Posted by Adam T. Sutton in Internet Marketing Strategy	August 7, 2007

By Adam T. Sutton, Managing Editor, Mequoda Group, LLC

In case you've been wondering if streaming video could help your online business, a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says most Internet users watch video.

Over half of online adults have watched video online, and about 19 percent of them do so on a typical day. Those numbers are starkly higher for broadband users, with 74 percent of them watching digital video, according to the report.

These numbers are more encouraging than surprising. The wild success of television over the past decades long ago established the popularity of video, and its rate of adoption online reflects that online technology is catching up to users' preferences.

What is surprising is another set of data released in the report that points to the viral and social nature of online video.

"More than half of online video viewers (57 percent) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75 percent) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them," according to the report.

It's unclear what this phenomenon has more to do with, the viral nature of the Internet or the viral nature of online video. But one thing is certain: video can't hurt!

If you are thinking of adding video to your online arsenal, these numbers should help urge you down that path and perhaps make you consider adding a few social networking features, too.

Depending on the nature of the video's content, you could have rating or comments enabled below them to generate some viral activity. And it would be hard to think of a reason not to add a "forward this to a friend" feature.

When you make video, the most important ingredient is value. A video that delivers real value to an audience gets watched. If you create a video that is just a promotion, it's obvious that no one will watch it. People hate commercials.

Creating value doesn't have to eat up your entire production budget, either.
We've written several tips about TravelZoo's seemingly low-budget, high value video, and consider it a great example.

Take a look, because it seems that offering streaming video is a good way to create some buzz.