Mobile is becoming increasingly important for any publishing platform.

How do I know?

I took a look at the share of views by device on my Youtube channel.

These statistics are available from mid-January 2013 onwards so I took a snapshot from 1 February 2013 to 30 April 2014.

Views from PC declined over time from a high of 85% of total in February 2013 to lows of 68% during December 2013.

During the last 3 months views from PC averaged 71% of total versus an average of 82% during the same period last year.

By contrast mobile has grown to a recent average of 19% of total views.

This growth has been driven primarily by a disproportionate growth by Android devices.

I need to point out that most of the channel viewers are located in Italy.

Depending on the location of your audience numbers may vary as mobile adoption may be faster or slower than in Italy.

What does that mean for your publishing efforts?

As a content publisher you need to be aware of the modality of content consumption.

The Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update predicts that “global mobile data traffic will increase nearly 11-fold between 2013 and 2018” at a compound annual growth rate of 61% between 2013 and 2018!!!

Furthermore “by 2018, over half of all devices connected to the mobile network will be “smart” devices” which will originate the near totality of mobile data traffic.

And finally the report predicts that mobile video consumption will have the highest growth of all mobile applications.

My recommendation is that, going forward, any YouTube channel owner should focus much more on producing video content targeted at mobile consumption.

Generally speaking this means shorter, more “snackable” on-the-go type of content.

Do you consume more video content using a mobile device?