Hulu, NBC Universal lead long-form video surge

Average February video stream is 22% longer than a year earlier

By Danny King -- Video Business, 4/22/2009

APRIL 22 | Hulu, ABC.com, NBC Universal and CBS Entertainment are among the fastest growing long-form video Web sites this year, indicating that more people are using the Internet to video-stream television shows and other forms of lengthier content, according to a report released this week.

Although Google's YouTube remains the world's most popular video Web site, Hulu, owned by NBC Universal and News Corp., boosted its unique viewership by more than 30% between January and February of this year, while NBCU, CBS and Time Warner's Turner Sports & Entertainment's Web sites each had month-to-month gains of about 10%, according to a Nielsen survey.

The popularity of such sites boosted the amount of time people spent watching videos in February by 23% from a year earlier, making videos the second-fastest growing use of the Web, after social networking. Additionally, the average video stream in February was about two-and-a-half minutes, or 22% longer than a year earlier.

"The growth in the early part of 2009 appears to be centralized among sites that host long-form videos," Nielsen said. "In fact, one of the more interesting trends in online video is the increasing attraction to long-form videos: The total minutes spent watching long-form is considerably more than minutes spent on short-form and has grown about 20% in the first two months of 2009."

Long-form video-streaming is just one of a few content-watching areas that have increased among Americans, despite the continuing increase of time spent in front of the television. Online-video viewing of the average American Internet user surged 15% between the third and fourth quarters of last year to almost three hours a month, while time-shifted television watching rose 11% to more than seven hours, Nielsen said in a study released in February.

Additionally, about 8% of adults watch current television shows on the Internet at least once a week, up from 6% a year ago, while with adults using the Internet from home, the percentage who watch online videos at least once a week is higher, Leichtman Research said in a separate report that month.

Among rankings of the amount of time a Web site's viewer spent on a particular site, Netflix, which has been expanding its video-streaming offerings, unsurprisingly came out on top, with the typical Netflix Web site visitor spending about three and a half hours on the site in February, according to Nielsen. Veoh, C-Span and Hulu's Web sites also attracted viewers who spent an average of about three hours on those sites in February.