• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 10, 2013

Mobile devices and social sites continue to fuel an increase in video consumption. It increased views 300% last year, prompted Facebook users to engage twice as much with content, and drove pre-roll ads to account for 82% of all video ad impressions in long-format content.

The analysis of video consumption behaviors was based on close to 20 billion video starts, 10 billion ads served by Adobe media customers and the analysis of more than 450 million Facebook posts in 2012, per Adobe Systems' Digital Index report, which compiles and aggregates data through real transactions to identify trends.

The biggest missed opportunity resides in the lack of video in social-media posts. Less than 25% contain video, according to Tamara Gaffney, senior manager of digital index at Adobe. "We show that including video produces better reach and social engagement, and media companies will get more complete videos," she said, mentioning that Twitter also plays a bigger factor in driving referrals to media sites.

Twitter has a 16% share of referrals to sites coming from social media. In general, Twitter fluctuates between 3% and 4%, Gaffney said.

Adobe customers produced 15.6 billion video streams in Q4 2012. From Q3 to Q4 2012, video consumption grew 13%. New TV and sports content drove the highest growth in video streams in Q4 2012.

Mobile video starts rose more than three times since the previous year, increasing from 3% to 10.4%, and 89.6% of the video consumption still takes place on desktops. When broken down by mobile device, tablets are growing the fastest in terms of mobile video usage, but video starts on smartphones tripled year over year from 2011 to 2012.

The weekend is the preferred time to watch videos on tablets with Sundays producing 17% of video starts on a tablet. Mobile video consumption is spread throughout the week with peaks on Monday, Thursday and Sunday at 16%.

Mobile also continues to drive TV Everywhere. More than 70% of the TV Everywhere viewing came from tablets and phones in 2012, Gaffney said. On Xbox consoles, users watched 14 different videos per person monthly on average.

Video ad click rates and ad impressions have remained consistent in 2012. Ads placed at the end of a video have a better click-through rate, about 3%, when compared with ads placed in the middle or pre-roll. Not surprisingly, ads placed at the beginning of a video result in significantly more impressions than the other two types of positions.