ITN Archive, one of the worlds largest archives for moving footage, has announced a 10 per cent annual increase in the time spent viewing the British Pathé archive website it manages. Widely regarded as a national institution, the British Pathé collection was digitised with a grant from the National Lottery that ensured the preservation of this vital part of British visual heritage for future generations. Comprising more than 3,500 hours of iconic footage, the site has just celebrated its second birthday and has been viewed by over 4.5 million users since its launch.
In the 12 months to September 2005, there were around 550,000 user sessions, with the average visitor spending almost 11 minutes on the site and viewing around 27 pages amounting to 11 years of continuous viewing time!
Christopher OHearn, Commercial Director for ITN Archive said: In just the past few months, some of the biggest names on the Internet, such as Yahoo and Google, have launched video products. The established success of the British Pathé site shows that if you have good video content then it will be viewed, which is encouraging for the entire archive industry.
Most traffic to the site continues to be for the free viewing of British Pathé newsreel material. In the last two years, over 750,000 items have been viewed. Some of those viewers have gone on to purchase higher-resolution files, while other requests are from educational users who have free access under an arrangement with school broadband providers.