Giganomics Consulting Inc.

A presentation by Bryan Segal of ComScore at the NextMedia Conference on June 7, 2009 reaffirmed Canadians’ leadership in online video use, compared to internet users in the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany, as reported by Cartt (June 8, 2009, subscription required).

At the same conference last year, Segal provided similar statistics on Canada's performance relative to these other countries.

The following highlights key indicators published by ComScore respecting online video usage among the five countries and how things have changed, or not, over the course of the past year.

Canadians were the most active users of online video for all but one of four indicators in early 2009. This was also the case at the end of 2007.

Two indicators have exhibited strong increases – the average length of time spent watching videos and the average number of videos watched per viewer. Users in Canada had the highest scores on both these indicators in 2009, as was the case at the end of 2007. Canadians also exhibited the largest absolute gains. However, the U.S. exhibited greater percentage increases. Charts 1 and 2 illustrate the growth for these two indicators for each of the five countries.

Chart 1

Chart 2

The average duration of each video watched, measured in terms of minutes per video, did not increase as significantly in most countries, as shown in Chart 3. However, the duration in Canada has increased to about four minutes, similar to the levels found in France and Germany. The duration in the U.S. increased as well but remains somewhat lower at 3.5 minutes per video. No data was available for the U.K. for 2009.

Chart 3

The percentage of internet users that engage in online video each month is an oft-cited indicator of the prevalence of online video in a country. However, as Chart 4 indicates, the trends are not as clear, with little or no change observed in most countries. Results reported for the U.K. suggest participation actually decreased. Some of the variation may be explained by seasonality factors. This effect may be minimized by taking observations from the same months of the year; however, data was not published for each country for the same months.

Chart 4

Another interesting indicator is the extent to which the videos being watched are drawn from Google properties, notably YouTube. The percentage has been relatively high in Canada, rising from 48% in January 2008 to 52% in February 2009. The trends are similar in Germany where the relative share increased from 42% in January 2008 to 51% a year later.

The relative share is lower in the U.S., and actually shows signs of decreasing. Google’s share stood at 43% in January 2009 and dropped slightly to 41% in April of this year. This has been accompanied by an increasing share garnered by Hulu.com

Google’s share is lowest in France, measured at 31% as of January 2009. This is slightly higher than the 29% share reported for January 2008. Google’s share in the U.K. stood at 45% in January 2008 but has not been reported for 2009.

Sources

All figures are taken from Comscore’s reported results for two periods: end of year 2007, which is December 2007; and first quarter 2009, which is from January or February 2009, with the exception of Germany which is December 2008. The only other exception is the average length of video per viewer for the end of year 2007, in which case the results for France are from January 2008, the U.K. are from March 2008, and Germany are from May 2008.