North America and Europe lag other global regions in online video viewing, according to a new study from The Nielsen Company.
West Watches Less Online Video
“How We Watch” indicates that Western markets still fall behind Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East when it comes to online video. Broken down by region, online video viewing is highest in the Middle East/Africa/Pakistan (MEAP) and Latin America regions, which each scored 114 on the Index of Online Video Usage (Past 30 Days). This means that online consumers in those regions were 14% more likely than the global average to have watched online video in the past 30 days.
Asia-Pacific slightly trails these regions with an Index score of 111. North America comes in below average with a score of 89, while Europe lags well behind the average with a score of only 77.
Globally, the study finds that 70% of online consumers watched video via the Internet in March. Penetration is predictably highest among younger consumers.
Asia-Pacific, Latin America Countries Watch Most Online Video
Looking at online video viewing frequency by individual nation, online video is most broadly watched among online consumers in China and Indonesia, where consumers are 26% more likely to use video. The rest of the top five countries ranked by Online Video Index score includes two Asia-Pacific countries (Philippines and India) and one Latin American nation (Mexico).
Conversely, online consumers in Germany, Belgium, France and Denmark are all at least 50% less likely to watch online video and consumers in Denmark are 70% less likely than the global population. In several of these lagging markets, Germany for instance, Nielsen says access to online video through the websites of traditional TV networks is just beginning and this introduction of premium online video content might still spur the pace of adoption.
Online consumers in the North American countries of the US (90) and Canada (93) both have Index scores slightly below the global average.
Online Video Consumption Rises 16%
Active mobile video users grew by 57% from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009, from 11.2 million to 17.6 million, according to recent Nielsen Three Screens Report data. Much of this increase can be linked to the strong growth of smartphones in the marketplace.
However, total time spent per week watching mobile video is still low, partially due to the fact essentially no consumers ages 2-11 or 65 and up watch video in this manner. Overall, Americans watch four minutes of mobile video per week. Adults ages 50-64 watch less than minute of weekly mobile video, while teens ages 12-17 watch 21 minutes of weekly mobile video.
About the Data: Nielsen conducted a global online survey of 27,665 online consumers ages 15 and up in March 2010.
