ABC.com reaches record video traffic

Cory Bergman July 14th, 2008

ABC.com users watched a record 815 million minutes of full-length episodes during the month of May — 37 million episodes in all — a 53% increase over the previous month and an increase of nearly 110% over the previous year. It appears this online video thing is catching on. Meanwhile, ABC.com says its working on new features for a fall release: closed captioning, “true” full-screen viewing without the browser borders, enhanced navigation, better video search, and video sharing and embedding functionality. More in the press release below…

PRESS RELEASE — Season finales for hit series LOST, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty, among other programming, pushed viewership of ABC.com’s Full Episode Player to a new all-time high in May 2008. ABC.com users watched a record 815 million minutes of full-length episodes during the month, a 53 percent increase over the previous month and an increase of nearly 110 percent over May 2007.

Data from Move Networks, ABC.com’s Internet television services provider, also shows that viewers watched 37 million episodes in May, an increase of over 27 percent compared to the previous month. The data also demonstrates that viewers were highly engaged with the programming, watching multiple episodes per month.

“Clearly, the demand for ABC’s high quality television programming continues to grow online, particularly among younger viewers,” said Albert Cheng, executive vice president, digital media, Disney-ABC Television Group. “Our digital media team is dedicated to bringing new innovations to the ABC.com Full Episode Player, and we expect that these efforts to enhance the online viewing experience combined with ABC Entertainment’s unparalleled content will result in continued viewership growth in the months ahead.”

Utilizing a unique interactive advertising model designed for high ad message retention, ABC.com’s Full Episode Player continues to deliver a premium to advertisers, attracting a young, highly educated and loyal user base. Since launching in 2006, approximately 400 million episodes have been initiated through the player.

Combining sleek, modern design with superior user-friendly functionality and smooth, stutter-free play, ABC.com’s online video player offers viewers episodes of the network’s most popular series and can be launched off of ABC.com, numerous broadcast affiliate sites, portals and video aggregator sites as well as social network sites via the ABC.com Full Episode widget. With many episodes available in HD and all available in a variety of viewing sizes, ABC.com is able to provide its online viewers with the best streaming viewing experience currently available.

This fall, ABC.com will add several new features to the player. Planned enhancements include:

- True full-screen viewing, with no browser border
- Closed captioning for the hearing impaired
- Content sharing tools providing users with the ability send and share video links from full episodes with others through email or by embedding links on other Web sites, blogs and social networks
- Enhanced navigation and video search capabilities that will allow users to search for series graphically, alphabetically, by genre or popularity.

As the online home of the ABC Television Network, ABC.com is dedicated to providing users with innovative ways to experience their favorite shows. Featuring the Emmy & Webby Award-winning, ABC Full Episode Player, ABC.com also offers everything from games, blogs, community forums, photos and downloadables, as well as the ABC Store which provides fans access to a wide variety of unique ABC-related merchandise. ABC.com is available anytime, anywhere on mobile devices at m.abc.com.