More and more Americans are starting to watch videos online, and their preferences show Google’s sites as the most popular.
The United States’ internauts have watched 12.7 billion videos online in the month of November, which is some 34 percent higher than the same month last year, as shown by data released on Monday by ComScore, a market research center.
The figures are organized by the owning company, and so largely due to YouTube, sites owned by Google are far and away the winners with more than 5 billion videos viewed, adding up to 40 percent of all videos seen online. Out of a total of 146 million, more than 98 million internet users watched an average of 87 Google-provided videos in November. YouTube accounts for more than 98% of all traffic on Google’s servers.
A distant second place went to Fox Interactive media, with 439 million videos seen by 58.1 million viewers.
Fox Interactive was followed by MTV.com and ComedyCentral.com parent Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) (324.9 million videos, 2.6 percent share); Hulu (226.5 million, 1.8 percent share); CNN.com parent Turner Networks (214.7 million, 1.7 percent share); Disney Online (137.2 million, 1.1 percent share); and AOL LLC (115.3 million, 0.9 percent share).
The same data also revealed that 77 percent of internet denizens in the United States had viewed at least one online video in 2008, and that, on average, a video viewer will watch some 273 minutes of video.
This news should raise some smiles for sites such as YouTube and Hulu, both of which seek to monetize online videos, turning them into a lucrative business by implementing an online ad market.
Better yet, a study by eMarketer which was released in December predicts even more growth in the following years: $1.25 billion in 2010; $1.85 billion in 2011; $3 billion in 2012; and $4.6 billion in 2013.
Some other interesting facts from the ComScore November 2008 report:
- 77 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online videos;
- The average online video viewer watched 273 minutes of video;
- 97 million viewers watched 5.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (52.3 videos per viewer);
- 52.5 million viewers watched 371 million videos on MySpace.com (7.1 videos per viewer);
- The duration of the average online video was 3.1 minutes;
- The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top 10.
So it seems that the realm of online videos is expanding. In the next year we’re bound to see more interweaving between TV and Online videos and movies, as some birthed from one place find their way into the other and vice-versa. Whether YouTube will still manage to hold their distant lead or whether others will take advantage of the growing medium and catch up, we’ll just have to watch and see.
