Online Video Accounts for Half of All Internet Traffic Tablets preferred over smartphones for viewing. Plus, expert shares insights on global financial market woes

 

If you think web-based video is everywhere, you’re not alone. Experts say online video accounts for more than half of all Internet traffic today and nearly 800 million people consumed watched at least one Web videos last year. That rate of adoption will likely double in the next 12 months according to networking services firm, Cisco, Inc.

According to Cisco, Web connected devices such as tablets, phones, game consoles, and TV sets, etc. are driving the surge in video consumption. Cisco claims that by 2016, HD streams to TV sets will grow six-fold, accounting for 6 percent of all worldwide consumer Web traffic.

However, this is chump change compared to mobile video consumption on tablets and phones. Cisco says mobile video traffic will grow 18-fold between 2011-2016, while the number of worldwide mobile users will reach 1.6 billion – a projected six-fold increase over 2011.

The Cisco report also claims that close to one-third of all Web traffic will come from devices other than the PC by 2016.

Tablet owners watching a lot more video than smart phone

Meanwhile, new findings from Rhythm New Media suggest that people prefer tablets to smartphones for watching online video. Depending on the mobile app, researchers say users watched from 50 percent to 175 percent more videos on tablets than they did on smartphones in Q1. However, because smartphones are more ubiquitous than tablets, they still account for the vast majority of time spent watching mobile video—79 percent versus 21 percent for tablets on premium properties.

Macro view

OUR TAKE: Domestically, manufacturing activity picked up a little bit according to the Institute of Supply Management, despite disappointing data on the employment and housing fronts. The equity markets are giving back most of the gains they accrued over the first five months of the year, but inflation and interest rates are still at historic lows. We think it’s still time to be cautiously optimistic about your own investments in advertising, hiring and infrastructure. Just pick your spots carefully.

Even those of you in small to midsize enterprises are really operating in a global economy however. For a global perspective, it’s too complicated for us, so we turned to our friend Paul Brian Gibson, of Norwalk, Conn-based Harborview Capital Management, LLC.
 

While the media has been filled with European headlines the last two months they have ignored the very poor data from China, Gibson told us Friday. “The reason oil has dropped 20 percent over the last few weeks is not Europe, it’s China, as the marginal buyer of the world’s commodities. Today’s official manufacturing PMI from China underscores the larger problems China faces--large decline in real estate prices, big drops in money supply, stagnating loan growth, declining rail activity and electricity usage. Chinese officials are wary of a major 2008 style stimulus that created the current bubbles in real estate and commodity prices.  The bubbles are not just in China, but in the commodity producing nations like Australia, Canada and Brazil.” 

Gibson said Europe has severe problems, but without crisis there will not be real reform. “Prepare for more downside in the risk markets, with the commensurate bounces in periods of severely oversold conditions until that real reform occurs, with support at that point, and only then, from the ECB and other central banks.”

Conclusion
Whether you’re talking about traditional media, new media, social media or the financial markets, you and your customers are connected globally for better or worse.  It’s never been easier to stay connected—but it’s never been harder to insulate yourself.

Winners in the global economy are not only the ones who are faster and more adaptable, but the ones who can see through a 360-degree lens (regardless of where that lens is manufactured).

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TAGS: ECB, European Central Bank, Paul Brian Gibson, Harborview Capital Management, Cisco, Rhythm New Media