Once again broadband survey reports show that Video on Demand services (VoD) are constantly on demand and becoming hugely popular with UK broadband customers. According to the latest report from Hitwise’s survey on the websites that are regularly visited, websites that provide video access and streaming videos account for more than 2 percent of internet traffic from UK visitors alone. This compares to just 0.08 percent of the total internet traffic twelve months ago.

As for BBC iPlayer which was launched in December, 2007, the fast growing on-demand video service comes third (5.66 %) after YouTube US (55.35 %) and YouTube UK (5.66 %) in terms of traffic. YouTube still remains the most popular VoD accounting for nearly three-fourths of total visitors to online video websites. However, it was BBC iPlayer that has made the giant leap by pushing other major video websites like myspace (5.49 %), Google Video (3.25) and Metacafe (1.27 %) behind.

It was reported that the traffic to BBC iPlayer has grown four times since its launch in last December while it is in 50th place among all websites in terms of traffic.

Robin Goad, Director of Research at Hitwise attributes the faster growth in online video industry to two reasons – “the increasing penetration of fast broadband connections in the UK and the sheer volume of compelling content out there is clearly helping to accelerate this trend."