• Research: 67% of U.S. Consumers Watch Mobile Video Daily

    Mobile video is white hot, and here’s yet another data point illustrating it: 67% of U.S. consumers say they watch mobile video daily, which is almost equal to the 70% of U.S. consumers who say they watch video on their desktop or laptops daily. And 62% of consumers say they plan to watch more online videos in the next 6 months, on whichever device is handiest.

    The data comes from AOL’s new 2017 State of the Video Industry Global Research Study, which covered 7 different markets.

    Globally, daily time spent watching video on mobile devices is now basically equal with desktop/laptop, with the former at 57% and the latter at 58%.

    Reinforcing the shift to mobile consumption, AOL also found that short-form video’s popularity is growing the fastest, with 59% of U.S. consumers watching videos that are 1 minute or shorter every day. In addition, 74% of consumers watch live video on their smartphones.

    All of the above feels like it aligns very well with the impact that Facebook’s emphasis on video is starting to have. More and more Facebook users are seeing more and more short videos in their news feeds. As they stop and watch them, mobile and short-form viewing are increasing. This is likely to increase further with Facebook now planning to autoplay with audio if the user’s ringer is set to on, even though Facebook will also be emphasizing longer videos too.

    No surprise, with mobile video consumption on the rise, 70% of advertisers expect to increase mobile video spending in the U.S. by at least 25% in 2017, almost equal to the 79% of publishers who expect client spending to increase by at least 25% this year.

    For advertisers, 3 big opportunities were cited: in-app videos that increase interactivity and engagement (cited by 47% of advertisers), granular audience targeting (cited by 46%) and ability to buy programmatically (cited by 41%).

    The leading challenges that still need to be overcome from advertisers’ perspective include “quality of consumer experience,” “quality of content and/or creative,” “quality of inventory that’s available programmatically” and “ad blocking.”