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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

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YouTube NBC Deal - Video Sharing and Online Marketing

June 28, 2006

Yesterday's article in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required - also reported in an online news story) included an announcement that US broadcaster NBC will make available promotional videos on YouTube. This marks a turning point for the wildly popular video sharing site whose greatest challenge to date has been copyrighted material, posted by members. NBC was at the center of the debate a few months ago when it forced YouTube to remove the Saturday Night Live skit "Lazy Sunday" from the site. My colleague LeeAnn Prescott blogged about the impact that the video had on visits to YouTube, illustrating that the week after the skit appeared on Saturday Night Live, visits to YouTube overtook visits to Google Video in the US. Since then, YouTube has take off.

In the UK, visits to YouTube overtook those to Google Videos in mid-February and last week accounted for 63% of visits to the top 10 video sharing sites. YouTube ranked at number 50 among the nearly 500,000 sites tracked by Hitwise last week and ranked 39 in terms of share of page views. Visitors spent an average of 15 minutes, 41 second on the site, which is about 6 and a half minutes longer than average for all categories of websites. YouTube's market share of visits has more than tripled in the past three months and continues to rise rapidly, allowing it to maintain its lead over its nearest competitors.

The next largest video sharing site, Google Video Search, saw its market share of visits increase by 49% in the three month period, while MySpace Videos increased more than fourfold. Google Video Search and MySpace Videos held a 16% and 9% respective share of visits among the top 10 video sharing sites in the week ending 24th June 2006. MetaCafe ranked fourth with a 5% share of visits to the category.

Top 10 Video Sharing Sites in the UK, Based on Market Share of Visits to the Custom Category, Week to 24th June 2006
video sharing sites.png

Last week, I proudly became a "tuber" uploading my first video to YouTube. I learned an important lesson - don't assume that YouTube is the domain of the young. My grandfather loved the video and the website and asked me to send through more photos and videos.

What does this mean to Advertisers?
Advertisers and broadcasters are increasingly looking to video sharing sites as a means to reach consumers. Video sharing has gone mainstream and sites are growing rapidly in popularity and offer an opportunity to reach customers through a viral and rich media.

Nike Football’s Joga Bonita is a prime example of a video campaign that was boosted through video sharing sites and which allowed Nike Football to build its brand online in the lead-up to the World Cup. Hitwise has seen searches for the Nike Football brand soar along with searches for videos in the series. I posted a blog with an example of this from the Ronaldinho video - one of the most popular in the series. Thomson Holidays has also been a pioneer in this area, making use of the popularity of YouTube to distribute videos about their destinations, such as this one on Fiji.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 12:54 PM | (1) | (0)