Comscore says Americans watched 11 Billion videos in April. Nearly 75% of Americans with Internet access watched at least one video. The "average" user watched 82 videos. Average length was 3 minutes. Hmm...I guess I am way below average.
John Paczkowski at AllThingsD says most of those 11 billion videos were unmonetized.
Mark Cuban says Hulu is making more money at video than YouTube. Although Hulu is tiny by comparison, they are better able to monetize their traffic...and use YouTube as a traffic generator.
Google / YouTube streamed over 4 Billion videos. Hulu wasn't even in the top 10. This is a case where bigger isn't better. My guess is that 5th place Viacom made way more profit on their videos than YouTube made streaming 20 times as many videos. Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in a recent interview that they haven't yet figured out how to effectively monetize YouTube.
Video is incredibly expensive to host on servers and stream out to users. YouTube is loading 10 hours of video every minute of every day. Imagine how much storage and bandwidth it takes to handle that. The costs are staggering. The revenues? Not so much.
Andrew Chen asks "where are all the video startups on this list?" Simple answer Andrew, the online video business is way too expensive for any startup to compete on volume. Every company on this list is a huge media company because the costs of creating, hosting, streaming, and audience building is enormously expensive. Well beyond the means of any startup. However, there is a place for clever startups like Hip Mojo. Small is beautiful...and profitable.
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