173 Million Internet Users Watched Online Video In January

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: BrightRoll Video Network with 27.2 percent penetration of online video viewers, SpotXchange Video Ad Network with 19.8 percent, and Tremor Media Video Network with 16.6 percent.
• 135.4 million viewers watched 12.7 billion videos on YouTube.com (93.4 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 23.5 videos, totaling 2.3 hours of videos per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 4.1 minutes.

Comments

178 Million Americans Watched 33 Billion Online Videos in a Month

Research firm comScore has just released data about the U.S. online video market from December. Americans reportedly watched 33.2 billion videos online during that month. 178 million users watched video online.

Google sites ranked at the top of the list by a significant margin, just like usual. Hulu was next in line with about a 12 million video difference. Google sites accounted for nearly 40% of the market share, with Hulu accounting for 3%. Here's the top ten:

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

According to comScore, users watched an average of 187 videos per viewer in December. That works out to be roughly 6 a day.

"Google Sites attracted 135.8 million unique viewers during the month (97.5 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo Sites with 59.8 million viewers (9.0 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 56.8 million viewers (9.7 videos per viewer)," comScore says. "The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property."

The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 30.5% penetration of online video viewers, BrightRoll Video Network with 21.7%, and BBE with 21.2%.

86.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. 134.4 million viewers watched over 13 billion videos on YouTube.com (97.1 videos per viewer). 44.9 million viewers watched 423.3 million videos on MySpace Sites (9.4 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos, totaling 2.2 hours of videos per viewer. The duration of the average online video was 4.1 minutes.
 

Have You Read This?

> Google To Get More Interactive With Mobile Video Ads

> IAB Releases Ad Unit Guidelines Updates

> YouTube Videos In Adsense Could Drive Clicks

Pepsi to Skip Super Bowl for Social Media

Pepsi will reportedly be skipping its annual Super Bowl commercials, and will instead invest the money it would generally spend on those, in social media marketing. This would make the first time in 23 years that Pepsi will not have Super Bowl ads.

Larry D. Woodard, President and CEO of Manhattan ad agency Vigilante writes in an ABC News piece:

Pepsi represents one of the stalwarts, not just of the Super Bowl advertiser lineup, but of broadcast TV in general. In 2006, spending on brand, Pepsi was at about $150 million. Although brand spending has been decreasing in recent years, Pepsi has continued to spend tens of millions on TV. And the Super Bowl annually has the largest audience of any TV show.

As television viewership has gone down, Internet usage, particularly social media interaction, has increased. The 2009 Super Bowl attracted an impressive 95.4 million viewers (approximately 42.1 percent of U.S. TV homes) and many of those watch the commercials as attentively as the football game. By contrast, in the important 18-34 demographic, a whopping 85 percent use social media (texting, blogging or social networking), and the phenomenal growth of social media has the attention of every major company. This holiday season, Toys "R" Us developed a Facebook page that grew at the astounding rate of between 40,000 and 95,000 fans per day after its late November launch.

As the numbers Woodard mentions would indicate, the Super Bowl is always an advertiser's dream. It costs big bucks, but there are so many eyeballs on those ads, and some people even watch the event just to see the commercials. Pepsi's move really says something about how far social media has come in the advertising world in such a short time. The fact that the company is breaking such a long-standing tradition in favor of it says a lot.

Of course social media will play its role in the further viewing of the Super Bowl ads themselves. They will no doubt appear on various video sites, and will be shared by countless people on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
 

Have You Read This?

> Socializing Advertising

> Pepsi's Social Media Challenge

> Amazon.com, Pepsi Bank On Free MP3 Music

YouTube Most Popular Video Site In France

France saw widespread growth in online video viewing during the past year, as audience size and video engagement both increased significantly, according to a new report from comScore.

The number of online video viewers in France increased 36 percent to 34.6 million, while the number videos viewed grew 141 percent to 5.4 billion. The average time spent viewing videos online nearly doubled to 11.7 hours per viewer in September.

"The online video market in France has rapidly expanded during the past year as Internet users demonstrate their preference for the sight, sound and motion of video for consuming online content," said Delphine Gatignol, comScore business development manager in France.

"While the Internet is still widely used for functional reasons, increasingly it has become an entertainment channel and the continued emergence of online video is a significant driver behind this trend."

Driven by the popularity of YouTube (which accounted for 99 percent of all videos viewed on the property), Google sites ranked as the top video content property in September with 22.9 million viewers and 1.8 billion total videos viewed, representing a 33.5 percent share of the French online video market.
French video site Dailymotion landed in the second spot with 394 million videos viewed, followed by Groupe TF1 (162 million videos), Megavideo (160 million videos), and Facebook (145 million videos).

Other highlights from September include:
   

• Viewers spent the longest time per video on Megaupload.com where they averaged 29.3 minutes per video.   
• The heaviest viewers of online video are males between the ages of 15-24 who watched approximately 21 hours of online video per person in September.   
• 22.9 million viewers watched 1.8 billion videos on YouTube.com (79 videos per viewer). 
• Females age 55 and older watched an average of 67 videos on YouTube.com in France, compared with males age 55 and older who watched 47 videos on the property during the month
   

 Have You Read This?

> YouTube Videos In AdSense Could Drive Clicks

> 35 Ways To Improve Your Online Video Performance

> YouTube Strikes Deal With UK Broadcaster

Next Page »