Broadband Content Bits: BBC Video Increase, Video Traffic Up

BBC video: Switching from RealMedia and Windows Media Video to Flash video is giving BBC News a ten-fold increase in the number of times a video is viewed. Trialled last year and upped this month, the Flash videos are embedded in-page. The site’s first major redesign since 2003 kicks off next week with more visibility for the new formats, wider pages and more breaking news. Release.

Video traffic up: UK internet traffic to video sites rose 178 percent in the year to last month, representing one in every 45 web visits, Hitwise data says. YouTube still takes the lion’s share on 69.31 percent, ahead of BBC iPlayer (5.66 percent) and – somewhat encouragingly for Fox – MySpace (5.49 percent). Search plays a big part – “youtube” and “you tube” were the fourth and fifth top search terms last month, one in every 40 searches led to a video site (up from one in 117 last year) and the top 25 video sites get a third of their traffic from search queries.