Online Video Market 'Explodes,' 33.2 Billion Views in December

Nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched 33.2 billion videos in December, according to industry analyst site comScore.


'When broken down,' says industry observer Paul Suarez, 'the numbers mean that 86.5 percent of total U.S. Internet users watched online videos and averaged 187 videos per user.'

We're not sure if this last little factoid means anything, but on the off chance that it matters to somebody's marketing plan somewhere we'll throw in that the average length video watched was 4.1 minutes, up from 3.5 minutes from March.

As you probably expect, Google and YouTube divide up the lion's share between them. Google sites were used for13.2 billion videos, almost 40 percent of the total, Suarez says, adding that 'more than 134 million people watched more than 13 billion YouTube videos, averaging 97.1 videos per user.'

A service we know little about, frankly, Hulu (News - Alert), 'ranked second with more than 1 billion videos viewed, an all-time high for the property, and representing 3.0 percent market share,' according to Andrew Lipsman, in the comScore (News - Alert) report.

Still Hulu ranked sixth for most unique visitors, trailing Google, Yahoo, Fox Interactive Media, CBS Interactive and Microsoft (News - Alert) sites. The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos, totaling 2.2 hours of videos per viewer.

Other interesting findings:

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

--Jambo Media, an online video solutions company, delivered videos to 39.4 million unique viewers, representing a reach comparable to that of video content providers in the top ten.

--Fully 86.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video, and 44.9 million viewers watched 423.3 million videos on MySpace (News - Alert) Sites (9.4 videos per viewer).