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Online Video Rises, Google Floats Highest
January 17, 2008

With evidence gathering that online websites are benefiting from the ongoing Hollywood writer's strike and shrinking TV content, it should be little surprise that Google and its YouTube property would be the lead recipient of any migration.

According to a new report by the research firm, comScore, Google increased its video market share in November by more than 2 percentage points to 31.3%.

The comScore survey, called the Video Metrix Report, found that American Internet users watched 3.25 hours of online video in November, totaling 9.5 billion online videos. Among all sites, Google's ranked first with a total of 3 billion videos viewed. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 419 million videos viewed or 4.4%, followed by Yahoo! sites with 328 million or 3.5% and Viacom Digital with 245 million or 2.6%.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, was the top U.S. video portal with 2.9 billion videos viewed in November. The report found the site had 74.5 million unique visits -- translating to an average of 39 videos per visit. Fox's Myspace.com ranked second with 43.2 million unique visits -- translating to 389 million videos watched or 9 videos per visit.

All told, 138 million Americans -- three in four U.S. Internet users -- watched online video in November. The average online video duration lasted 2.8 minutes. The average online video viewer consumed 69 videos.

The survey included adult content sites, but no single adult portal ranks as high as any of the afore mentioned media properties, said senior analyst Andrew Lipsman.

He also added that there is not enough direct data to determine if the Internet usage is increasing in response to the writer's strike.

"I know there's been a lot of theorizing behind it, but I don't know of any clear evidence," he said. "Prime time TV watchers may be switching to more sports or news. Maybe a small portion have moved to online. But if they're watching TV shows, the same TV shows aren't being posted online. If there are any changes, it's subtle."

The survey was conducted by comScore, which measures a global cross section of more than 2 million consumers who give comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing.

Posted by Ned Randolph on January 17, 2008 | Comments (0)