Video on the web is exploding - never before has there been so much rich content available, and never before have consumers possessed the technical ability to download that content so quickly. The proliferation of high-speed/broadband internet service combined with technical advances in video production and online delivery have achieved something of a critical mass, and an explosion of video use on the web - especially over the past year - is the result.

With the availability of high-speed internet access rapidly approaching 50% nationwide (and well above that for many major urban areas), technology advancements have created the opportunity for online video to proliferate rapidly as well.  Use of streaming video increased 38.8% across all entertainment and media sites in 2006, including both free (ad-supported) and paid (subscription) services. Online video now makes up the single largest category of traffic traversing the Internet. In fact, online video served by YouTube alone now accounts for at least 2% of all internet bandwidth usage. Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube last October is another clear sign of the growing interest and opportunity in online video ads. 

If a picture is worth a thousand words, could online video be worth 1.65 billion?

Businesses are now realizing that internet video can be a powerful marketing tool. Adding video to your website and online media campaigns can truly engage your site visitors and convey far more information than static imagery and text alone. The advertising industry is increasingly excited about this technology because they can now  measure its impact using real numbers.  In a recent poll of business decision makers in the B2B sector, for example, 57% responded that online video had influenced their purchasing decisions. Among the younger internet generation, over 80% of MySpace users are regularly using online video (and the number of unique visitors to MySpace.com has now surpassed the 50 million mark - comparable to the number of US households that tune in to watch the Super Bowl).

Can your online marketing campaigns afford to ignore these numbers?

(to be continued...) 

Future segments in this series will discuss various aspects of online video technology and the many different ways in which clients can take advantage of recent technological advancements in order to ride the crest of the online video wave.