International Business and Technology Blog

The only way is up!  But, don’t hold on. Get video centric now! Globally, IP video traffic is expected to grow threefold between 2016 and 2021, a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26% and representing 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021. Read that twice and contemplate. Successful businesses are driving the internet video explosion. Reports on the ‘state of video’ abound, from those that carry the bytes (example Cisco, see below) to those that are involved in every stage of the video conception to consumption boom. And video marketing, the fastest growing trend of our digital era, is a main driver of this growth. Large corporations have long understood and profited from the video cool aid, and now it is the turn of mid-size businesses, driving up those exponential video statistics. Fully 9.6/10 professional marketers say they are using video for business development purposes, with 63% of all businesses already on-board. Are you?

Just on YouTube, “>300 hours of video are uploaded every minute”. No wonder then that this is a fast-paced changing environment. Videos come in all shapes and sizes, with businesses tailoring them for specific purpose and intent. The main classifications are: brand, animation, educational, documentary, explainer, tutorial, music, experience, email, product, company, testimonial, comedy, personal, public service announcement, news, frequently asked questions, demonstration, pornographic, instructional, personalized, thank you and whatever comes next! With all that video content out there, it is not surprising that “55% of people watch videos online every day”, and again on the YouTube platform (the market leader by far) “>5 billion videos are watched every single day”.

Two other takeaways from this video-centric blog are: mobile and international.

• Mobile programmatic videos, on high-speed 4G networks that reduce latency, are ensuring mobile video accessibility and enjoyment for more consumers everywhere on their smartphone and "phablet" screens. The Cisco table below tells us that between 2016 to 2021, the petabyte per month (PB per month) video mobile consumption will grow from 3,660 to 33,173 PB per month: a whopping 55% CAGR. That compares to 27% for fixed devices, so more than double! Wow. And just to follow the money and in case there is any doubt in your mind about the value, mobile video ad spend is predicted to reach $9 billion globally in 2018.

• What about international consumer internet video? Between 2016 and 2021, the market will be led in terms of size by Asia Pacific (61,352 PB per month) which will represent 39% of worldwide video consumption and by the Middle East and Africa in terms of growth from 1,170 to 10,895 PB per month, which is a staggering 56% CAGR.

Check out these video statistics and highlights from Cisco, that help get a better picture of the seismic shift that video presents to our online global world.   

Ciscos’ video highlights tell us that:

• It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021. Every second, a million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2021.
• Globally, IP video traffic will be 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021, up from 73% in 2016. Global IP video traffic will grow threefold from 2016 to 2021, a CAGR of 26%. Internet video traffic will grow fourfold from 2016 to 2021, a CAGR of 31%.
• Live Internet video will account for 13% of internet video traffic by 2021. Live video will grow 15-fold from 2016 to 2021.
• Internet video surveillance traffic increased 72% in 2016, from 516 Petabytes (PB) per month at the end of 2015 to 883 PB per month in 2016. Internet video surveillance traffic will increase sevenfold between 2016 and 2021. Globally, 3.4% of all internet video traffic will be due to video surveillance in 2021, up from 1.8% in 2016.
• Virtual reality and augmented reality traffic will increase 20-fold between 2016 and 2021, at a CAGR of 82%.
• Internet video to TV grew 50% in 2016. Internet video to TV will continue to grow at a rapid pace, increasing 3.6-fold by 2021. Internet video-to-TV traffic will be 26% of consumer internet video traffic by 2021, up from 24% in 2016.
• Consumer Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic will nearly double by 2021. The amount of VoD traffic in 2021 will be equivalent to 7.2 billion DVDs per month.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN) traffic will carry 71% of all internet traffic by 2021. Seventy-one percent of all internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2021 globally, up from 52% in 2016.

Cisco’s global consumer internet video, 2016–2021, projections are impressive. Special focus needs to be paid to the expected growth of mobile and that of Middle East and Africa.

Source: Cisco VNI, 2017