Watch Online Videos? You Were Probably YouTubing
Online video viewing is growing like crazy—nearly 15 billion Internet users viewed online videos in January alone. To further illustrate that phenomenon, YouTube surpassed 100 million viewers for the first time that month, according to new research.
The study from ComScore found that the number of Americans watching video online jumped 4 percent from December 2008 and of that gain, 91 percent came from YouTube viewing. Of the total U.S. Internet audience, 76.8 percent viewed online video.
In January, Google Sites, which includes YouTube, topped the list as the No. 1 U.S. video property with 6.4 billion videos viewed overall. That figure accounts for 43 percent online video market share (YouTube.com comprises more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the Google Sites.). Trailing YouTube is Fox Interactive Media, which came in with 552 million videos (3.7 percent), followed by Yahoo Sites with 374 million (2.5 percent).
The report said that more than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 101 videos per viewer in January. Google Sites accounted for more than two out of every three Internet users who watched video: 100.9 million viewers watched 6.3 billion videos on YouTube.com, the equivalent of 62.6 videos per viewer.
The time spent watching also increased a substantial 15 percent. The average online video viewer watched 356 minutes of video (approximately 6 hours), up 15 percent vs. December.