Comments on: Mobile Video or Audio? Place Your bets.

By: McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Business Observations: September 25, 2008 Edition

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:05:48 +0000

[...] Mobile Video or Audio? Place Your bets. [...]

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:32:02 +0000

Giff

Thanks for the comment.

I agree it seems pretty high to me. But not totally out of line with common sense.

For starters, many US people are on fixed rate data plans, so the click-fear in other markets doesn’t exist in the same way. If you see a video you like you click on it.

I also suspect that video consumption is in sushi size bites, rather than one or two longer sessions. That would mean around 6 min per day, which seems believable.

I’d be willing to bet though, that the vast majority of this consumption has nothing to do with conventional programming broadcast to mobile.

Russell

By: Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS

Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:39:07 +0000

Russell,

How do you respond to the surveys by folks such as Nielsen and pushed by Fierce Mobile that claim:

“While Americans spend 2 hours, 19 minutes per month viewing video online, they now spend 3 hours, 15 minutes per month watching video content on mobile devices. Nielsen adds that as of the first quarter of 2008, 91 million Americans (roughly 36 percent of all U.S. mobile phone subscribers) now own a video-capable phone. Teens ages 13 to 17 are the most avid mobile video consumers, watching 5 hours, 25 minutes per month–adults ages 25 to 34 screen 3 hours, 36 minutes of mobile video per month, but adults ages 55 to 64 view just 2 hours, 10 minutes a month.”

These numbers just seem way out of line to me. The average US mobile subscriber spending 3+ hours a month watching mobile video?

Would welcome your thoughts on this and other surveys that continue to be published.

By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:11:18 +0000

As Mike says, the idea that consumers would be interested in linear, time-locked programming on mobile when it’s something they’re moving away from on other screens is puzzling. Part of the problem with mobile TV/video IMO is that it’s largely siloed off from other video content. I don’t want to have access to “mobile video”, I want access to my video and the content I’m interested in — ie my DVR recordings, full choice of YouTube or other web video, and my relevant live channels when I want them. For instance, if I have all the ESPN channels at home, I want access to content from them on my mobile, not only access to some hacked-down mobile-specific channel with limited and unattractive content. Why can’t I access any of the content on any of my screens? Giving users full choice should be the ultimate goal.

Of course, somebody will pop up to say that networks couldn’t support all this traffic, and they’re right… but this technical hurdle won’t make an unattractive, but technically feasible, service successful.

By: Steven Hoober

Steven Hoober — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:39:03 +0000

I can buy this. Makes sense from a personal use point of view and some anecdotal info and poor data I have on churn off video services.

My favorite example is one way NPR has recently started offering “mobile content” to everyone, thru their member stations. Dial a number (visible on the local station a a banner) and you get the NPR service as an IVR. Press a number to listen to… pretty much the radio broadcast. With advertising interstitials.

Yes, only really good for voice, but that’s brilliant to me. Use the voice channel, for voice content. Neat, simple.

If you wanna try it out, here’s our local station’s access number:
816-398-8439