Trying to make your case to start an online video initiative at your institution? 70% of young adults have visited video-sharing websites like YouTube

Ok, I know, my headlines are horribly long (and as a result so are my post URLS – hint: use tinyurl.com if you want to share a post with coworkers), but I promise there is a reason to this madness ;-)

Anyway, I’m a bit late to the party as the survey report I’m writing about this morning was published last Wednesday by the good folks of the Pew Internet and American Life Project: “Increased Use of Video-sharing Sites,” a 6-page memo available for free as a PDF file.

This survey of 2,054 American adults (age 18 and older) was conducted between October 24 and December 2, 2007. The number of internet users asked the video-sharing question was 1,359. The margin of error on the sample of internet users is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The results about the American adult population are already very promising for anybody planning to launch an online video initiative:

• 48% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
• 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site “yesterday” – the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site “yesterday.” Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.

But, when you go beyond to look at the results for respondents aged 18-29 (that is our student target audience), this recent survey is probably the single proof you needed to make your case to start your online video program at your university or college:

So, what does it mean — besides very good news for Google, the company behind YouTube and Google Video?

Probably that you need to start to incorporate more online videos into your marketing mix and upload some of these on video-sharing websites. If you don’t, you will miss a huge opportunity to connect with your student target audience.