JW Player Releases First Quarterly “Trends in Online Video Report”

Video views from 900 million unique viewers on JW Player grew 50 percent faster than Facebook, with 13 billion monthly streams – more than the top 100 YouTube channels combined

NEW YORK CITY(11 Dec 2014)

JW Player, a leading online and mobile video platform and player technology company, today announced that one in seven people on the planet and one in three people in the United States and Europe watch online video content delivered by it each month. These findings are among the results of the first quarterly JW Trends in Online Video report, which looks at the state of online video across six continents.

“We are excited to share the results of our first quarterly JW Online Video Trends report, which reveal dramatic growth of our platform,” said Dave Otten, CEO, JW Player. “With 80 percent of end users coming from outside the United States, our data represents a truly global audience, and we’re proud to showcase the growth of our network and share these insights on the online video industry as a whole.”

The report highlights JW Player’s recent dramatic growth and analyzes video streaming and consumption habits across devices, platforms and geographies within its network of connected players. Unlike studies that focus only on the top 10 to 20 video sites in the United States, JW Player’s data is representative of the global “long tail” of video, millions of international publishers around the world comprised of small, medium and large video sites. 

Key insights from the report include:

Global Audience Insights 

• Digital video content publishers represent a truly global community, with more than 80 percent of JW Player’s publisher streams delivered to viewers outside of the United States.
• More than 75 percent of international viewing across 193 countries is concentrated among audiences in Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China, Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Canada and Japan.
• Video time watched per person is highest in Europe, averaging 34 minutes per viewer, followed by 32 minutes in North America, 30 minutes in Asia and 14 minutes in Africa.

How We Watch

• Tablet users watch the most video per month (40 minutes), followed by desktop (30 minutes) and mobile phones (20 minutes); however, the growing trend toward larger phones could quickly increase viewing time on these devices.
• Progressive video file downloads on the web comprise more than 60 percent of plays (MP4 format), but streaming is growing fast at approximately 25 percent. Adaptive streaming consists of significant usage for both Apple HLS and Adobe HDS.
• Google Chrome dominates video delivery on desktop browsers, and Apple’s Safari dominates video on tablet browsers, while the two remain head to head for video on mobile devices.

A Viewer in the US is Worth Six from England

• Relative to the United States, U.K. and Canada, video monetization is considerably smaller in Europe and Asia. In the U.S., preliminary data indicates approximately 20 video ads (10 minutes) per hour are watched vs. four video ads (two minutes) per hour watched in Europe. 
• Video ads per unit of time per continent correlate with market data showing video ad monetization per online user in the U.S. is $14.50 vs. $2.50 (USD equivalent) in Europe, a factor of six difference. In the U.S., broadcast TV runs at 16 minutes of ads per hour watched, much greater than online video. The data highlights the opportunity to monetize video even more in the U.S. and abroad.
• Pre-roll video ads are highly popular (85 percent) vs. mid- and post-roll formats (<15 percent) with open standards video advertising (VAST), accounting for 90 percent of all video ads.

“We believe that this data, and the future insights we will continue to gather, will enable our global publisher network to increase viewer engagement and better capitalize on monetization,” said Eric Hoffert, CTO, JW Player. “As devices, advertising and streaming technologies with which audiences consume video are shifting, these insights, and those that are yet to come, provide an opportunity for publishers to reach new audiences, while increasing revenue and traffic.”

The report also tracked JW Player’s growth over six months from May through October of this year, during which time monthly video streams tripled from 4.3 billion to 13.6 billion, monthly ad impressions doubled from 1.4 billion to 3.3 billion and time watched increased from 16 billion to 28 billion minutes watched. After introducing autoplay video, Facebook recently reported a 14.5 percent monthly growth rate for video views. JW Player’s monthly stream growth over a comparable period was 21 percent to 50 percent higher than Facebook’s. In addition, monthly video streams for JW Player are greater than the top 100 YouTube channels combined. 

The data from JW Player’s global network of connected players processed by this pipeline handles a “video firehose” of 25,000 video events per second, equivalent to 1.5 million events a minute, 100 million events an hour and 2.5 billion events a day. 

“The fact that video ad impressions doubled in six months highlights JW Player’s continued strength as a monetization solution for publishers. We offer publishers advantages that include native ad waterfalling and support for VAST3 and VPAID advertising standards. This enables JW Player’s publisher clients to have full control of the advertising experience, resulting in quantum increases in revenue generation capabilities offered by our online and mobile video solution,” said Chris Mahl, President, JW Player.

For more information and to read the full report, visit www.jwplayer.com/labs. 

About JW Player’s JW Trends Report

As part of JW Player version 6, JW Player launched an analytics service to provide our publishers insights into their audience, content and advertising performance, with the objective of fostering an open video ecosystem. With this report, JW Player shares insights at the network level: global trends in the areas of video consumption, video delivery and video monetization.

About JW Player

JW Player is the New York-based startup that pioneered video on the web and is now innovating for the future. Started in 2008 as the world’s first open source video player, today the company’s customers span the globe across 193 countries and range from Fortune 500 companies to individual bloggers. The company’s flagship product, JW Player, is live on more than 2 million sites with 13 billion video streams to a billion monthly unique viewers across all devices — phones, tablets, and desktops. Nearly five percent of all video streams worldwide are delivered through JW Player. In addition to the player, the company’s services include video hosting and streaming, advertising, and analytics. For more information, seewww.jwplayer.com.