More Than a Snack: Tablet Video Viewing Drives Longer-Form Mobile Content

Tablet TV is bucking the trend for mobile video. While conventional wisdom says that consumers “snack” on video when they view it on a portable screen, it turns out that the lion’s share of time spent viewing on tablets is actually long-form content: television shows and movies.

Ooyala’s new Q3 2012 Global Video Index shows that not only has video usage on tablets grown 90 percent over last two quarters, nearly three quarters (71 percent) of tablet viewing time is not snack-centric but rather videos that are 10 minutes or longer. In fact, the report found that a full 30 percent of total tablet viewing time was spent watching content more than an hour long.

When it comes to other digital distribution methods, the report found an interesting correlation between live viewing and time spent watching. For instance, the amount of time users spent watching live video on gaming consoles more than doubled in the third quarter, while desktop viewers tuned into live video for an average of 40 minutes at a time.

Content availability is the linchpin to this. “A lot happened in the world of video during the third quarter of 2012,” said Ooyala’s Greg Franzeze, writing in the company blog. “Olympic fever took over London (and the world), the iPad 3 was released in China, and the U.S. election picked up steam. Q3 also saw the launch of the PAC-12 Networks [a hybrid broadcast/online video initiative powered by Ooyala], an event that raised the bar for digital sports broadcasting.”

The industry also saw the emergence of new mid-form, online-only content like Jerry Seinfeld’s Web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”

Major operators and service providers around the world have a clear opportunity here to monetize the consumption trends through service-specific packages, higher data tiers and advertising. Their ability to support longer-form video with quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) could be a real market differentiator.

“Online video distribution continues to redefine television around the world,” said Bismarck Lepe, cofounder and president of products for Ooyala. “For premium content providers, the ability to closely monitor consumption across devices and across an entire network is critical. It’s the only way to have a holistic strategy for optimizing revenue. This requires sophisticated and actionable analytics.”