One in seven people on the planet and one in three people in the United States and Europe watch video content delivered by online and mobile platforms and players each month. These findings are from JW Player's first quarterly JW Trends in Online Video report, which looks at the state of online video across six continents.

Unlike studies that focus only on the top 10 to 20 video sites in the United States, JW Player's data is representative of the global "long tail" of video, millions of international publishers around the world comprised of small, medium and large video sites. Key insights from the report include:

Global audience insights

- Digital video content publishers represent a truly global community, with more than 80% of JW Player's publisher streams delivered to viewers outside of the United States.

- More than 75% of international viewing across 193 countries is concentrated among audiences in Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China, Brazil, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Canada and Japan.

- Video time watched per person is highest in Europe, averaging 34 minutes per viewer, followed by 32 minutes in North America, 30 minutes in Asia and 14 minutes in Africa.

How we watch

- Tablet users watch the most video per month (40 minutes), followed by desktop (30 minutes) and mobile phones (20 minutes); however, the growing trend toward larger phones could quickly increase viewing time on these devices.

- Progressive video file downloads on the web comprise more than 60% of plays (MP4 format), but streaming is growing fast at approximately 25%. Adaptive streaming consists of significant usage for both Apple HLS and Adobe HDS.

- Google Chrome dominates video delivery on desktop browsers, and Apple's Safari dominates video on tablet browsers, while the two remain head to head for video on mobile devices.

A viewer in the US is worth six from England

- Relative to the United States, UK and Canada, video monetization is considerably smaller in Europe and Asia. In the US, preliminary data indicates approximately 20 video ads (10 minutes) per hour are watched vs. four video ads (two minutes) per hour watched in Europe.

- Video ads per unit of time per continent correlate with market data showing video ad monetization per online user in the US is $14.50 vs. $2.50 in Europe, a factor of six difference. In the US, broadcast TV runs at 16 minutes of ads per hour watched, much greater than online video. The data highlights the opportunity to monetize video even more in the US and abroad.

- Pre-roll video ads are highly popular (85%) vs. mid- and post-roll formats (<15%) with open standards video advertising (VAST), accounting for 90% of all video ads.

The report also tracked JW Player's growth over six months from May through October of 2014, during which time monthly video streams tripled from 4.3 billion to 13.6 billion, monthly ad impressions doubled from 1.4 billion to 3.3 billion and time watched increased from 16 billion to 28 billion minutes watched.

After introducing autoplay video, Facebook recently reported a 14.5% monthly growth rate for video views. JW Player's monthly stream growth over a comparable period was 21% to 50 % higher than Facebook's. In addition, monthly video streams for JW Player are greater than the top 100 YouTube channels combined.

The data from JW Player's global network of connected players processed by this pipeline handles a "video firehose" of 25,000 video events per second, equivalent to 1.5 million events a minute, 100 million events an hour and 2.5 billion events a day.

Story filed 02.01.14