YouTube tops online video viewership

Digital business analytics company comScore has said Google-owned YouTube topped the online video content viewership last month, reports CBR Online.

New data released from the comScore Video Metrix service showed that 176 million US Internet users watched online video content in May for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer. The audience engaged in more than 5.6 billion viewing sessions in the month.

Online videos reached 83.3% of the US Internet audience. The study found that Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in May with 147.2 million unique viewers, followed by Vevo with 60.4 million viewers and Yahoo Sites with 55.5 million viewers.

According to Product Review, over the years there have been a number of online video services unveiled to compete with YouTube.

Although they are good and offer an easier service, there seems to be no beating them at the moment.

Rapid TV News has been looking at the Video Metrix and found that on average users of Google's video service managed 311 minutes per viewer, but Hulu was not that far behind with 217.8 minutes - not bad when you consider the former has a greater reach.

Hulu's strong performance was also indicated by its clear lead in terms of its business creation with the OTT service, writes Rapid TV News.

This generated the highest number of video ad impressions, 1.3 billion, out of the total of 4.6 billion video ads viewed by Americans in May 2011. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall, highest among video ad networks, lagging some way behind with 700.8 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (642 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (565 million).

More than 2.0 billion minutes were spent watching videos ads totalled with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 560 million minutes. Over four-fifths (83%) of the US Internet audience viewed online video.

Video ads accounted for 12.6% of all videos viewed and 1.2% of all minutes spent viewing video online.