While proliferation of digital stills has not led to growth of still-licensing revenue as a whole, continued and explosive growth of online video most certainly will. Video, particularly advertising and corporate projects, continues to command higher budgets than print. Online video advertising is also more affordable than spot television, which has led to growth on both ends of the spectrum: larger companies are adding it to their mix; smaller businesses that never produced video before are adopting it.
This has already led to increasing demand for stock motion content. Unlike stills and despite available low-budget options, commercial footage has retained its premium price point.
The reasons for this are clear. Now that content producers have captivated an audience, they have moved to the second stage of marketing online content: making it pay. When comScore released online video-measurement service Video Metrix 2.0 last week, sr. director of video and cross-media products Tania Yuki said: “[M]ore attention is rightfully being given to the monetization of the online video medium, particularly as it relates to the existing TV landscape.”
More than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video content in June. Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube. ranked as the top video content property with 144.5 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites, Vevo ad Facebook. comScore ranked TV show and movie Web site Hulu 10th in terms of unique viewers, but it was third in terms of user engagement—meaning that people spent more time on it per visit, averaging 2.2 hours per viewer.
Hulu, which surpassed 1 billion monthly video streams last year, also dominates the online video advertising market—unsurprising, given its television-like format already accepted as a commercial delivery vehicle. According to comScore, Americans viewed more than 4.3 billion video ads in June, with Hulu generating the highest number of ad views at 566 million.
Despite the popularity of long-form content such as shows and movies, the online video market leans toward short and snappy. The duration of the average online video in 2009 was 4.1 minutes—balanced by market penetration that is nothing short of stellar: comScore says that 86.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.