Total online video streams viewed and online video time per viewer each increased 25% year-over-year in September 2009, according to (pdf) US online video usage and top-brand data from The Nielsen Company, which also revealed that unique viewers and streams per viewer are up for the month.
YouTube Top Brand
Not surprisingly, YouTube remains the undisputed #1 brand in online video, when ranked by video streams for the month, Nielsen reported.? YouTube racked up nearly 6.7 billion US views in September, and saw more than 106 million unique viewers.
Hulu streamed the second-highest number of online videos, 437 million, with 13.5 million unique viewers.
Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live/Bing, and Fox Interactive Media rounded out the top five brands.
Nielsen’s numbers appear to be more conservative than those reported by comScore, which uses a different methodology to estimate YouTube’s US market to be in the neighborhood of 10 billion videos viewed per month. comScore also reports that MSN is the #2 internet video provider.
However, based on numbers released by YouTube itself, data from both measurement services may, in fact, be an underestimation. A recent blog post by YouTube founder Chad Hurley stated that YouTube routinely serves up more than 1 billion video views per day around the world.
About the data:? The data were collected through Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus, which combines patented panel and census research methodologies to provide a count of viewing activity and engagement and in-depth demographic reporting. Online video viewing is tracked according to video player, which can be used on site or embedded elsewhere on the web. Nielsen defines a unique viewer as anyone who viewed a full episode, part of an episode or a program clip during the month. A stream is a program segment. VideoCensus measurement does not include video advertising. Effective with June 2009 data reporting, enhancements to the Nielsen VideoCensus service have made previous data incomparable except for directional purposes.