Exclusives

Mobile video plays continued to grow in the fourth quarter of 2017 and could soon reach 70% of all online video played globally, according to Jim O’Neill, principal analyst at streaming video services provider Ooyala.

“Seventy percent is not that far off,” he said April 24 on a webinar that discussed the findings of Ooyala’s Q4 2017 Global Video Index report. “I don’t know that we’ll see it in the next quarter or two. But by the end of the year, I think there is a really good chance,” he predicted.

After all, mobile phone rates are more competitive now and “content is coming to mobile devices faster than ever,” he said.

Mobile sports had been expected to slow down the adoption of over-the-top (OTT) video services, he noted. But now sports leagues are looking to stream more content, especially to smartphones, “as a way to connect with millennials and even younger viewers,” he said.

Sports leagues are also looking to mobile as a way to “help improve the in-stadium experience” of sports fans, he said, adding they’re also hoping mobile streaming will bring more fans back to stadiums because most sports are seeing drop-offs in attendance.

He predicted sports will be a “catalyst of mobile’s next growth spurt, and I think it’s going to happen really quickly,” he said.

Mobile online video plays “moved past 60 percent” globally in Q4 “for the first time, garnering a 60.3 percent share of all video starts,” Paula Minardi, head of content strategy at Ooyala, said on the webinar.

Of those mobile video plays, smartphone plays grew 1.8% from a year ago to 47.5% and “they outnumbered tablet plays by a 4-to-1 margin,” she said, citing Ooyala’s data, which is made up of online video metrics of the vast majority of the company’s more than 500 customers. Tablet plays rose to 12.8% of all video plays, a 68% increase from a year ago, she said.

In the Asia-Pacific region, mobile’s share of all video plays topped 60% (at 60.5% this time) for the third straight quarter, an increase of 12% from a year earlier, she said. Asia-Pacific tablet plays grew 33% to just under 13% of all plays, according to Ooyala.

Ninety percent of mobile users across the Asia-Pacific region are using a smartphone to access the Internet on a daily basis, while 95% of tablet owners there use that device to access the Internet each day, O’Neill said.

But there’s “still a lot of room for growth” in that region because “mobile penetration is all over the board” there, he said. Although “mobile penetration flirts with 100 percent” in certain countries there — including South Korea and Hong Kong – penetration in other Asia-Pacific companies is below 10%, he noted. However, “there’s a lot of good signs pointing to continued adoption” of mobile video in the region, he said.

In the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, the mobile share of video plays grew more than 35% to reach 63.5% in Q4, according to Ooyala. Of those, tablet’s share of video plays grew to 15.8%, up 37% from a year earlier. The 15.8% share for tablets were the highest share for the device globally and one of the highest ever recorded, according to Ooyala.

In Latin America, mobile plays topped 56.3%, up 9% from a year ago. But that region had the lowest percentage of plays on tablets, at just 5.1%, Minardi said.

On the flip side, the 51.3% of video starts on smartphones there was the highest globally for the second-straight quarter, according to Ooyala.

O’Neill predicted mobile growth will expand quickly in Latin America and he wouldn’t be surprised to see it become the second region to top 70% in terms of mobile video plays, after Asia Pacific, he said.

In North America, mobile plays surged in November and December, surpassing 57.6% for Q4, an increase of 11% from a year earlier, according to Ooyala. The 57.6% marked the region’s highest share ever for mobile devices. Meanwhile, tablet plays there increased 32% from a year earlier, with a 10.8% share of all plays.

“North America has been our problem child as far as mobile adoption,” O’Neill said. But the market is catching up to other regions, he said, noting 92% of 18-29 year-olds own smartphones there and a “rising number” of older adults are buying them also now. About 75% of U.S. adults now own smartphones, he pointed out, calling North America a “strong market” that will “get a lot stronger” for mobile penetration.

In terms of overall engagement trends, long-form content more than 20 minutes 
“continued to dominate time watched on all devices” in Q4, Minardi said.

Smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and PCs all saw time watched for medium- and long-form content top 50% in Q4, while about 50% of time watched on connected TVs, tablets and smartphones was long-form content, according to Ooyala. But long-form content viewed on PCs – at 37% — reached its lowest point since the first quarter of 2016, when it was just 35%. On the other hand, short-form content time watched on PCs climbed to 50%, the most of any device, according to Ooyala.

“What we’re seeing is the evolution of both smartphones and PCs to be the two devices that consumers graze on to discover content and, once they discover that content, they either watch it on a tablet or they watch it on a connected television” for a larger-screen experience, O’Neill said.

Meanwhile, getting content through the supply chain quickly and efficiently, to as many markets as possible, has become increasingly important for content executives, he also said, adding: “I think that we’re going to see a lot more pressure to get more content out, more quickly and more effectively.”