Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), the Taiwanese unit of Yahoo Inc, said yesterday that video content and mobile platforms would play key roles in its online advertising business this year, in light of emerging demand from the two segments.
“To me, the most important business for Yahoo-Kimo this year is video, and the other is mobile. The two segments are what we want to highlight this year,” Frank Chen (陳建銘), vice president and managing director of Yahoo-Kimo, said at a media briefing.
Although the company has forecast higher growth in those two segments than for display and search advertising, it does not expect to generate huge advertising revenues from either one this year due to their smaller scale, he said.
“Our target for investment in the two segments will focus on user engagement instead of sales numbers,” Chen said.
According to a survey by Yahoo-Kimo, about 93 percent of Taiwan’s Internet users have watched online videos, with 75 percent watching them at least once per week and 70 percent surfing the Internet for video content exclusively.
The company also found that 45 percent of Taiwan’s Internet users like to watch short films online, with 30 percent viewing via mobile phones.
The survey, conducted online from Feb. 17 to March 7, collected 6,034 valid samples from respondents aged 12 to 54.
These online video users spend an average of 11.8 hours every day using different media and devices, with more than half of those hours devoted to Internet-connected devices and mobile phones, the survey showed.
For example, respondents said they spend an average of 4.6 hours per day on the Internet — 2.2 hours watching TV, two hours on mobile phones, 1.1 hours using MP3 players, one hour on broadcasting and 0.9 hours reading newspapers and magazines, according to the survey.
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