M+E Connections

Live streaming on IBM’s platforms is still heavily concentrated in the U.S., but the viewing audience is becoming increasingly broad geographically at the same time that more people are shifting to mobile devices for their online consumption, according to IBM data.

The enterprise live streaming audience is “getting more diverse” in terms of geography, Anthony Romero, product marketing manager at IBM company Ustream, said on a Jan. 24 webinar. He explained: “There’s more and more people watching this content from outside of North America.” He pointed to his company’s data that showed, in 2015, about 73% of enterprise viewers came from inside North America.

That figure dropped only slightly, to about 70.5%, in 2016, so the “vast majority” of viewers were still coming from inside the U.S., he said. “But it’s no longer as large as it was before” and we can see that people outside the U.S. are “starting to watch at an increasingly higher rate versus” people in the U.S., he said. He added that, from 2015 to 2016, enterprise live video traffic from outside the U.S. grew almost 93%.

There’s also a shift being seen in the kind of devices being used for live streaming, he went on to say. In terms of all streaming — which he defined as streaming by individuals and companies — in 2015, about 74% of people watched live streaming on their desktops, he said.

In contrast, only 25.7% of people viewed live streaming on mobile devices, according to IBM’s data.

Part of the reason for that was, he explained: “Live streaming content does need a pretty sturdy connection. It needs to be stable. It needs to be fast. You don’t want to be stuck with a scenario where you’re endlessly buffering and you’re actually missing live streaming content because your connection speed isn’t stable enough.”

Data for 2016, however, showed somewhat of a “different picture” in terms of device usage compared to 2015, he said. The percentage of viewers using desktops in 2016 decreased to 52.68%, while the percentage of them using mobile devices grew to 47.32%, according to IBM’s data. That’s a “pretty big shift” in just one year, he said, adding that it’s not quite a 50-50% split yet, but it’s “getting close.”

Mobile was “almost a non-factor” in the enterprise live streaming area alone in 2015, when desktops accounted for about 94% of live streaming in that sector, he said. Mobile was “almost a non-factor” in enterprise at that time, accounting for only 5.85% of live streaming, according to IBM’s data, he said.

There was, however, a “pretty dramatic shift” in 2016, with desktops slipping to about 71% of live enterprise streaming and mobile increasing to almost 29%, he said.
Meanwhile, the amount of viewing time for live streaming grew from 2015 to 2016 when it came to all streaming, he said. Viewers spent an average of 15.16 minutes live streaming on desktops and an average of 4.45 minutes on mobile devices in 2015, according to IBM’s data. That grew to 18.47 minutes for desktops and 6.57 minutes for mobile devices in 2016.

When it came to extended live stream viewing across all viewers, desktop was “still king” in 2016, Romero went on to say. People viewed live streams 240% longer on desktops than mobile devices in 2015 and that slipped to a still whopping 181% longer in 2016, according to IBM’s data.

Enterprise viewers tended to be “more engaged” with live streamed content than others, he also said, pointing to IBM data that showed enterprise viewers watched live streams more than 17% longer than other viewers.

The average video on demand (VOD) content, meanwhile, grew from 2015 to 2016, he said. The average VOD file grew from about 42 minutes and 280 MB to 62 minutes and 490 MB – a 48% increase in length and 75% increase in file size, he said.

The live streaming data was based on a combination of IBM cloud video and Ustream platform usage, he said. The company had to “sift through” a lot of data to come up with the conclusions it did, and a lot of the facts included in the webinar were made available for the first time, he said.

Romero projected that North American viewers will continue to make up the majority of live streaming enterprise viewers in 2017.

He also predicted there will be a continued “maturing” of the mobile market. Global mobile penetration grew from 61.1% in 2015 to 62.9% in 2016, and that is expected to grow to 64.5% in 2017, he said, citing third-party data and estimates.

He projected that mobile viewership will surpass that of desktop, but just “barely.” Desktop viewership will also continue to dominate in the enterprise space, he said. Time spent watching live video is expected to continue to grow as more content is broadcast live, he also said. In addition, he projected that desktop will continue to engage viewers for longer periods than mobile, but the gap between the devices will continue to decline.

Also, a rising but low 14% of marketers used live video in 2016 and 60% of professional marketers indicated they plan to increase their video spending in 2017, he said.
Enterprises need to use more highly engaging video content because people will be consuming more video than ever going forward, he went on to say.

By 2017, video will represent 74% of all online traffic, he said, again referring to a third-party projection. That is expected to grow to 80% by 2019, he said.