A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, cited by Adweek, found that traffic to online video sites has increased by close to double over the last year for adults, as 48 percent visited a web site during that time.
The increasing penetration of broadband in households is the major driver of the trend. Now over 50 percent of adults have broadband in their homes.
According to the study, "The dramatic growth in the population using video-sharing sites is tied at least in part to the popularity of such sites among men, younger adults (those under age 30), and college graduates."
While the use of young adults has been a big driver, I'm a little surprised that the study said that only 14 percent of those between the ages of 30-49 visited video sites. Numbers in other studies have been far higher than that. Even so, those numbers still indicate solid growth, as it's twice as high as the year before, where it came in at 7 percent in the Pew study.
I think those numbers are much higher, but they still represent the upword trending of the market, which is what's most important for marketers to know.
Another important trend was women are also increasing their visits to video sites, also more than doubling during that period.
This growth will continue as better and more relevant video content is available across a variety of demographics. That seems to be a big part of video growth beyond the young male demo. Another is the growing amount of professional content being quickly added online. All of this will ensure strong video traffic growth for some time to come. This is still really at the relatively early stages of the trend.
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