GROWTH IN ONLINE VIDEO PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION DRIVING CONTESTS

Tack on one more “Life Certainty” to Death and Taxes—that being, Gen Y loves to watch, send and produce videos. Go ahead, just Google “video contests” ... we got 3,570,000 results.

Also, YouTube’s Video Contest channel is chalked full of various brand-centric video contests. Why so many? Because now there are three things certain in life—death, taxes and Gen Y loves to watch, send and produce videos!

In fact, we’ve seen two notable “user-generated” video contests right here in Credit Union World. First came Fairfax County Credit Union, which announced its user-generated ad contest winner a couple months back.

And now Tinker Federal Credit Union’s “WhatMoneyMeansToMe” $2,000 video contest scholarship is taking entries (ProjectNewAge.com will keep you apprised of the results). Smart organizations and brands are figuring out that Gen Y loves to watch, send and produce videos.

But it’s not just Gen Y consuming and sharing online video. Today, nearly half of ALL Internet users have visited video-sharing sites (such as YouTube), and daily traffic to these sites have nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007 (according to the Pew Internet).

Here are some other key Web video-related findings:

-48% of Internet users said they had visited a video-sharing site, compared with 33% who said so at the end of 2006 (a growth of more than 45% year over year).

-Percentage of women who have visited a video-sharing site is up from 27% in Dec. '06 to 43% in Dec. '07 (an increase of 59%).

-70% of Gen Y’ers age 18-29 have visited video-sharing sites as of Dec. 07 (up 27% from the year-earlier period's 55%).

-The greatest increase among age groups comes from those aged 50-64: the number of visitors increased from 19% to 30% (up 58%).

-Some 15% said they had used a video-sharing site "yesterday," nearly double the 8% who had said so at the end of 2006.

-About 30% of online young adults and 20% online men watch a video on sites like YouTube on a typical day.

-Among women, average daily usage was up from 5% to 11% (an increase of 120%).

-Among those age 30-49 typical daily usage increased from 7% to 14% (an increase of 100%).

-Some 22% of Americans have made videos, and 14% of them have posted at least portions of those videos online - more than triple the percentage of those who said they had done so when surveyed in February-April 2006.

ProjectNewAge suggests during your next member (and prospective member) research project, asking questions about online video use. The more you know about your members’ (Gen Y, Gen X and Boomers) online activities, the better you can integrate New Media into your marketing mix.