Year-over-Year Online Video Viewership Falls

May 19, 2010

Year-over-year US online video viewership fell 0.2% to 133.5 million unique viewers in April 2010, according to VideoCensus data from The Nielsen Company.

On a month-over-month basis, the number of unique US online video viewers rose 1.3%. Total video streams, about 9.4 billion, fell 9.2% year-over-year but grew 1.6% compared to March 2010. Streams per viewer, 70.5, were down 9% from April 2009 but up 0.3% from March 2010. The average viewer spent 181.2 minutes watching online video in April 2010, down 7.8% year-over-year but up 1.2% month-over-month.

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MLB.com Gains, Google Loses Viewers
MLB.com was ranked 10th among online video brands with 7.8 million unique viewers in April 2010, but clearly led month-over-growth with an 83.4% rate. Google ranked sixth with 12.5 million unique viewers and had the highest rate of month-over-month viewer loss, 17.9%.

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YouTube remained the most popular online video site with 97.1 million unique viewers and 1.1% month-over-month viewer growth. Yahoo retained its second-place spot with 27.6 million unique viewers, but lost 9.5% of its unique viewers from March 2010. Facebook came in third with 24.3 million unique viewers and 3.9% month-over-month growth.

Fox Has Best Stream Growth Rate
Fox Interactive Media, the fifth-most popular online video brand in terms of video streams with 133.9 million in April 2010, had the highest month-over-month growth rate in this area (32.1%). CBS Entertainment Network, the 10th-most-popular online video brand with 115.9 million streams, had the highest rate of month-over-month loss (19.6%).

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YouTube retained its leadership in streams with 4.9 billion, up 5.8% from March 2010. Hulu held the second spot with 687.9 million streams, although it lost 2.8% of its March 2010 stream total. Yahoo ranked third with 204.1 million streams, a heavy 16.5% month-over-month loss.

Megavideo Gains Most Time per Viewer
Online video brand Megavideo, which ranked fourth in terms of average time spent per viewer in April 2010 (164.8 minutes), had a leading 17.5% month-over-month growth rate. Number five online video brand Youku lost a significant 58.2% of average time spent per viewer from March 2010, ending up with an even figure of 110 minutes.

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Online movie rental service NetFlix, which did not make the top 10 rankings in any other Nielsen VideoCensus category during April 2010, clearly led in the category of average time spent per viewer (427.8 minutes, down 0.3% from the previous month). Hulu followed with 253.3 minutes and a negative 7% month-over-month growth rate. Justin.tv came in third with 169.2 minutes, good for a 4.2% month-over-month growth rate.

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