French spend 13% of online time with video

First it was surfing and then social networking. The latest online trend is for users to watch online video. According to a recent comScore study, users in France spend 13% of their online time with streaming video.

by Kristina Knight

According to the study, 79% of French surfers initiated a video stream in April. France has the second-highest percentage of streaming video viewers; UK users stream slightly more (80%). Meanwhile users in the US are the third-highest streamers (76%), followed by Germany (70%).

“With almost 8 out of 10 people initiating a stream in France, video streaming is clearly mainstream, with a user base that is comparable to search, email and shopping,” stated Delphine Gatignol, business development manager for comScore France. “What is particularly striking is that French Internet users tend to spend a greater proportion of their total time online viewing streaming video compared to the other countries examined in the study.”

The average viewer in France initiated 64 individual streams compared with 80 for UK users, 65 streams for US users and 62 streams by German surfers.

What this indicates is that online video is fast becoming a mainstream pastime and advertisers should quickly jump on board. By utilizing video within websites, those videos can go viral, spreading the word more quickly than simply a display or a text ad.