Every day Germans view about 151 million videos, according to the Web TV Monitor 2010 published by the Bavarian media authority BLM, based on research by Goldmedia. The survey also found that there are currently around 1,275 video sites and portals.
Most of the traffic is generated by video sharing sites such as YouTube, but the so-called Mediatheken (catch-up TV sites) from the broadcasters and other sites with professional content are increasing market share. Goldmedia expects the total traffic to video sites to triple to 390 million views daily by 2015.
The Web-TV-Monitor 2010 provides for the first time a comprehensive market overview of the web TV market in Germany. The analysis is based on a survey of all German web TV providers during September 2010 by Goldmedia.
About two-third (65%) of all internet users access, at least occasionally, videos from the web, according to the ARD/ZDF Online Study 2010.
The Web TV Monitor 2010 lists exactly 1,275 German web TV portals and sites. Almost half of these (47%) are from traditional media, with the online services of the print media taking a 26% share, followed by the sites of TV channels (without the Mediathekenl). Sites from radio stations account for 5%.
About one third of all web TV offers are from dedicated web TV sites (34%). The remainder are dived between corporate TV and video shopping portals (8%), non-commercial web TV channels (4%), Mediatheken and VOD services (4%), video sharing platforms (3%) and communication portals (1%).
These figures represent the number of available sites on the web, not the actual usage. Video sharing shares and UGC sites take up 89% of all video traffic on the web, followed by the Mediatheken and VOD services from the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, as well as the commercial offerings RTL Now and Maxdome from ProSiebenSat.1.
The average viewing time of videos from the surveyed Web TV platforms is currently 9.5 minutes. In 2008, the average viewing time per online video was 4.8 minutes. By 2013, this time is expected to double to 18.5 minutes. Compared with conventional TV, web TV usage is still low. But this is bound to change when more attractive and more long-form content will become available online. One interesting fact that the researchers found is that web TV ‘prime time’ is slightly earlier than traditional TV prime time, namely between 6pm -9pm.
NOTE – People who are interested in downloading the original report – which is available in German only! – can access the Goldmedia website for a free download.
