Streaming Video Changes the Way the Public Watches Popular Media

Streaming video has come a long way in the last 10 years. The amount of time that you had to wait to listen or watch anything downloaded was, most of the time, longer than the actual program you were going to watch. The dreaded buffering circle on your screen or the buffering percentage stuck on 66% for 15 minutes would drive views insane to the point where they would just leave and forget about the program. Now, streaming video has taken over the TV, movie, and radio business. With websites such as Youtube, Hulu, Metacafe, and Vimeo, you can pretty much watch any TV show ever made instantly on your computer with little to no waiting time. With the technology today, you can stream video to your smart phone, or even watch live broadcasts of SportsCenter or Monday Night Football straight from your phone. The increase in popularity of streaming video has changed how the public watches video, which in turn is changing the business of how it is distributed.

What is Streaming Video? 

Streaming video came into effect after the hassle of dialup’s slow internet connections. Downloading videos could take hours at a time to finish and became an annoyance to deal with. People wanted a faster way to view video’s from their computers to watch, TV shows, movies, and simple videos uploaded from individuals all over the world. Streaming video works by compressing a video file on the internet. Instead of having to download a whole file to watch something, video data is continuously being sent to your computer as you watch it. This enables you to watch your video right away. Once the compressed video is sent to your computer, a special program on your computer (software usually in your browser) uncompresses that file to be able to watch. This enables you to watch video instantly at your convenience. Whether you missed the latest episode of Lost, or a movie you do not want to go out and rent, streaming video enables you to access that show or movie instantly on your computer.

Streaming Video is Destroying the DVD Business. 

With the strong improvements of streaming video over the last couple of years, going out to rent a movie has become almost nonexistent. The hassle of leaving your home to go find a movie has become too much for the average consumer. The convenience of being able to go online and accessing your favorite show or move instantly is so appealing to the consumer that DVD rental businesses are struggling to stay afloat. In an article written by Jacqui Cheng on arstechnica.com, she states that “outside of Netflix and the online video niche, the trend can only mean bad things for physical media like traditional DVD and Blue-ray”. She goes on to say that customers are willing to settle for less quality video such as standard-definition on Netflix, or VOD instead of “walking to the corner Blockbuster or even waiting for a DVD in the mail from Netflix”. Customers want their product the fastest and most efficient way possible which is why streaming video from your TV or internet is the growing trend today. This trend has put many DVD rental businesses out of business and has opened up a new market for online businesses to thrive. With this trend, companies have had to make drastic changes. Netflix, a company who used to be a DVD business who mailed DVD’s to their consumer has had to change their business model to fit their consumer. Enabling consumers to rent their DVD’s online, they have seen a “26 percent increase in subscribers year-over-year and a 19 percent year-over-year growth in revenue” (Cheng). This has expanded into partnering with XBOX live as well as cable providers to enable customers to access movies not only from the internet, but directly to their TV, letting them view their desired content from whatever medium they wish. Streaming video has changed the way the public watches their video content. Moving away from physical DVD’s and other means of watching their favorite video content, online streaming makes it simple and instant for the consumer. With this exploding trend, it would not be surprising to see a complete end to the movie rental business, and see an expanding market in the online movie rental business.

 Cheng, Jacqui. "ArsTechnica." Ars Technica. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2012. .

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/01/streaming-video-cannibalizing-dvd-rentals-says-netflix/>.

Key Indicators for Advertisers choosing to implement their ads include Ratings and Shares:

Ratings and shares let producers, TV networks, and other people invested in specific shows know who and how many people are watching their show.  This enables them to know if their show is popular or not in regards to other shows on television.  Ratings are the percentage of people watching a program out of all possible TV households (with TV’s on or off).  Shares on the other hand are shown as the percentage of those actually using the televisions that are tuned into your station or network at a specific time.   

This information is so valuable to advertisers because they can see what their target audience is watching and how to reach them the most.  A great example of this is through taking a look at last Saturday’s tv ratings of college football.  Nielsen TV ratings reported that 4.01 million people tuned into the Wisconsin vs. Nebraska game on ABC, and 3.57 million people tuned into the Texas at Oklahoma State Game on FOX.  Of those games, viewers ages 18-48 had ratings of 1.2 and Share of 4 for ABC viewing, and a rating of 1.1 and Share of 4 for the FOX viewing (as seen below).

If you were an advertiser that wanted to reach the male audience, finding the demographic that you wanted to reach along with the ratings and shares of individual programs would be your first step into reaching them.  ESPN illustrates that TV programs such as college football attract and audience that is 94% male and 66% inbetween theage of 18 and 34 .  This information, along with the ratings and shares found above are a goldmine for advertisers for companies like Men's apparel stores, Truck companies, alcohol distributors and other companies geared toward men.  

To get to your consumer, you must understand and be able to analyze information about TV audiences.  This enables you to cut down costs and get directly to your consumer.  With this information, both consumers are receiving what they are interested in and advertisers are taking that opportunity and running with it.    

In today's world, TV can not be the only source of entertainment at the same time.  Now, 52% of men and women use their phones as other sources of entertainment while watching TV. Multi tasking has become the new normal when watching TV.  With 81% of people aged 18 to 24 using their cell phones while watching TV, our worlds are contently being updated by texts, Facebook messages, twitter posts, news, all while watching a program on TV.  Advertisers should take a more serious look at this trend as it will probably rise in the next couple of years to where over 75% of the whole population will be multi tasking between screens when watching TV.