According to Nielsen online video viewing in the United States is now over three hours a month to 169 minutes a month on average. Those numbers are significant, but the bigger part of the analysis to me is

“Since the number of minutes per user is increasing at a faster rate than the number of videos per user, that means people are gradually moving to longer and longer videos–from 2.4 minutes in February to 2.7 minutes in March.”

Which means long form video (like Hulu) is really starting to catch on.

When it comes to web video length , I’ve always said the shorter the better with a sweet spot being around 60 to 90 seconds. Video 2 Zero has taken an interesting look at  how long people will watch web video analyzing audience attention span coming to the conclusion that ideal run-time for web video 2.5 – 4 minutes. I know that will be a relief to any video producers out there, because it is rare to find a producer (and I used to be one pre-web) who can say anything in less than 90 seconds.

For their analysis six top video sites (excluding YouTube) let Video 2 Zero  have access to their statistics for two weeks giving them 188,055 videos, totaling 22,724,606 streams to break down.

I got a new Blackberry Bold and it is compatible with the qik live video streaming service so you can check out my latest live video on my qik page or follow me on twitter and check in live whenever you see the live streaming note.

The video quality is decent (320 x 240) for the web, but it is dependent on the quality of the video camera/lens on your cell phone and the speed of your data connection on the cell phone.

When I worked at the newspaper, we played around a lot with qik and it just came available for Blackberries that have video camera built it in– also, it works a lot better on phones with a 3G connection that have a faster data service.

NYTimes.com general manager, Vivian Schiller, reports that their slide show section has taken off accounting for 10 percent of their overall August traffic.

Note to self: Add video AND slide shows to the site.

Which one do you think will be easier to produce?

The Lost Remote TV blog discussed two new online advertising technologies that I want to point out to you.

First, YouTube is finally going to start putting ads in the video using video overlay ads. The new semi-transparent ads will cover the lower fifth of the screen and disappear after 10 seconds. Hopefully, other video sites will follow their lead and help kill pre-roll video commercials.

Second, Facebook is trying to monetize their traffic and huge database of info about it’s members by working on a new advertising approach that puts ads in their user’s news feeds based on user criteria such as age, gender, location, favorite activities and preferred music, to name a few. Advertisers love specifically targeting their ads with lots of demographic data because they get more bang for the bucks and sites love selling targeted ads because they can charge a whole lot more for them.

The Pew Internet and the American Life Project released a report yesterday on Technology and media usage. The report revealed that 59 percent of adults online have watched video and 19 percent of adults online watch video on a typical day. That’s a huge market for online video and why entertainment TV producers and local TV broadcasters should be jumping on the web video wagon to protect their market share.

Interestingly, if you look deep enough at their numbers you will see that adoption of broadband video is driving adult usage of online video.

Brian Storm of mediaStorm, MSNBC fame is now conducting an online seminar for Apple explaining how to create a rich media podcast with Final Cut Pro.

“I guess when Viacom and CBS split up, CBS got the IQ.”

- Jeff Jarvis commenting on Viacom’s vs. CBS’s response to Youtube. Basically, CBS is asking YouTube to take down all unauthorized video and replacing it with an official copy of whatever video that was taken down to help build buzz around a central video clips rather than several unauthorized clips. On the otherhand Viacom is suing YouTube for having a business model that actually benefits from following the notice and take down provisions of the DMCA.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration revealed the details of it’s digital TV converter box subsidy that will allow every US household two apply for two $40 coupons to defray the cost of the converter box. The boxes are expected to cost between $50 and $70 a piece. The goal of the vouchers is a seamless shift to digital television by February 19, 2009.

The reason the feds are giving this subsidy is because the conversion to digital TV is a government mandate, not a market driven decision.

This year all the TV networks are promoting their websites and advertising the fact that you can visit their sites and watch their shows online. I’ve really ignored this facet of online video because I really don’t have the time to go watch an hour long TV shows on the Internet.

Last week, we DVRed Lost and our local TV station was running about 15 minutes late and we ended up not recording the last 15 minutes it (which I was really upset about). While watching another program, we saw a promo for watching Lost on ABC’s website. So, we went to their web site to check it out. Overall, I was very impressed with the quality of the flash video and we only had to watch one short 30 second commercial. The site was very useful for catching the last 10 minutes of the show, but I still don’t think I’ll be regular tuning in via my web browser.