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Hitwise Intelligence - Robin Goad - UK
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Online video traffic up 41%; BBC iPlayer 22nd most popular UK website
March 19, 2009
UK Internet traffic to Video websites has increased by 40.7% over the last 12 months. During February 2009, 1 in every 35 UK Internet visits went to a specialist Video website, up from 1 in every 50 in February 2008.
Video is now a key component of the online landscape in the UK. Three years ago YouTube was still in its infancy and slow connections meant that online video wasn’t a viable option for many Internet users. Since then UK Internet traffic to video sites has increased 37-fold, and a growing number of sites now include video content. Our research highlights the growth in video-specific websites, but if you were to add in all of the other sites that now include video – from newspapers to retailers – the numbers would be even higher.
Top 10 Video websites, based on market share of UK Internet visits to a Hitwise custom category of Video websites, February 2009:
1. YouTube: 62.9%
2. BBC iPlayer: 11.2%
3. Google Video: 2.0%
4. MegaVideo: 1.5%
5. MSN Video: 1.4%
6. Google Video UK: 1.3%
7. Channel 4 TV: 1.3%
8. MetaCafe: 1.2%
9. Vuze: 1.2%
10. Daily Motion: 1.1%
iPlayer, the BBC’s online video catch up service, was the 22nd most popular website in the UK during February 2009, and the second most visited Video site after YouTube. UK Internet traffic to the site increased by 152.1% between February 2008 and February 2009, and reached its highest level over Christmas. For the week ending 27 December 2008, iPlayer was one of the top 20 most visited websites in the UK. Visits to the site also increase by 3.3% as a result of last weekend’s Comic Relief programming.
The BBC has been promoting iPlayer on TV and through its other websites, and this has clearly been a successful strategy. UK Internet searches for ‘iplayer’ have trebled over the last 12 months, while 40% of the site’s traffic comes from other BBC properties. In addition to receiving traffic from searches for popular BBC TV programmes such as “Eastenders”, “Waterloo Road” and “Mistresses”, iPlayer is also popular with British radio listeners. During February 2009, 1 in every 10 visits to the website came from a BBC radio website. Radio 4 sent iPlayer more traffic than any other station website, while “The Archers” was the most searched-for radio program.
YouTube is the most popular Video website in the UK, picking up 62.9% of visits to Video websites during February 2009, when it was also the sixth most visited website overall. YouTube is also the second most popular destination for music searches in the UK after Wikipedia. For the week ending 14 March 2009, YouTube received 7.5% of UK Internet traffic from searches for the 250 most popular music related search terms, while Wikipedia received 10.8%.
YouTube now receives over twice as much traffic from the top music searches as MySpace. Therefore, if the decision to remove copyrighted music videos from the site following the recent dispute with PRS For Music isn’t resolved, it could have an impact on YouTube’s traffic in the longer term. However, so far the impact has been minimal. The amount of traffic that YouTube received from music searches fell marginally between the week ending 7 March and the week ending 14th March, but at the same time total traffic to the site increased.
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Posted by Robin Goad at 10:00 AM
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In Categories BBC | Search | TV | Video
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Links to weblogs that reference this entry:
- BBC’s iPlayer traffic up over 152% but I still watch Top Gear on YouTube (Alokgurtu's blog)
Video Traffic in UK has seen an increase of over 40.7% in the last 12 months. According to the latest Hitwise Report out in February 2009, 1 in every 35 UK internet visits went to a specialist Video website. YouTube is the most popular video destinat... [Read More] - BBC’s iPlayer traffic up over 152% but I still watch Top Gear on YouTube (Alokgurtu's blog)
Video Traffic in UK has seen an increase of over 40.7% in the last 12 months. According to the latest Hitwise Report out in February 2009, 1 in every 35 UK internet visits went to a specialist Video website. YouTube is the most popular video destinat... [Read More]
