Online Video news views surge 600%

Interesting to see online video news views on YouTube increasing by 600% in 2008 according to some reports.

This is significant for a couple of reasons:

1. Online video is beginning to mature. As users increasingly turn to online news sites for their “print” news, a similar revolution appears to be gathering momentum in “tv” news.
2. YouTube is moving beyond being an online aggregator of entertainment clips, and into the serious business of competing with more established broadcasting brands. Although much of the video news in question on YouTube is provided by established broadcast brands (i.e. the BBC YouTube channel), so there is a certain circularity here.

The most important take away is that online video is gaining authority.

One of the side effects of this is that online video advertising revenue will increase, as premium brands begin to see the relevance of online TV.

Crucial for companies such as the struggling ITV, but more significantly an interesting step on the path to online video convergence and a viable business model.

UPDATE

Beet.tv has an interesting post on how news videos displayed on YouTube have been organized to be timely and relevant to the news of the day through the integration of Google News into YouTube News.