The following material puts Internet video in the context of overall video consumption. The material was presented during a panel discussion on Internet video, March 18 2009 [1]. The numbers below are extrapolated from available data in March as reported by ComScore [2] and Nielsen [3,4].
A billion minutes may sound like a lot, but not when you are talking about video.
1Bm ≈ 20,000,000 viewers × 50 minutes/month
One billion viewing minutes is roughly comparable to one weekly episode of a relatively unpopular primetime TV program.
YouTube has ~40% market share of Internet video [2]. YouTube viewers in December 2008 consumed roughly 19 billion minutes:
19Bm ≈ 100M viewers 90 minutes/month
Thus, all of Internet video is roughly 46 billion minutes (with a growth of 13% month over month):
46Bm ≈ 150M viewers × 305 minutes/month
ComScore reports that Hulu has ~10% market share and their viewers watch longer videos. This likely accounts for the longer viewing time of all Internet viewers compared to YouTube.
46 billion minutes sounds like a lot until you compare it to popular commercial television.
The American Idol on March 3 2009 had the highest Nielsen rating for the week [3], approximately 3 billion minutes.
3Bm ≈ 26M viewers × 120 minutes
A single episode of American Idol in a single 2 hour period received ~1/6 of the viewing minutes of an entire month of Youtube. Further, over the month, there were approximately 10 episodes of American Idol, so that American idol, a single TV franchise, represented more viewing minutes in a month than all of YouTube.
The Super Bowl is the single programming event that garners the highest viewership. The viewing minutes of Super Bowl XLIII are roughly 24 billion minutes:
24Bm ≈ 100M viewers × 240 minutes
Thus, the Super Bowl, a single event, represented more viewing minutes than a month of YouTube. The 24 billion minutes represents only the 4 hour game, and does not include the pre-game and post-game programming; if the collateral programming were included, the total viewing minutes might approach a month of all Internet video.
Nielsen’s A2/M2 Three Screen Report for Q4CY2008 provides further context for video viewing [5]. One key finding of the report was that U.S. video viewers across all delivery media watch more than 151 to 161 hours of video per month. This provides us with total video consumption of 2.5+ trillion minutes:
2.5 to 2.6Tm ≈ 151 to 161 hours/month × 285M viewers
Therefore, conventional TV viewing minutes is roughly 2 orders of magnitude greater than Internet video viewing minutes. There are two major ramifications of this: (1) we’re still early in the move to Internet video, and (2) the transfer of even a small amount of TV viewing to the Internet represents a large relative increase to Internet viewing.
We’re only reporting U.S. numbers here. A rough rule of thumb is that Europe and the Pacific Rim each view about as much video as the U.S., so that worldwide video consumption is approximately 3 times U.S.-only consumption.
References
[1] The State of Video on the Internet, Boston, March 18 2009.
http://www.vilnashul.com/calendar/event/the-state-of-video-on-the-internet/
http://herot.typepad.com/cherot/2009/03/video-in-transition.html
http://www.newsoftwarepathways.com/blog/?p=116
[2] Comscore, U.S. Online Video Viewing Surges 13 Percent in Record-Setting December, February 4 2009.
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/2/US_Online_Video_Viewing_Sets_Record
[3] Nielsen, Primetime Broadcast Ratings, March 10 2009.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/primetime-broadcast-ratings-march-10-2009/
[4] Nielsen, A2/M2 Three Screen Report 4th Quarter 2008, February 2009.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/3_screens_4q08_final.pdf