The top online video content properties experienced some shakeups, gains and losses month-over-month between April and May, according to new comScore VideoMetrix data. News Distribution Network (NDN) saw the biggest monthly gain, of 26.8%, rising from about 27 million viewers to more than 34 million, to pass Amazon and Hulu for the 8th spot. Both Amazon and Hulu lost a significant portion of their video audiences, falling 9.9% and 9%, respectively. By contrast, Yahoo gained ground, reporting about 57.8 million viewers, up almost 8% from 53.6 million in April to solidify its hold on the second spot.
The top 3 content property rankings remained unchanged. Google Sites (driven chiefly by YouTube views) maintained their #1 position with 151.7 million viewers, down close to 4% from 157.7 million a month earlier. Yahoo! Sites followed, ahead of VEVO, which dropped roughly 2.5% from 49.5 million to 48.3 million viewers. Beyond the top 3, some changes occurred: Microsoft overtook Facebook for the 4th spot, by virtue of its 3.6% gain in viewers, while AOL moved ahead of Viacom for the 6th position, as the latter lost close to 5% of its audience.
The average number of hours consumed per viewer remained essentially unchanged, at 21.9 hours in May, compared to 21.8 in April. Google again demonstrated the highest viewer engagement, with an average of 7.7 hours per viewer, up significantly from 7.2 a month earlier.
Ad Views Reach New Peak
Americans viewed about 6% (600 million) more video ads in May as compared to April, to reach a new peak of 10.1 billion ad views. This is a strong gain, but represents a slowdown in growth rate from earlier in the year: for example, ad views in March reached 8.4 billion, up 11.7% from 7.5 billion in February, and up 50.6% from 5.6 billion in January.
Meanwhile, Hulu generated the highest number of video ad impressions again, at close to 1.7 billion, or 17% of all ads viewed. Google Sites ranked second overall with close to 1.4 billion, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 1.13 billion. Adap.tv (966 million) and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform (897 million) rounded out the top 5.
Time spent watching video ads totaled close to 4.5 billion minutes during the month. Hulu delivered the largest duration of ads, at 725 million minutes. Video ads reached 52% of the total US population an average of 64 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 56.
Other Findings:
- 84.5% of the US internet audience viewed online video in May.
- The duration of the average online content video was 6.5 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
- Video ads accounted for 21.6% of all videos viewed and 1.9% of all minutes spent viewing video online.
- More than 180 million US internet users watched online video content in May for an average of 21.9 hours per viewer.
- The total US internet audience engaged in 36.6 billion video views.
