Well, it could be pretty darn important, if you believe the latest data from comScore,Inc, a leader in measuring the world on the Internet.
They released a report in July 2009, showing that 158 million U.S. internet users are now watching online videos on a regular basis. This happens to be the largest number they have recorded to date.

Another good source of user data is eMarketer, and they also recently reported that U.S. online video viewers will grow to 188 million by the end of 2013 and more than half of the U.S. population will view videos online in the same year.

Now get this, in the month of July 2009, there were a total of over 21 Billion (Yes, the billion with a B) videos viewed around the world.  Wow !

They broke the videos down by categorizing them as either coming from Google, Viacom Digital or Microsoft sites.  Of those 3 sites, guess who took the TOP DOG share of the views?  Yep, you probably guessed it…. Google.  Google accounted for 42 percent of all videos viewed online and within that group, YouTube captured over 99% of that traffic.  As a whole, Google accounted for almost 9 Billion viewed
videos.

So if you think that video isn’t important, you might want to think again…. Before your competition decides to try it and starts grabbing customers away from your biz.

The good news is, YOU ARE NOT TOO LATE ! Now is the perfect time to jump on this bandwagon.  Other studies confirm the continued growth of online videos, including video’s viewed on mobile devices.  That is a whole other subject for later.  I’ll follow up with a post later where I’ll show you that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get a video posted that will help turn internet visitors into walk-in customers.