Six of 10 Online Adults Watch Online Video, Most Prefer Professional Quality

Some 57 percent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19 percent do so on a typical day, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project‘s first major report on online video, reports MarketingCharts.

Moreover, 74 percent of broadband users with high-speed connections at home or work watch or download video online, Pew said.

Professional-quality videos are generally preferred to amateur productions, which nevertheless appeal to coveted segments of the young male audience, according to Pew:

• Overall, 62 percent of online video viewers say that their favorite videos are those that are “professionally produced.”
• 19 percent of online video viewers express a preference for content “produced by amateurs.”
• Some 11 percent say they enjoy both professionally produced video and amateur online video equally.
• Among young adult men, some 43 percent of online video users express a clear preference for professional video, but 34 percent say they prefer amateur content.
• Another 19 percent of male video viewers ages 18-29 say they enjoy both amateur and professional content equally.

Overall, 27 percent of online video consumers say they watch or download video from YouTube; of those who watch or download videos from more than one location, 29 percent say YouTube is the place where they view online video most often. Young adults are almost twice as likely to point to YouTube as a source for online video: 49 percent of video viewers age 18-29 say they watch YouTube videos.

The complete report can be downloaded here.

YouTube’s Traffic 50 Percent More Than All Other Video Sites

The market share of U.S. visits to YouTube increased 70 percent from January 2007 to May 2007, according to Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott, with the share of visits to some 64 other video sites increasing only 8 percent in the same period, writes MarketingCharts. (Traffic data refers only site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos.)

As of May 2007, YouTube’s market share of visits to video sites was 50 percent more than that of those 64 sites combined, according to Hitwise.

The top 10 list in Hitwise’s video site custom category for May is headed by YouTube, with 60 percent of visits, followed by MySpaces Videos with 16 percent and Google Video with less than 8 percent.

More video site data from Hitwise:

• Search engines are responsible for about 20 percent of traffic to all video sites.
• Hitwise captured 23,696 search terms that sent traffic to its custom category of 65 video sites in the four weeks ended June 24.
• In the corresponding year-earlier period, Hitwise captured 110,775 search terms sending traffic to the same category.
• There has been a 300 percent increase in the amount of traffic leaving search engines and going to video sites in the past year.