People Now Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets Than Desktops | TechCrunch

Viewer engagement by device

It perhaps is counter intuitive, but a new study by Ooyala suggests that people spend more time watching long-form video on their tablets, than on their PCs.


Even more surprising, there is evidence that smart phone users, on the smallest screens, might be watching video at levels approaching PC viewing.


In fact, the Ooyala study already shows that viewer "engagement," defined as the percentage of any bit of content that the user actually watched, is higher on smart phones than on desktop PCs or game consoles, both of which offer the biggest screens.

Granted, the Ooyala report does confirm that, given a choice, most people seem to prefer watching video on the biggest available screen. But what might be surprising is the amount of viewing on the "smallest" screen--the smart phone--so much of the time.

Tablet viewers watch for longer periods of time than viewers of desktops or mobile devices, and tend to watch more of any single bit of video as well.

For each minute watched on a desktop, tablets recorded “1:17 in played content”, which works out to 28 percent longer than the desktop average. People Watch Videos Nearly 30 Percent Longer On Tablets

That tablet viewers are more than twice as likely to finish a video than desktop users might be explained by the fact that much tablet use occurs "on a couch, rather than at a desk," meaning the user is in a more-relaxed setting without the "I'm at work" mindset.

The completion rate for tablet viewers was double what it was for desktop viewing, and is 30 percent higher than that of mobile devices. 


It is just a historical anecdote, but 30 years ago, the best and brightest video executives would have adamantly insisted that people would not watch entertainment video on small screens. But that was a long time ago. Before optical fiber changed fixed networks. Before most people had mobile phones, much less smart phones. Before 3G and 4G. Before digital video and video compression. Before high-definition video. Before the Internet and the Web. 


It's just a reminder that what seems true "now" might not have been true in the past, and might not be true in the future. 

Tablet Users Watch 30% More Video

Where it comes to online video consumption, device type matters. And it looks like tablets are shaping viewer behavior in new ways. Tablet users averaged nearly 30 percent more viewing time per play than those who watched on desktops, for instance, and they completed videos at double the desktop rate, according to data from Ooyala. 

Viewer engagement was generally higher on mobile devices than on desktops. Mobile viewers completed 75 percent of a long-form video at a rate of 20 percent, compared to 18 percent for desktops. As a general rule, device type heavily influences viewer engagement. In the third quarter of 2011, tablet viewers were the most engaged, while desktop and laptop viewers were relatively less engaged.

For each desktop viewer who completed a video, for instance, more than two viewers did the same while watching on a tablet. Across all plays, the video completion rate for mobile devices was slightly higher than that for connected TV devices and game consoles, as well.

In fact, the latest data suggests  viewers are turning to their tablets, mobile devices and especially their
connected TV devices and game consoles to watch medium- and long-form videos. You might think mobile users would watch shorter clips, while desktop PC users watch more long-form programming. That doesn't seem to be the case. 


Desktops or laptops are far more likely to be used to watch short clips, the Ooyala data suggests.  Videos shorter than three minutes, for instance, accounted for more than half (52 percent) of the hours of content viewed on desktops.


That same measure is 42 percent for mobile devices, 29 percent for tablets and just six percent for
connected TV devices and game consoles. 


By contrast, longer-form videos represent a bigger share of the hours played on non-desktop devices. Videos 10 minutes or longer accounted for 30 percent of the hours watched on mobile devices, 42 percent on tablets and nearly 75 percent on connected TV devices and game consoles, Ooyala reports. VideoMind Video Index