Recent research from Nielsen shows that in May, unique visitors, total streams, streams per viewer, and time per viewer were all up compared to the same month in 2008. There was a 49% increase in time per viewer.

According to Nielsen, YouTube was way on top in video streams (with over 6 billion during the month) and unique viewers (95 million). Behind YouTube were Hulu, Yahoo, Fox Interactive Media, and ABC.com.

That was the past. What About the Future?

Cisco recently shared some interesting predictions (via Ben Worthen at the WSJ) of its own looking at the future of online video. Stats from this research include:

- Internet traffic will increase fivefold over the next five years, driven in large part by a jump in the amount of video transmitted

- Over 90% of traffic will come from video (including TV, video on demand, or file sharing)

- Video chat will increase tenfold between 2008 and 2013

- the amount of data flowing to mobile devices will double each year, increasing 66 times by 2013, with video being the fastest growing category.

Another reason why online video will likely continue to grow in a big way is that HTML 5 is continuing its path toward wide acceptance. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica has a fascinating piece on what this will mean for online video and rich media.

"A growing number of prominent companies that deliver content and services on the Web are putting their weight behind HTML 5 and touting it as the way forward for building interactive Web applications and deploying rich media in the browser," he says. "Video is one of the most significant areas where this trend will have a major impact. "

"For content providers like YouTube and DailyMotion, the HTML 5 video element offers numerous advantages," he explains. "It integrates seamlessly with conventional HTML content and can be manipulated with JavaScript and CSS. This enables Web developers to build video player interfaces that are more consistent with the rest of their website. The ability to control playback with JavaScript allows video to be a more native part of the user experience in interactive Web applications."

There’s no doubt that there are big things on the horizon for online video as a medium. Just how quickly it has grown thus far may be a little overstated though. Christophor Rick of video marketing firm ReelSEO talks about a study from Trendstream that calls online video the fastest-growing media platform in the history of media. That might be going a little overboard.

"Now they say that online video has only been around for three years (or maybe Mediapost said that) but I beg to differ," says Rick. "Online video was pioneered by the pornography industry way before YouTube showed up (which was 2005). Sure, many might not want to admit it but honestly, porn drove internet technology innovation for a long time. So that means the numbers seem to be slightly skewed."

"The heart of the matter is this – online video is rapidly expanding," he says. "Since its initial inception maybe a decade or more ago it has obviously become the media du jour online….So is video the wave of the future for online entertainment? Well, isn’t it the current wave we’re all riding already? Will that stop? No, probably not. Will it grow? Yes, without a doubt. Will more people upload, watch, share, create, comment on, Twitter, or otherwise talk about online video? Absolutely."

I think Rick’s conclusion is the main take away from all of this. You can probably fit online video into your budget whether you realize it or not. You can use video to improve your ranking and conversions, and as long as YouTube is top dog in the industry (not to mention the 2nd largest search engine), there are plenty of ways to use it to help your online business.

Content and Reputation

Bad videos are a turn off for viewers. They must have value. Otherwise they’ll be viewed as a waste of time. If viewers see your videos as a waste of time, this is generally going to equate to wasted time on your part as well, and chances are that you put a whole lot more time into your videos than any viewer will. But even worse, if your videos are perceived as a waste of time by viewers, it’s going to reflect negatively on your brand, or at the very least upon your ability to offer useful and informative content.

Remember, while the rise in online video popularity is certainly evident, many people would just as soon obtain the information they’re looking for with text. In fact, this is a good reason to offer truly unique content with your videos. Developing a reputation for having solid unique content with them will give people a reason to watch them. The best videos provide a user experience that simply can’t be duplicated in text.

Robert Scoble cited a good example in a recent post. "Text is easier to consume. Easier to search. All that stuff. But here, let’s try something. You take 1,000 words to explain to me what the next game from EA looks like. I’ll do it in a minute or two of video. The video will beat your blog every time," he declares.

Length is often a factor. As a rule, people generally do not want to watch lengthy videos unless they are either entertaining or truly useful to them. From a business standpoint, I believe you are going to have greater success with making the content as useful as possible in as little amount of time as possible.

Video Usability

Grantastic Designs Founder Grant Crowell writing for ReelSEO has a great article/podcast on web video usability. He discusses the need for video providers to have some kind of usability standards. In his article, Crowell talks about some factors that should be taken into consideration when providing video content:

– Location
– Features
– Testing

By location, he means, where it is being viewed. Is it being viewed on a website or in a stand-alone player? Is it on your own site or is it being viewed in an embedded player on someone else’s? Do you even offer the ability to embed your videos?

Apart from embedding availability, features of the video include things like the player itself, the navigation of that player, accessibility, search, image and audio quality, length, content, speed (buffering), conversions, and completion. Videos should also be tested. This means: lab testing, user testing, and analytics.

Engagement and Google

In Crowell’s article, he also talks about the engagement factor of videos. Being how user-engagement is of growing importance (and will likely continue to be as SERPs evolve), I wanted to hear some more of his thoughts on this, so I contacted him and we had a little chat. Following is what came of that:

Chris Crum: You refer to engagement as an active state, and I agree, but what kind of actions do you expect videos to inspire? Comments? Conversions?

Grant Crowell: The actions ultimately depend on the business model of the video owner. But the potential with video is far greater at engagement and conversions than with static content. The first step is getting attention. After that it can serve as a direct response or lead, or buzz (going viral), or branding.

Even within the video, you can have several calls-to-action, all clickable and with additional actionable items from them. (See our latest video interview at ReelSEO on Mixpo, for more on this.

"Conversions" can be both mini and macro, depending again on what are the business objectives of the video owner. A comment could likely be a mini-conversion. A hundred comments and 3rd party link popularity and buzz, well that could be a macro-conversion.

CC: SEO Bruce Clay recently speculated that as SERPs evolve, videos might make a difference in ranking. For example if two competing businesses have content of basically equal value, but only one of them has video, the one with video might be favored. How important do you think it’s going to be for businesses to offer some kind of video content on their sites?

GC: Video itself can be given an almost "unfair advantage" in the SERPs. We’ve demonstrated that at ReelSEO with how we’re able to have our own image icons show up from our videos for search results — directly from our ReelSEO.com site (not YouTube). I’ve even done a case study to show how [in] a video series I did on YouTube, the targeted keywords had my image icons show up higher that the entire local and regional media stories.

I believe the search engines, especially Google, consider video to have higher engagement potential than static content. Even when the external link popularity may not be great, just putting up new regular videos can show up right away, and at the top, of search results. I’ve seen it happen many times before

This is something that can be heavily abused however, it’s a weak spot with the search engines for determining quality standards of relevancy around video.

It is extremely important for businesses to offer video content on their own sites, both for search visibility and usability purposes. (Search visibility I would consider to be a part of usability, too.)

Not just on their own site, but [also] popular and relevant video sharing sites. There are websites starting to come out that are behaving a little more like video hubs for the SMB crowd. ragantv.com is one such example for the B2B audience. For the B2C audience, eHow and howcast.com are good examples.

But the issue of usability is a tricky one since there are no real standards yet for both content and delivery.

I want to thank Grant for taking the time to talk to me about this (emphasis added), and I think he had some very interesting things to say that should encourage those looking to break into online video or expand their efforts. Grant’s company Grantastic Designs has been in the search marketing game for a long time, and he is clearly well-versed in the ways of search.