Led by a strong surge in YouTube viewers, internet users in the US viewed 14.8 billion online videos during January, up 4% from December 2008, according to data from comScore Video Metrix.
YouTube accounted for 91% of the incremental gain in the number of videos viewed, surpassing 100 million viewers for the first time ever, comScore reported.
Google Sites Still Lead
In January, Google Sites once again ranked as the top US video property, with 6.4 billion videos viewed (43% online video market share). Google’s YouTube.com accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed at the property.
Fox Interactive Media ranked a distant second in terms of videos viewed, with 552 million videos (3.7%), followed by Yahoo Sites with 374 million (2.5%) and Viacom Digital with 288 million (1.9%). Megavideo climbed 15% (103 million videos) in January to capture top-10 spot for the first time.
YouTube Tops 100 Million Viewers
More than 147 million US internet users watched an average of 101 videos per viewer in January. Google Sites grew to 102 million online video viewers during the month, or more than two out of every three internet users who watched video, comscore said.
Fox Interactive ranked second with 62.1 million viewers, followed by Yahoo Sites (41.9 million) and Microsoft Sites (30.0 million).
Other notable findings from January 2009:
- 76.8% of the total US internet audience viewed online video.
- The average online video viewer watched 356 minutes of video (approximately 6 hours), up 15% vs. December.
- 100.9 million viewers watched 6.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (62.6 videos per viewer).
- 54.1 million viewers watched 473 million videos on MySpace.com (8.7 videos per viewer).
- The duration of the average online video was 3.5 minutes, up from 3.2 minutes per video in December.
- The duration of the average online video viewed at Megavideo was 24.9 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.
