February 18, 2018

News flash: We like to watch

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a video can be worth nearly 4 million times more – just ask Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, whose “Despacito” music video became the most watched YouTube video ever, with over 3.9 billion views tallied in late 2017.

The takeaway here is simple: people like to watch, and they’re doing it on a diverse array of devices, platforms and apps more often. Consider, for a moment, the latest staggering stats. Worldwide, people watch an average of five hours and 45 minutes of online video weekly – a 34 percent increase from 2016, based on results of Limelight Network’s State of Online Video 2017 consumer survey.

By 2021, a million minutes of video content will cross global IP networks every second, according to Cisco; at that rate, it would take you over 5 million years to watch all the video crossing the network each month. And within three years, IP video traffic will account for 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic, per Cisco.

In my latest article for EContent Magazine, I assess the current state of online video. Read it by clicking here.