matt - Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
If there were ever a television show that is in itself an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), then Lost is it. This is a series that extends it’s presence beyond it’s weekly broadcast with numerous sites that offer clues or breakdowns into the show on a weekly basis.
What caught my eye though is just how popular Lost is online – and I’m only referring to the number of people streaming episodes and and other relevant Lost content.
This Variety article has a good breakdown of the eye-popping numbers:
“ABC’s island drama accounted for 35.8 million video streams of full-length episodes, clips and other shortform content viewed by 1.4 million unique viewers during the month of March”
Wow. And that’s just Lost. And for a show that isn’t even in the Top 20 Nielsen ratings for Broadcast TV. Looking at the overall numbers for content streamed online shows an even bigger WOW:
“Overall, online video viewing continues to grow apace in the U.S. In all, 130 million unique users watched 9.7 billion streams, with the number of streams up nearly 39% from March 2008 and up nearly 9% from February’s benchmark.”
Finally, for the ultimate WOW:
“The average length of time that viewers spend watching online video is also growing — from an average of 169.3 minutes per viewer in February to 190.3 minutes in March”
These numbers are showing that Online Video viewing is accelerating at a breakneck pace and will hopefully usher in the era of Interactive Video Ads sooner than projected.
And if you’re still convinced that Broadcast TV and Ads are the future…well then I’ll let the image below speak for itself…
