Americans viewed 9.4 billion video ads in September, as data from comScore VideoMetrix reveals. That is a slight dip from August’s 9.5 billion ads, but, fairly positive news after the June-to-July 2012 plummet from 11 billion to 9.6 billion. Turning from ads to content videos, overall, 181 million US internet users watched in excess of 39 billion online content videos in September. Reaching 85% of the US internet audience, that represents a small dip from August’s 87.7%. But the number of videos viewed saw a respectable lift of 3.4% over August from 37.7 billion.
Google Sites, driven chiefly by YouTube.com, was the top online video content property in September with 150.3 million unique viewers, practically unchanged from August. Yahoo! sites maintained second place, gaining about 4% to reach 57.4 million. AOL, Inc. took the third-place spot with 53.8 million, followed by VEVO with 50.3 million and Facebook.com with 46.4 million. This is the second consecutive month of losses for Facebook, which was at 47.7 million unique viewers in August and 53 million in July.
Top Ad Properties
Returning to video ads, each of the top 5 video ad properties delivered more than 1 billion video ads, led by Google Sites (1.8 billion), followed by the BrightRoll Video Network (1.3 billion), Hulu (1.2 billion), Liverail.com (1.1 billion) and Adap.tv (1 billion). The time spent watching video ads reached 3.4 billion minutes, and BrightRoll delivered the highest duration of video ads (681 million minutes).
Video ads reached 51% of the US population an average of 60 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency (51 ads per viewer), compared to Google Sites’ average of 20.
Machinima Leads YouTube Partners In Engagement
Measuring YouTube content videos (not ads) on its partner channels, video music channel VEVO, with 48.8 million total unique viewers, kept its #1 position, followed by Warner Music (24.4 million). Maker Studios reached the #3 spot for the first time (23.5 million), followed by Machinima (22.7 million) and Fullscreen (21.2 million).
Machinima enjoyed the highest viewer engagement (70 minutes per viewer), followed by VEVO (38 minutes).
VEVO streamed the greatest number of videos (545 million), followed by Machinima (449 million).
Other Findings:
- The average duration of online content video was 6.4 minutes, compared to 0.4 minutes per video ad.
- Video ads accounted for 19.3% of all videos viewed and 1.3% of all minutes spent viewing online video.
