‘SoMo’ social-mobile video consumption set to explode

Growing time spent on social networking sites on mobile devices will lead to massive expansion of social-mobile video distribution in the next decade, according to The Diffusion Group (TDG).

The use of social-mobile networks for video consumption stands at 13 hours a week in the US, according to TDG, accounting for 10% of smartphone use and 14% of total smartphone video time.

TDG predicts that social-mobile video use – or SoMo in TDG’s parlance of choice – will rise from 684 million daily viewing minutes in 2016 to 7.4 billion by 2025. As a share of total smartphone video viewing, SoMo Video will grow from 17% in 2016 to 43% in 2025, according to the company.

The amount of time consumers spend on all types of screen – including TV, computers, tablets and mobile phones – is now in excess of 50 hours a week, with smartphones growing their share of the total, according to the research from TDG.

Smartphone hours per person now stands at 8.6 hours a week, greater than the total 8.2 hours consumers spend watching broadband video. Social networking comprises four hours of weekly screen time, of which 63% is spent using services like Instagram.

Joel Espelien, senior analyst with TDG and author of the report, said: “Screen time is shifting towards mobile. Mobile usage is shifting towards social networking apps. And social networking apps are shifting towards video. All the trends are lining up in favour of massive growth in SoMo Video over the next decade.”