Online video views rocket by 47% in UK

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 6 Jul 2009 at 17:27

The UK watched 4.7 billion online videos in April, an increase of 47% on the year before.

The comScore figures confirm a growing interest in bandwidth-intensive video, which is proving increasingly problematic for Britain's broadband providers.

Google's YouTube remains by far and away the biggest source of video, with 2.4 billion views in April. The BBC is in second place with 79 million, although the average viewing duration is likely to be far longer on the iPlayer than it is with the short video snippets YouTube is famous for.

The ITV sites saw an 102% increase in video views year-on-year, with ITV.com now offering streams of popular shows such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale, which it wasn't doing last April.

The figures will lend further ammunition to the broadband providers, who are beginning to demand recompense for the amount of video that's now flying over their networks.

Last month, BT suggested that the BBC should help meet the costs of the iPlayer, reigniting the debate over net neutrality in the UK.

""We can't give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect," said John Petter, managing director of BT Retail's consumer business.