MediaPost: Ooyala report shows that mobile video will account for half of all video traffic by 2016

Mobile devices are set to account for more than half of all video views by 2016, according to the Q2 Video Index released today by Ooyala.

Mobile — smartphones and tablets — accounted for 27 percent of web traffic in June, up from 21 percent in February. In the past year, mobile traffic has tripled to 25 percent of the total.

Ooyala isn't the only company to make predictions; Cisco previously predicted that mobile video traffic will account for 69% of global internet traffic by 2018.

This latest Ooyala report, which details other recent data, points to the growing growth of video on the small screen — and not just for micro-video content, although that’s its primary use case.

Larger small screen devices like iPhone 6 etc - make watching videos on mobile devices much better.

Oolyala also pointed out that it's not just the abundance of video content, but also the increasing availability of faster 4G mobile phone services. TV Everywhere services are available everywhere. Ooyala predicts that in the United States, 90% of pay TV viewers can log on to TV Everywhere, but another statistic points out that you can make traditional cable TV viewers know about TV Everywhere, but you can't get them to use it.

Ooyala also mentions — and you’ve probably heard by now — that millennials love watching videos on their phones and tablets.

The study also revealed some other surprising statistics: Despite the dominance of mobile devices, the big TV isn’t completely dead. Connected TV viewers spend 81% of their time watching videos longer than 10 minutes — including traditional TV.

But tablet viewers spent 23 percent of their time watching videos that were around half an hour (for sitcoms) or an hour (for TV series) — significantly more than on other devices.

The report reiterates that smartphones are meant for watching short videos, with those viewers spending 45% of their time watching videos that are under six minutes long.

However, short videos can be watched everywhere - videos of 1-3 minutes are the most played on any device. On PC, 31% of videos consumed are less than 1 minute.

Ooyala's report provides an interesting comparison between video viewing in Boston during a rainy April and a sunny June.

Conclusion: In the wonderful month of June, more videos were watched - including 23% more videos on smartphones and 10% on tablets. In the boring month of April, the total time spent watching videos increased significantly, with 40% of videos played on PCs, 10% on tablets, and 3% on mobile phones. Ostensibly because people may have stayed at home during this period. There is no scientific basis for this, just interesting.

Ooyala's statistics are derived from anonymous viewing habits measurement and billions of views from 239 countries. A quarter of Americans watch on the Ooyala player, but half of the player's traffic comes from distribution customers outside the United States, including ESPN, Caracol, Rolling Stone and Univision.

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