Coke Launches Interactive Billboard In Times Square

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Have a Coke and a smile – and see your name up in lights while you’re at it.

Coca-Cola, already on a roll after the launch of a cool drinkable billboard for its Coke Zero product back in April, has made the next step towards interacting with possible consumers, this time in New York. Adweek reports that the company has just launched a new billboard in the Times Square area – but this isn’t just some static electronic sign-advertising product. It’s interactive.

Utilizing the “Share a Coke” campaign that the company has been recently running, the billboard interacts with users by showing fun facts for user’s names. For instance, as you can see in the image above, by using the name Lauren, the sign easily points out that “Laurens sure steal the limelight. They’ve starred in 723 movies since 1936.”

By tweeting their first name on Twitter with the hashtag “#CokeMyName”, users can see themselves up in lights, along with some fun facts surrounding their name. It’s a program that also ties in with a recently launched website that does the same thing – for those who can’t make the trek to New York City.

The billboard is the brainchild of Clear Channel Outdoor, who put together the tweeting program so that it had an interactive touch to it, instead of just running a pre-programmed set-up.

So how’s it work After the user sends a tweet, it appears on the billboard within approximately two minutes’ time. But there’s more to it than that, as a webcam set up across the street will snap a picture of the person’s name. From there, the social media team for Coca-Cola will tweet the photo back to the person within the hour.

“That potentially then seeds more social sharing amongst your Twitter followers (and) social impressions,” said Sean McCaffrey, Clear Channel Outdoor’s senior vice president of national client strategy and partnerships. “It’s the interesting convergence of the mobile, digital and physical worlds.”

So far, the billboard has been running for two weeks, but it’s already seen 200 custom messages per day. And Coca-Cola hasn’t been shy when it comes to sharing these messages on its Twitter account, complete with photos.

This, tied in with the company’s printing of names on Coke bottles and cans, will no doubt add a personable touch to advertising. After all, who doesn’t like getting mentioned by name

Now Hiring This Week: July 8th

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[a]listdaily is your source for the hottest job openings for senior management and marketing in games, entertainment and social media. Check here every Wednesday for the latest openings.

Read a case for and against job hopping before you find your next position.

  • Riot Games – Brand Manager (Los Angeles, Calif.)
  • Activision – Senior Director, Consumer Marketing (Santa Monica, Calif.)
  • Ubisoft – Associate Brand Manager (San Francisco, Calif.)
  • Instagram – Head of Consumer Marketing (Menlo Park, Calif.)
  • Ayzenberg – Marketing & Communications Director (Pasadena, Calif.)
  • Ayzenberg – Director, ION Business Development (Pasadena, Calif.)
  • Ayzenberg – Account Executive (Pasadena, Calif.)

For last week’s [a]list jobs postings, click here. Have a position you’d like to place with us Email us at pr@ayzenberg.com.

Sony: For VR to Make Progress, People Who Make Content Have To Make Money

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By Rachel Weber

In part two of our interview with Sony Computer Entertainment’s president of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida we turn our attention from software to hardware and the Morpheus virtual reality headset. Yoshida updates us on the increased developer activity, the collaboration required to stop the dreaded motion sickness and why he doesn’t have a headset at home just yet.

This year E3 seemed to be all about the big games again, especially for Sony. Is that a strategic decision for you?

That’s our perfect simple strategy. GDC has new hardware, E3 is games. The games have always been in development, but our teams and software teams, we ask them to target E3 because GDC was a time when we barely had the working hardware. There was only a small number of hardware units so we had to pick and choose a small number of teams in London Studio and Japan Studio to get their games running. We knew we couldn’t support any other teams.

But we knew that after GDC we could mass produce this unit in time for E3 so that’s how we are targeting different events. By Paris Games Week, the next big event, and by TGS after that, I’d expect more games will be shown on Morpheus.

So there are more Morpheus developer kits in the wild now?

Yes, that’s how you see 20 games at E3. Actually we had to turn down some of the submissions for E3 so more than 20 submissions were already there. And more devs are working on games for TGS. The teams are having a very very easy time to transition from last year’s model to this year’s model as well as from Oculus to Morpheus. So because Oculus is available and the DK2s are available in abundance devs have been working on content for PC and for Oculus. Many, especially small teams, use middleware like Unity and Unreal and these work really, really well in terms of porting games from PC with Oculus to PS4 and Morpheus.

One dev said it took them two days to get the PC game running on Morpheus and other teams say similar things, a week to get it running on PS4.

Sony has always worked closely with indie developers, but are you having to provide more practical support and guidelines because you’re dealing with essentially a new medium?

In terms of making sure the experience wouldn’t make people sick. That’s the one single important thing we need to work more closely with devs on than we do with console games. Everyone goes through this learning process, including our own first party teams. The simplest thing that the developers implement may make you totally crazy sick, like sudden camera movement, so even devs working for years on VR still have that. The danger is that people get acclimatized, you get used to using Morpheus or using VR so devs use it everyday, they have no idea what they’re making would do to other people. It’s a danger.

The good thing is people will get better at using VR experiences as they use it more. I couldn’t play Doom when it came out but now I can play an FPS, people get used to it. The same things will happen but the danger is that the first time people try it is the most sensitive time. It’s really crucial that devs do play tests with people who never tried VR.

That’s how we have to share our knowledge and know how and extend some support. And getting performance, Morpheus runs at 120 frames per second and in order for a game to run at 120fps for Morpheus you need to at least get your game to run at 60fps constantly. So that’s a minimal technical requirement and for some devs some optimisation might be necessary.

Why has no one announced a price for their headset yet, Are you waiting for someone else to go first?

We are talking about launching next year so typically we don’t talk about pricing one year ahead of time. I think we announced the price of PS4 at E3 the year of the launch so that’s five months before the launch. So it’s too early. It’s not like we are waiting for Oculus to announce their price. We still have work to do to know exactly the cost of goods and so on.

Microsoft recently sneaked into the virtual reality market by partnering with Oculus to provide controllers. Were you surprised by that move?

[Phil] Spencer’s appearance at their conference was a surprise but Microsoft provide the OS, Windows, for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift so if you’re making headsets you really want to work closely with the OS companies.

We don’t have to do it because we make our own OS, but every millisecond counts, like John Carmack talks about, so it’s just natural that they work together closely. Microsoft publicly in the past was saying, like the PR line was, ‘we don’t know about VR’ but now they are positive so I think that’s good for everyone.

The industry is fully behind VR, but what does your research tell you consumers are saying about it Are more people aware of it outside the industry?

I hope more people have had a chance to try GEAR VR, for example, and some of the videos. A couple of weeks ago I visited Chris Milk’s company called VRSE. They’ve done amazing documentaries, like a Syrian camp in Jordan where he worked with the United Nations to show how it is to stand in the camp with the refugees. It’s very touching. Another one he showed was The New York Times cover story, how a photographer and immigrant came to New York and focused on one person, another immigrant, to shoot him as a cover of the magazine. That whole process was shown in 360 video.

So these are great videos being made and these things can be enjoyed by anyone so I totally believe that the panorama videos could be super important for Morpheus as well. Not everyone in the household is a gamer so when you have to spend more money to buy it you want to have your family on your side, and non-gaming content is perfect.

So will PlayStation commission any video content for Morpheus Exclusives for the platform?

No. Videos work with everyone and for VR as an industry to make progress, people who make content have to make money. I want companies like VRSE to be able to recoup from as many platforms as possible, and that’s their business plan as well. We just want to make sure that their content and other companies content works really really well on Morpheus. Because PS4 is powerful hardware and Morpheus runs at 120fps, so the video watching experience can be much better than the mobile experience, for example. So that’s what we want to do, make sure we are providing enough technical support for that to happen but we don’t feel the need to make non-gaming content by ourselves or fund them.

So do you have the Morpheus at home, Do you get it out for dinner parties?

I know some developers do that for one, as a play test and for another just to brag about it. I don’t do that. I’m so conservative, I’m timid about bringing something I’m working on to home and if they don’t like it I’d be devastated. So I wait until the thing is near final so I’m sure they will . . . especially I’m talking about my daughters, so I want to make sure that they will have an amazing, great experience. So I’m waiting.

Reprinted with permission from GamesIndustry International. Read the first part of the interview on GamesIndustry International here.

Newzoo: Top Core PC Games In June

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In June, the top seven games in the Top 20 Core PC Games were stable from the previous month. Riot’s League of Legends remained the perennial number one, with no title able to take its place since these rankings began. Mojang’s Minecraft and Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive kept Ranks 2 and 3, respectively, while Wargaming’s World of Tanks and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft were stable at Ranks 4 and 5. Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm continued its ascension, breaking the top 10 for the first time; the more casual-/team-friendly MOBA climbed three spots to take Rank 9 in June. HOTS wasn’t the only MOBA on the rise; Valve’s DotA 2 climbed one more spot to Rank 8, pushed by the hype surrounding The International set for August 2015, currently with a record-breaking prize pool of more than $15 million.

Other key takeaways:

  • Valve on the Rise. Valve had a good month in June. Not only did CS:GO retain Rank 3, all its other titles in the rankings were on the rise. DotA 2 climbed one more spot to Rank 8, Garry’s Mod rose an impressive four places to Rank 13 and Team Fortress 2 rose two spots to Rank 18.
  • A Blizzard Win Is Team Fortress 2′s rise really a nod to Blizzard As people anxiously await the release of Blizzard’s new game Overwatch, Team Fortress 2 is the closest alternative. If the anticipation of Overwatch is in fact driving people to play Team Fortress 2, this is truly a Blizzard win. Along with Heroes of the Storm gaining three spots in a crowded MOBA market, it seems there are good times ahead for Blizzard.
  • GTA V Down, San Andreas Up. Grand Theft Auto V continued its decline while Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Multiplayer is climbing back up the rankings. After its strong debut in April, GTA V fell out of the top 10 in June, down three places to Rank 11. Perhaps players are returning to San Andreas, which rose three spots to Rank 12.
  • The Witcher Breaks Top 20. As we predicted after its debut in May at Rank 21, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has managed to break the top 20. CD Projekt’s massive and sprawling open world RPG took Rank 16 in June.
  • Diablo III Drop Out. Two game dropped out of the rankings in June: Robocraft and Diablo III. While Robocraft was on a gradual descent since April, Diablo III tumbled out of the top 20 from its Rank 11 position in May. With a big patch in the near future (now on the beta test realms), we expect Blizzard’s title will re-enter the top 20 in the near future.

 

PC Games Market Monitor
In line with our monthly Top 20 Core PC Games Rankings, we have developed a brand new service in collaboration with Overwolf. The PC Games Market Monitor provides a monthly overview of the performance, cross-over and churn for the Top 20 PC/MMO games, and covers more than 40 countries across Europe, North America and Latin America. The data is derived from Overwolf’s user base of close to 10 million PC gaming enthusiasts. Subscribers will receive a monthly report and dataset featuring the Top 20 PC games by unique players, game sessions and average session time. For a PC title of choice, the data will show cross-over engagement and churn. Month-on-month changes are quantified for each game in every country of choice, revealing, for instance, the impact of marketing campaigns or (esports) events.

A full product presentation with dummy data can be found on the product page.

Inside PlayStation Now: Game Streaming Grows Swiftly

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Sony has had great success with games for decades, and recently the company has been more successful than ever. The PlayStation 4 is the undisputed sales champion of the latest generation of consoles, and at E3 Sony created great excitement over upcoming titles like Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last Guardian, No Man’s Sky, and many others. The company isn’t taking it easy on other fronts, though – the Project Morpheus VR hardware continues to advance to an early 2016 launch, and the groundbreaking PlayStation Now game streaming service is also advancing as it continues its successful beta test, introducing a completely redesigned interface today.

Sony’s PlayStation Now service launched was based on the technology developed by Gaikai, which Sony purchased in 2012. Now in open beta, PlayStation Now offers either game rentals (at about a dollar a day for a weekly rental) with over 350 PS3 titles to choose from, or a subscription service that lets you play any of over 125 games as much as you like for $19.99 a month (or $44.95 a month for a three-month subscription). PlayStation Now is available on PS4, PS3, PS Vita, PS TV, select Sony TVs, select Sony Blu-Ray Disc players, and select Samsung Smart TVs in the continental U.S. and Canada, and requires about 5 Mbps of bandwidth and a Dual Shock 3 or 4 wireless controller, if you don’t already have one.

Robert Stevenson

Gaikai’s chief product officer Robert Stevenson and Sony Computer Entertainment of America’s senior director of PlayStation Now, Jack Buser, spoke with [a]listdaily about the new interface for PlayStation Now and how the service has evolved.

How is PlayStation Now evolving, and what is it you’re announcing today?

Stevenson: We’ve been tuning and driving our subscription business., and our new subscription app launches today with new UX, a new look, and we’re super excited about it. We started looking at this many months ago as a way to improve the discoverability in the subscription. Today we have over 125+ titles, and the experience on the PlayStation 4 is sort of transactional. What we want to do is really make it more about discovery, make it much more modern, improve the user experience.

Some of the things we’ve done in the new app is put in some new curated categories — traditional stuff that you might expect like action-adventure, top-rated games, but also some unique themes with common characteristics across different types of games. For instance, we have once called Evil Anywhere, which as you might expect has a lot of very dark, evil, dramatic style games. We’ve also gone in and really enhanced the game detail pages for browsing when you’re in a subscription. We’ve focused on making it much more rich in terms of imagery to entice people to check it out and play it.

What can you tell us about how the users are engaging with PlayStation Now?

Buser: If you look at some of the engagement metrics recently on the service, you can see that users are highly engaged. Year over year, we’ve seen a 300 percent increase in PS Now users — this is largely due to the subscription being so compelling. If you look at usage per week, average usage is going to be about 4 hours, which is a very high engagement metric. If you look at it per session, we’re looking at about 45 minutes a session, and for popular games over an hour. You can see that people are coming in, playing for very long sessions, and then they’re playing multiple sessions per week to get to that very high average per week of four hours. That’s where that new user experience becomes so important, because when you have such a large growth in your user base and they are so engaged in not just one but several games, it’s important to give them a rich user interface to help them more easily transition to other games they might not have otherwise checked out.

You now support a wide range of Sony devices and some Samsung TVs. Do you plan to add more devices the list of those that support PlayStation Now?

Stevenson: We don’t have anything new to announce today, but the vision we’ve articulated for many months is a service that allows you to play great PlayStation games across any sort of convenient device. It takes time to do that sort of growth, but we think Samsung is a major step forward, it’s a massive consumer electronics company that has huge market share at retail. We’re already starting to see people coming in through the Samsung channel and playing through that, on top of the Sony Bravia users. We’ll continue to do that kind of thing for the foreseeable future.

Jack Buser

Buser: It’s interesting to note that Samsung is one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world, and PlayStation Now is the fastest growing cloud-based game streaming service. That really underscores the vision we’ve been talking about since the announcement of PlayStation Now. We want to make this rich library of games available to gamers through as many devices as possible.

Stevenson: And it’s a consistent access and experience. The same 300+ games are available as rentals across all those devices, the same thing with subscriptions. This is really a new way of thinking in terms of videogames. You can step through your day playing on a console, playing on a television, playing on your Vita, you can have multiple touch points but still experience the same great games with no limitations.

So far PlayStation Now only serves up PlayStation 3 games. Are there plans to add PlayStation 2 or PlayStation 4 games at some point?

Stevenson: We have articulated from day one that we plan to look at all the PlayStation devices: PS1, PS2, and PS4 for the future. We don’t have anything live today except for the PlayStation 3 catalog, but that catalog is a very deep and rich catalog, so we are continuing to expand that, and literally weekly and monthly we are adding more titles. Other PlayStation platforms are in the long-term discussion.

Buser: One of the great things about offering PS3 games as we start this service is there are so many gamers that are new to PlayStation. The success of PlayStation 4 has really made a whole generation fo gamers aware of PlayStation. PlayStation Now is a great way for gamers to catch up to all the franchises they might’ve missed in the prior generation, whether you’re a fan of Uncharted or Killzone or other titles.

Doesn’t that mean PlayStation Now can be a great promotional and marketing tool for those games where you have new titles coming out for old franchises?

Stevenson: We’ve been doing some promotion with God of War, as people buy the new editions of God of War you can go back and get free rentals of the older titles. We see this as extremely valuable, exactly as you just described. Connecting the prior versions and story arc of the franchise and bringing that forward in a very seamless way. You’re on the same device that you’re going to buy the new version on. You just pop into PlayStation Now and you can play the older editions, get up to speed on everything, learn the game mechanics, and really appreciate the depth of the franchise.

We see it as a way to get people into the franchises, but it’s also a way to show the amount of content that’s been built in the past. You see users come in with PS4 and they may not have a history with older titles, and PlayStation Now shows off the entire PlayStation library.

Buser: This also speaks to the lifecycle of the game in our industry. In the games industry, we’ve been very focused on the first few months after a game is released. Unlike our friends in the movie and music industries, there wasn’t as much of a long tail for the game industry. I think PlayStation Now has an extremely interesting role to play as the lifecycle of the game industry matures. This gives publishers the chance to rejuvenate the ability of a title to generate revenue. When we release a title into the subscription, we create quite a bit of buzz around a title that may not have been advertised for a year or two, even three years in some cases. Now because it’s coming into the subscription, gamers are talking about the title, they’re curious about the title, and it’s like this breath of fresh air into a franchise or even an individual title that previously was very difficult to do in this industry.

AMD Partners With Nerd HQ And Walker Stalker At San Diego Comic Con

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has Comic Con International covered in San Diego July 9-12. The chipmaker continues to go the event route in partnering with established brands like it did at the PC Gamer Show outside of E3 last month. In San Diego, AMD will be connecting with consumers who are in town for Comic Con, but aren’t on the actual convention show floor.

Peter Ross, senior marketing manager at AMDPeter Ross, senior marketing manager at AMD

Peter Ross, senior marketing manager at AMD, said the company has had success in years past partnering with Geek & Sundry during “the Con.” This year they’ve teamed up with two much larger brands in San Diego with actor Zachary Levi’s Nerd HQ four-day celebration of games, tech and entertainment at the New Children’s Museum and Robert Kirkman’s Walker Stalker Fan Fest at PetCo Park, a two-day celebration of The Walking Dead.

AMD worked with Petrol Advertising and Electronic Arts to bring the 20 versus 20 player Star Wars Battlefront Walker Assault mode to consumers for the first time. After receiving critical acclaim at E3, fans can play the multiplayer experience on AMD-powered PCs inside Nerd HQ. Levi even added a charity element to this set-up, allowing fans to donate to his Conversations for a Cause (with all money going to Operation Smile) for a chance to play the game with him.

Ross said in addition to the PC set-ups, AMD is working with Sony to have PlayStation 4 versions of the game playable for fans at Nerd HQ as well. Sony is another major sponsor for Nerd HQ, and AMD powers the chips inside PS4.

“Nerd HQ had over 50,000 attendees last year at PetCo Park and reached an additional 5 to 10 million people online,” said Ross. “We’re anticipating a bigger audience with the New Children’s Museum location.”

Ross said AMD will be giving fans a chance to win a cool PC gaming rig. And there will also be Star Wars photo opportunities for all attendees.

AMD will also be part of the first-ever Walker Stalker Fan Fest at PetCo Park on July 10-11. Skybound is now working directly with this fan convention, which is bringing more game activations to this year’s event. Telltale Studios is doing a panel with the developers and voice actors from The Walking Dead Season 1 & 2, including Melissa Hutchison, Dave Fenoy, Gavin Hammon, Nicki Rapp, and Nicole Vigil. The Panel will be moderated by Walker Stalker’s Cindi Peterson and The Walking Dead TV actor Jason Cabassi. Afterward, there will also be a live voice-acted session of the best moments from the first two seasons of the episodic game on a big screen in the baseball stadium.

According to Dan Murray, president of Skybound Interactive, the fan fest will also feature game developers Other Ocean and Team 17. Both of these game studios will have The Walking Dead games playable. In addition, Twitch will host an entire day of programming with eight top streamers on July 11 from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. playing different games. Starbreeze is bringing The Walking Dead RV to the stadium, which will have playable versions of The Walking Dead VR video game demo that 505 Games debuted at E3 2015.

Inside of the Walker Stalker “Dead Zone,” AMD will have a VR demo featuring Oculus Rift demos of Zypre’s First and Crytek’s Robinson: The Journey. AMD will also have its Project Quantam prototype machine and a 4K demo with HP system featuring Dragon Age: Inquisition. Ross said the 6th Generation A-Series AMD processors on HP and Lenovo systems will be running Dirt Rally and Lego Batman. Starbreeze’s Payday 2 will be playable on several mobile gaming systems. And Battlefield 4 will be playable on Xbox One and Killzone: Shadow Fall on PS4.

“We’re excited to engage with the Comic Con audience,” said Ross. “They represent a real core group of hardware gaming fans and users. The whole gaming space is critical to AMD. We have great relationships with Sony and Microsoft in the console space, and we’re doing everything we can do to grow the PC gaming space.”

Over 130,000 people attended Comic Con last year. More visitors are coming into town for day trips even without tickets, just to take in the free options that stretch throughout the downtown area. AMD is just one of the companies to tap into this huge gathering of pop culture fans at one of the biggest gatherings in the United States.

‘Mighty No. 9’ Jumps From Kickstarter To Movies

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At one point in time, Mighty No. 9 was merely an up-and-coming Kickstarter project being headed up by Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune, in the hopes of reviving an old-school side-scrolling shooter for a new generation to enjoy. Little did anyone realize, however, that the game would become one of the biggest crowd-funding projects in history, making over four million dollars during its campaign.

Now, the heroic little adventurer is expanding his limits beyond video games. Variety has reported that a partnership between Legendary Digital Media, Contradiction Films and Mighty game studio Comcept (headed up by Inafune) will work together on a live-action Mighty No. 9 film project.

The game, being developed by Comcept and set to release later this year through Deep Silver, focuses on a hero named Beck, the ninth model in a line of Mighty Numbers droids, as he takes on his cohorts after a computer virus makes them run rampant.

Tomas Harlan and Tim Carter are on board to develop and produce the movie. There’s no word yet if Inafune will play a role, but he is likely to consult somewhere on the project.

Legendary Digital Media and Contradiction Films have dealt with video games before, having produced the movie Dead Rising: Watchtower for release exclusively on Sony’s Crackle network. The film has been a huge draw for fans that have been enjoying Capcom’s games in that series, so Mighty No. 9 should see a similar draw from its growing fanbase.

This is just the latest indication that old-school properties – or spin-offs of them, thereof – can still draw the right kind of audience. Koji Igarashi, producer of Konami’s Castlevania series, recently proved this with his Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night project for Kickstarter, raising even more than Mighty with a total of $5.7 million dollars. And producer Yu Suzuki is doing something similar with his Shenmue III project, which is nearly at $4.5 million dollars with ten days to go in its campaign.

Could these see movies as well As Mighty has easily proven, the possibilities are there.

Meanwhile, Mighty No. 9 will be available for various consoles on September 15th, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, 3DS, PS Vita and PC. The trailer is below.

Facebook Video Can Now Float

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Watching a video is one thing – but being able to watch a video in a setting of your choosing is another. Online video is no doubt popular, but users like having different options available when it comes to viewing clips, including going full-screen and not being forced to watch said clip in a small, static window.

So, Facebook has decided to change up its video formatting in its News Feed, providing the ability to detach a video outside of the News Feed and place it anywhere within the browser window, according to a report from Mashable.

By clicking on an icon on the lower-right hand portion of the screen, users can move about the video clip however they see fit, even though it must remain within the browser window. This is currently for the desktop version of Facebook, though – seeing as how mobile screens aren’t big enough to support video movement (at least, not yet – they are getting bigger).

With the launch of the “floating video” window, users will have access to a close button, as well as play/pause, and, of course, the option to like and share them with others. It also conveniently vanishes if a user moves away from the News Feed, in case they feel like checking out something else.

Although this is relatively small compared to Facebook’s other changes to video, it’s the latest movement by the company to integrate the format into its social media site. It recently introduced a program where it hopes to create better monetization opportunities for creators and advertisers alike; and it’s also attracted networks like Amazon and HBO when it comes to “sampling” certain shows, including Ballers and The Brink.

And these moves are certainly making a difference, as the company reported an estimated three billion daily video views on its site earlier this year. There’s no question that traffic will continue to rise – and with the convenience of being able to view videos in a movable format, too.

Mobile Video Viewing On the Rise

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Sometimes watching videos on the go via a mobile device is just convenient. Flipping over to YouTube and/or Facebook and clicking a play button makes it easy for people to stay informed with a variety of video content. And, according to a new report from eMarketer, it’s definitely getting more popular.

With results gathered from Ooyala for the first quarter of 2015, eMarketer reports that 34 percent of digital video views worldwide managed to come from mobile phones, versus seven percent coming from tablets. That shows a tremendous amount of growth in a year’s time, with a increase of 126.7 percent of digital video views overall — a 95.2 percent increase year over year, from 21 percent to 41 percent.

As for what type of videos are preferred, users seem to go for the short-form content clips. Ooyala reports that videos that ran for under three minutes managed to make up nearly half the time spent watching video on mobile phones overall. By comparison, nearly 60 percent of time spent with tablet video manages to go a little longer, at least over ten minutes.

On Device Research, working on behalf of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, held a poll as well, asking smartphone video viewers about how often they watched short-form videos and longer ones. 57 percent of those polled indicated that they watch content that runs five minutes or shorter throughout the day, while 35 percent prefer longer-content videos.

According to these results, a lot of these viewers are also willing to sit through ads to get to their content, in an effort to save a few dollars for a premium subscription service. The IAB reported that 78 of respondents would prefer to watch free mobile videos with ads, versus the 15 percent who said they’d pay for a monthly mobile video subscription to skip the ads. Meanwhile, eight percent said they’d pay for separate video views, without any ads.

One more interesting statistic from FreeWheel indicates that 17 percent of digital video ad views in the U.S. were on smartphones, while only eight percent were on tablets. That may be something of note to advertisers, though, as you can see from the stats above, several folks are still willing to sit through ads to get to their beloved content.

The full report can be found here.