PPLive has received $250 million as an investment from Softbank, the operation representing the Series D Round financing for the online video company. No other Chinese video company has ever raised such funds, as either public or private investment. The last acquisition of such proportion was Google’s acquisition of YouTube, all those years ago.  The investment is really indicative of a larger trend in video, which is gaining speed on a global scale.  Several video companies in China are of interest right now, for their growing numbers and technology potential.

PPLive counts over 105 million active monthly users, incorporating TV shows, drama, movies, sports, news and entertainment programs, in addition to live chatting and personalized and social functions for video viewing. Given these features, the company is expected to become the leader in the sector in the years to come. PPLive CEO, Dr. Vincent Tao says, “We believe that online video is perhaps the largest industry disruption for TMT sector in the next 5 to 10 years. SOFTBANK is looking for a company who can not only win in China but also can be scaled to the other markets.”

The sound investments in online video follow a strategic plan as at the moment, spurring online video marketing to increase as well. Online video targets all demographic groups and studies indicate that 49 percent of people watch online videos for an hour each day. “Widespread adoption of devices, ranging from PCs to the iPad and smartphones has made it easy for…all ages to watch video content whenever and wherever they wish to do so,” said the report, which was cited on Thomson Local Marketing News.

An AOL report says that in December 2010 video streams and viewers rose to 406 million streams and 49 million viewers in December, up 106 percent and 84 percent respectively since September 2010. AOL sees online video as a top priority for 2011, focusing mainly on improving its content offerings internally and in partnership with premium content providers.

But Asia and the United States aren’t the only regions hit by the online video trend; Voddler, the Scandinavian video provider has received an investment of $8 million from Nokia Growth Partners for expanding its service offerings to multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets and set-top boxes. Nokia thinks twice before taking a step further after suffering a reverse with the Ovi Unlimited music service, but this time the company bet the money on a strong trend.  Still in Europe, we have British LOVEFiLM currently under Amazon’s patronage, counting 1.4 million members across the UK, Sweden, Norway and Germany. Suffice it to say that online video is cutting a dash.

But we also have Facebook’s decline in video traffic from 58.5 million visitors in August 2010 to 41.1 million in December, which shows us the other side of the shield.   There are several conjectures as to why Facebook’s seeing a dip in online video traffic, though it’s important to note the social network’s video presence is actually up 33% overall.  The roller coaster of video-related activity is a mre reminder that the industry is still in its infancy, and bringing the technology and monetization to scale is a journey that’s still developing before our eyes.