APAC watched a whole lot of mobile video in Q4 2015, says Ooyala

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

ITEM: New stats from Telstra video subsidiary Ooyala indicate that APAC in general – and Singapore in particular – is dominating mobile video viewing worldwide.

The word “dominating” requires a slight qualifier. According to Ooyala’s Q4 2015 Global Video Index, overall mobile video accounted for 43% of all video views in APAC in Q4. That’s slightly below the world average of 46%.

However, five APAC markets – Singapore (55%), Australia (53%), Japan (50%), Indonesia (49%) and South Korea (47%) – are above both the world and regional average. Thailand (at 44%) is slightly above the APAC average.

The Ooyala report credits Asia’s appetite for mobile video partly to the fact that more people in the region use mobile than fixed-line to access video in the first place. But another key factor is higher tablet usage in the region, Ooyala says:

Where tablet views make up just one out of every seven mobile views in the rest of the world, they make up one of every five in APAC countries.

From the report:

In all, tablets had one third or more of the views compared to smartphones in nearly half (46%) of the 15 countries studied in the APAC region. In the Philippines, there was one view on a tablet for every two views on a smartphone. New Zealand and Australia had similar ratios.

In the ROW, video views on tablets made up just 14% of all mobile video views. It’s no surprise that ZenithOptima contends the region has the highest tablet penetration in the world. Hong Kong is the world’s leader, ZenithOptima said, with tablet penetration rates at 77% and rising to an expected 91% by 2018. Singapore is at 64% with growth expected to reach 82% by 2018.

The report also breaks down device usage for video viewing by the length of the video content. For long–form content (defined as video longer than 10 minutes), smartphones accounted for 55% of time watched in Q4 in APAC. For tablets, the share of time watched was nearly 65%. Desktops were a distant third at 43%. On the other hand, desktops accounted for 54% of views for content shorter than 6 minutes.

From the numbers, Ooyala stipulates that screen size does tend to be a determining factor in how long people will watch:

Still, as in the ROW, the size of the screen does appear to matter as content gets longer, especially for the longest content segment of 60 minutes and up. Connected TVs (CTV) score a 45% share of time watched, compared to just 19% for tablets and 13% for smartphones. For content between 30 and 60 minutes, CTVs again are the leader at 44%, but tablets (34%) and smartphones (31%) also play well at that length.

Globally, total share of long-form viewing on connected TVs grew to 74% in 2015, which works out to 72% annual growth. Long-form content represented just over half of the viewing share on tablets in Q4 2015, versus 38% on desktops, and 31% on mobile.

And for those of you thinking, “Yes, but is there any money in this?”, Ooyala also says that programmatic advertising is still rising consistently. The number of Deal-ID transactions (prearranged trades sold programmatically) increased from 10.1 million in Q3 2015 to 26.3 million in Q4, representing a 160% increase quarter-over-quarter, Ooyala says:

This marks the third consecutive quarter that Deal-ID transactions increased more than 150 percent. Additionally, the number of active programmatic marketplaces increased by 21 percent throughout Ooyala’s customer base in Q4, driving more demand and therefore higher CPMs, also increasing 26 percent quarter-over-quarter.

You can download the full report here for details.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Video · Wireless