Who's Watching User-Generated Video?

More than 22 billion user-generated videos were viewed in 2007. Who is watching this stuff? Accustream's latest report tells all...

ACCUSTREAM RESEARCH: UGV AT 22 BILLION VIEWS IN '07; SEMI-PRO, BRAND PARTNER CONTENT KEY GROWTH DRIVERS

Salinas, CA, User Generated Video (UGV) scored 22 billion views in 2007, up 70% over 2006, according to a published market report from AccuStream iMedia Research.

The report, UGV 2005 - 2008: Mania Meets Mainstream, contains extensive UGV library usage trends by month, year, content category, site and brand.

The report's detailed analytics features AOLUncut, Broadcaster.com, Crackle.com, Ebaumsworld, LiveDigital, Metacafe, MySpace TV, Revver.com, Vsocial.com, VEOH.com, Yahoo Video and YouTube, among others.

The report scrutinizes UGV library management, and how it is crucial to maintaining brand entertainment value. Almost 20% of total views generated in 2007 were delivered by videos published in 2006 or before.

"With few exceptions, UGV sites large and small deftly rotated previously released videos into featured areas, introducing them to new audiences, re-introducing them to buffs, helping sustain forward view momentum while curating the latest library videos," explained Paul A. Palumbo, research director at AccuStream.

Yahoo Video was one of the exceptions, opting to focus almost exclusively on videos published in 2007.

Analysis of UGV sites highlights similarities and differences in expanding or evolving content category strategies, and pinpoints numerous publishing modifications taking place throughout the year. Comedy, funny, music, entertainment and weird are popular categories on UGV sites.
There is a growing presence, however, of both semi-professional and professional content inside UGV environments. The report concludes YouTube partner channels accounted for 10.6% of cumulative site views generated over the past year.

Semi professional content grabbed a 47.5% total share on MySpace TV, and the Screen Bites category on Crackle.com generated a 17.5% cumulative share of total views.

More refined analysis reveals average views per video of 10,695 in 2007. Crackle.com led the UGV group, averaging 216,596 per video, accelerated by its re-organization in 2007, emphasizing category expansion and more professional content.

Casting out to the entire market segment, there were a total of 1.68 million non exclusive videos added to UGV libraries in 2007 (net of removed, retired videos) that generated views, became part of library rotation and were accessible to users, averaging 9,538 views each.

AccuStream iMedia Research publishes extensive research on Internet streaming media, audio and video advertising, subscription media, CDN, UGV and download media.