On Monday (Sep 28, 2009) comScore announced that Google had surpassed 10 billion video views in the month of August [1]. With a market wide average viewing duration of 3.7 minutes, consumption of Google video alone has exceeded 1% of the estimated total monthly U.S. television consumption of 3 trillion minutes [2]. Read “Everything on Demand Part 1 — 3 Trillion Minutes per Month”. Exceeding 1% adoption in a new market, let alone in a single company, has always been a noteworthy milestone.
The press release went on to indicate that Google continues to hold 40% market share. This means that in the 9 months from December 2008 through August 2009 consumption of online video as a whole roughly doubled. If this rate of growth were to continue, online video consumption would cross the even more significant 10% milestone in 18 months. However, a closer look at the last two years of comScore data shows that the rate of growth has been dramatically increasing.
The following figure shows the monthly consumption of online video since November 2007. Consumption in November 2008 was 48% higher than in November 2007 whereas consumption in August 2009 was 168% higher than in August 2008. These increases reflect large increases in the number of views compounded by increases in average viewing times. Given the large macro-economic effects playing out over the past 12 months as a bold caveat, this may signify that the market is reaching the knee of the adoption curve. Read Everything on Demand Part 3 — Beginning of the Curve”.
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[1] Google Sites Surpasses 10 Billion Video Views in August
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/9/Google_Sites_Surpasses_10_Billion_Video_Views_in_August
[2] Consumption = Total Views * Average Viewing Time