Smartphone video starts topped 50% globally for the first time, a 13.2% year-over-year change and the largest in five quarters.
That’s according to the just-released Q2 2018 Global Video Index Report from Ooyala, which shows that a temporary leveling-off in Q1 did little to chill the surge in video plays on tablets and smartphones.
In fact, it surged 9.8% globally in Q2, exceeding 62% of all online videos for the first time.
“We see the Q1 pause in mobile video’s rapid growth curve as a normal transition as consumer habits and content creators’ initiatives get in alignment,” said Jim O’Neill, Ooyala principal analyst. “Q2 represented a reignition of mobile-video consumption coinciding with new content initiatives, season-finale TV events and sports-season finales.”
He added that more content creators are now developing content concurrently for multiple platforms and are transitioning beyond “snackable mobile-only content.” This speaks to a trend that began in 2017, O’Neill said.
In North America, mobile plays increased to 56% of all video starts, up 4% year-over-year and up 14% since Q2 2016; mobile starts in North America have exceeded 50% for eight quarters; long-form time watched on smartphones topped 75%.
“We’ll see a massive uptick in Q3 as more fans watch NFL games on their mobile devices, and, just as legacy TV networks use NFL games to drive traffic to other television content, this promises a spillover effect for other genres of mobile content,” O’Neill noted. “Content owners and distributors need to take advantage of this unprecedented period of demand to pivot into treating technology operations much as manufacturing-based industries treat manufacturing operations. The move to a ‘content supply chain’ is a fundamental, data-driven change transforming the media industry.”
The full Ooyala Q2 2018 Global Video Index Report can be found here.
