep viewers engaged

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These are certainly impressive numbers, but ComScore’s metrics don’t tell the whole story. The report covers internet video sites. What it doesn’t cover are views on sites that ComScore doesn’t consider to be “internet video sites.” As video becomes more “common” on the web it will show up on sites that aren’t considered video sites. We don’t think of the web as a bunch “internet text sites” do we? We think of entertainment sites, e-commerce sites, travel sites, etc. Video will be no different.

For example, I just recently I came across a site called TVtrip, which provides video guides for hotels around the world. I continue to be impressed by all the creative ways companies and people are using video across the Internet. One of our customers, 1800Flowers, has begun producing high quality video for their increasingly popular site – Celebration.com. If you are looking for ideas for a bridal shower, birthday party, BBQ party, etc., then check it.

More and more companies are realizing that online video can be an asset for their organization. It’s not just about YouTube and Hulu anymore.

• 12 billion videos were viewed during the month of May in the US
• This represents an increase of 45% compared to a year ago
• Google sites (mostly YouTube) represents 34.58% of all videos watched
• There is a huge drop-off from there, with Fox Interactive (MySpace Video) coming in second with 6.4%
• Hulu breaks into the top 10 with 0.7% share (88 million videos)

Unfortunately, ComScore leaves a number of questions unanswered:

• How does ComScore define “video site”? Does this include sites that focus exclusively on video like YouTube, Hulu, MySpace Video, etc? Or does this include video that augments a site like newspapers, magazines, and other Internet sites (e.g. content, community, etc.)?
• What is a “video server network” and how is it different that a “video content site”? This is an important questions since ComScore explains that their metrics are for “video content sites” only and exclusive “video server networks.”
• If we understood how they are defining these terms, we could determine how much video consumption is from video oriented sites, and how much video consumption is coming from other web sites that increasingly include video. Basically, is video becoming ubiquitous across web sites across the Internet?
• How does the top 10 list change if ranked by total time spent watching video? I would be surprised if YouTube still wasn’t #1 by this measure, but would Hulu (with longer form content) still be #10?
• Where are sites like Veoh, MetaCafe, Heavy, and DailyMotion? These are all top 100 sites according to Alexa; much higher than Hulu; yet the don’t show up anywhere on this list. Is this because ComScore focused on viewers in the US?

My take away is that video metrics, as with many things related to online video today (e.g. advertising) there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity. While reports like these from ComScore are certainly helpful, they do not yet provide the comprehensive data necessary to bring clarity to this market.

In order for publishers, advertisers, etc., to make intelligent decisions about video they will need to look at available metrics from sources like ComScore and others, but they will also need to make some projections based on previous historical trends for how previous Internet trends evolved and matured.

Alex Castro