Two recent studies indicate that around 75 percent of online retailers based in the United States are deploying video on their websites.

Firstly, the e-tailing group’s ’13th Annual Mystery Shopping Study’ reveals that nearly 75 percent s of U.S. online retailers had video on their websites in the fourth quarter of 2010 (up from 55 percent a year early).

The percentage of Americans aged 12 and older with a smartphone has more than doubled in the past year, from 14 percent to 31 percent, according to research from Arbitron Inc. and Edison Research.

According to the firms’ report, ‘The Infinite Dial 2011: Navigating Digital Platforms’ a majority of Americans also have two or more computers (51 percent) compared with just 24 percent in 2002. And 81 percent have Internet access, with two-thirds of Internet users accessing wireless.

Just over 8 out of 10 U.S. Internet users (82.5 percent) viewed online video in February 2011. The most popular online video site was YouTube – making Google the leading provider of online video with 141.1 million unique viewers, followed by Microsoft with 48.8 million uniques and Yahoo! with 46.7 million viewers.

Facebook.com came in fourth with nearly 46.7 million viewers, while VEVO ranked fifth with 45.9 million viewers.

Research by Ernst & Young shows that interactive media was the fastest growing sector within the media and entertainment industry in the 2006 to 2010 period. Interactive media companies’ average profitability was 35 percent during the period, with profitability growing by 15 percent.

Traditional media companies, meanwhile, have seen their profitability wither, and their profitability DECREASE over the past four years. Publishers experienced an average 1 percent decline in profitability (based on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization or ‘EBITDA’) in the 2006-2010 time period, whilst television networks’ profitability dropped by 4 percent, and music companies’ profitability dropped by 5 percent.

Online video may be becoming more professional than ever, but that hasn’t stopped the growth – or popularity – in user generated content (UGC) video.

According to AccuStream Research, UGC video sites, networks, channels and brands attracted 230 billion views last year in the United States, 146.9 percent more than in 2009.

YouTube may get the most video viewers, but Hulu serves the most video ad impressions, displaying nearly 1.1 billion ad impressions in January 2011.

Indeed, Hulu accounts for more than double the volume of ad impressions as its second place rival, Tremor Media Video Network, which had 503.7 million ad views in January.

Google/YouTube.com was the top online video content property in January 2011, with 144.1 million unique viewers during the month. Online music video site VEVO assumed the #2 ranking with 51.0 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! sites with 48.7 million viewers.

Rounding out the top five were Viacom Digital with 48.1 million viewers and AOL, Inc. with 44.5 million viewers.

The Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) will run its 35th annual international conference on June 5-7, 2011 at the Capitol Hilton in Washington D.C. There will be five main tracks covering audience generation, sales and marketing, content generation, new revenue streams and managing your business. Guest speakers include Randy Coon, COO of The Motley Fool, and Bill Dugan, Vice President/General Manager of StepByStepMarketing.com. Along with plenty of learning and networking opportunities there will be an early morning walk/run through Washington DC and a wine tasting. An early bird rate is available until May 12, 2011. Visit SIPA 2011 for more information and to register.

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According to its publishing business plan, the AOL Way, AOL wants more direct traffic and less traffic from the search engines.

No surprises there. What online publisher – i.e. one that makes money by monetizing web traffic via advertising – doesn’t want to be less dependent on sources of traffic that Google, Bing, etc can switch off at any moment?

Following on from our series of articles on the AOL Way (the leaked document describing AOL’s publishing plans and processes), today let’s look at AOL’s operational processes for pumping out content day in, day out. AOL’s approach may serve as also a useful reference for systematizing your own approach to content publishing.

According to the AOL Way, here’s how a typical day should look for the content teams working on its various blogs (TechCrunch, Engadget, Huffington Post, etc):