D! DARE TO ASK - MEDIA\TECH\TALK

— Alex Balfour, Head of New Media, London 2012

The detailed report shows just how much technology has recently changed the viewing behaviour. ‘Multi-platform’ seems to finally become real, as underscored by Olympic records for live video streaming and mobile usage.

During the day, most usage came from office computers at lunchtime, tablets are quickly becoming a familiar couch companion and accounted for more viewing than any other online medium in evenings/late night.

The streaming numbers were also significantly up - the BBC and NBC as well as several local broadcasters offered multiple live streams.

Here is a deep dive into the BBC stats:

• An average 9.5 million global daily uniques to the BBC Sport website is almost a quarter higher than the previous record level.
• Video requests were doubled from those seen during any previous event (106 million) – higher than the 2008 games (32 milion) and 2010 World Cup (38 million).
• A third of web visits came from mobile. But only a tenth of video requests were mobile.
• Most interestingly, the majority of video requests (62 million) were for live streams. Only eight million were for on-demand live streams, 35 million were for short-form clips.
• The BBC, which adapts streaming quality to viewers’ bandwidth, says the average bitrate was “the highest the BBC has ever delivered online” at 1Mbps.