Younger Viewers are Shifting from TV to YouTube

Posted On
11/03/2007

Younger Viewers are Shifting from TV to YouTube

According to Advertising Age magazine, younger viewers are moving to the computer screen perhaps a bit faster than anyone thought. With younger adults, only 23% strongly agree that they prefer to watch TV rather than online video. Nearly 30% of the 12-64 year old population report that the PC is cutting seriously into their TV time. What does this mean?

It means that if you’re a producer or programmer, options like Joost, podcasting, YouTube, IPTV, and other venues should be part of your mix NOW. Don’t wait until the big switch has happened. Start to build your online brand and presence NOW. I believe TV will always be around, but there’s no question that alliances and viewing habits are changing. Don’t get into the PC vs. TV battle. Maintain a strong brand in both media to reach to widest possible audience.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Brian Sinks

I started an account with YouTube 2 weeks ago (http://www.youtube.com/bsinks01). My first video was a re-edit of a TV program for a New York singer/songwriter's demo (yes, we have permission). In just over a week there was over 300 viewings. I've now added several videos of other ministries and clients.

If you use YouTube I'd like to pass on a couple suggestions:

- Your video needs to be under 10 minutes.

- Your video is converted to a Flash video file. If you don't have the ability to render your video to Flash directly the best video file type, that encodes on YouTube with the least artifacts, is WMV. Avoid MOV, MPEG1/2, AVI. Best render settings are WMV, 320×240, 4:3, 512K stream or 3-5mbps. This will keep your video under the required 100MB limit for upload. Mike Jones wrote a great article "Getting the best from YouTube" you can Google to find more information.

- Make sure to take the time to list as many tags as possible. When viewers type words for searches they are more likely to find your video.
http://www.kingdomjournalism.com/ Steve K.

Phil, Have you heard that GodTube (the "Christian YouTube") is now the #1 fastest growing site on the entire Internet?! 4 million unique visitors just last month! See this report: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582372/ …

I confess I was pretty skeptical about GodTube, but my "wait and see" position on it has now changed — I've set up an account on GodTube and I plan to create a channel there to mirror the one already up on YouTube (www.youtube.com/siminternational).

With an audience that size, every Christian ministry/org needs to start paying attention to GodTube, wouldn't you agree?
Phil

Depends on what you want to do with your media projects. The title of the article you linked to is: “Christians tuning into thriving GodTube.com.” That’s CHRISTIANS. So if you’re creating media for believers, that’s great. Upload to GodTube all day long. But if you want to reach a wider audience or the non-believing audience, then that wouldn’t be the place for you.
http://www.chrisbusch.com Chris

As media fragments, communicators who want to multiply through media must fragment with it as long as it makes economic sense. At this point, online video warehouses like YouTube and GodTube make a lot of sense economically. Use either or both depending on what your goals happen to be. Here's where knowing your purpose can help. A lot of Internet usage has been "me too!" without regard to any particular strategy. And, when you catch a wave, you can enjoy a modicum of success without being very strategic. But it helps to have a purpose in mind for your online video postings.

I believe the Internet is still in its infancy and is becoming more of a medium for creative communicators rather than being dominated by IT types. Internet video has finally reached a stage where it is generally not too painful to view and the quality will continue to improve. So I agree with Phil (as much as it pains me to say that), start now with an online video presence and continuously improve it. Start with YouTube and/or GodTube. You'll get more direction and ideas after you get started.

Brian's comments above about tagging are important. A key skill to develop to maximize your online efforts is selecting the best keywords and tags.
Brian Sinks

Thanks, Chris.

I also wanted to add that YouTube, though the most popular now, is in danger of being passed over down the line if they don't stay relevent with technology (especially with video professionals). There's pressure on them by many because of their re-encoding process. They want wider support and more choices for their media: other video codecs supported, 16:9, some type of HD (AVCHD, WMV-HD). If they don't there are others who do that are gaining momentum like BlipTV, Revver, and Metacafe. I've decided to try YouTube now but I'm keeping my eyes open.

Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35)
Anthony Peterson

You Tube highlights the fact that there is alot of consumer demand out there thats not being met by traditional broadcasters. Similarly, Google has demonstrated that theres about 5 Billion dollars of advertising demand for localised niche advertisers not serviced by traditional media.

I suspect that once prime time network TV broadcasts can be customised and sponsored on a Zip code level then this will plug into Church's business models and unleash a lot of untapped demand.

Most churches budgets for reaching specific zip codes exceed major national advertisiers budgets for reaching a specific zip code. Analogue television cant tap into this demand, but in theory digital TV can.

I predict a massive renaissance in free to air TV in a few years time once these technological issue are sorted out.

Phil Cooke

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Younger Viewers are Shifting from TV to YouTube

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