• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, November 14, 2011

The release of the Kindle Fire this week may provide more fuel for the online video business than the book business.

To be sure, eBooks are flourishing and many publishers are reporting robust increases in the digital book business. But the Kindle Fire and the soon-to-be-released competitor from Barnes & Noble, in its newest tablet, are both banking on video to boost sales.

Why? Because tablet users like to watch video on the devices.

Tablet users are averaging 30% more viewing time for video than those who watch Web videos on computers, according to a quarterly video report from video technology firm Ooyala . What’s more, tablet users finish videos more frequently than those who watch on computers — with completion rates double for tablets, a promising figure for measuring engagement.

In fact, Ooyala ranked tablet users as the most engaged video viewers of any device, ranking higher than mobile video viewers, desktop users and connected TV and gaming console video watchers, with a little less than 40% of tablet users watching a video to completion, compared with less than 20% of computer users doing so.

Interestingly, we still tend to prefer to watch short clips on our computers, while we turn to tablets for longer-form viewing. Ooyala said videos 10 minutes or longer comprised 42% of the hours of video viewed on tablets, ahead of both mobile devices and computers. Videos shorter than one minute accounted for 7% of the total hours watched on a tablet.

These findings seem to suggest that tablet users are actively searching for longer video and shows to watch on their tablets, than sitting back and finishing these videos much of the time. When the millions of pre-ordered Kindle Fires land in consumers’ hands this week, it’ll be interesting to see if video consumption on tablets rises exponentially, or if Kindle users have a fire lit under them to read more books.