Microsoft, Viacom Pick Up Video Viewers

October 26, 2011

Microsoft sites and Viacom Digital reported the best month-over-month unique viewer performance among the top five US online video properties in September 2011, according to comScore VideoMetrix data. Microsoft sites reported about 54 million viewers, up 16% from 46.4 million viewers, while Viacom Digital reported 53.4 million viewers, up 7% from 49.9 million viewers.

Microsoft climbed from fifth to third place, pushing August’s third place finisher Facebook.com down to fifth place as it lost 3.4% of its 51.6 million viewers, dropping to 49.9 million. Viacom maintained its fourth place position.

Elsewhere in the top 10 US video properties by unique viewer, Google maintained its longtime dominance (largely through its ownership of leading video platform YouTube) with 161.4 million unique viewers. Yahoo maintained its sixth place position with 46.1 million unique viewers, but gained slightly from 45.7 million the prior month, reversing a three-month trend of losing unique viewers.

NBC Universal gained roughly five million unique viewers from August, but remained near the bottom of the rankings with the comparatively small total of about 29.8 million viewers.

Hulu Generates More than 1B Video Ads

comscore-video-ads-oct-2011.JPGAmericans viewed more than 6.8 billion video ads in September, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1 billion. Tremor Video ranked second overall (and highest among video ad exchanges/networks) with 811 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (803 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (665 million).

Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 2.9 billion minutes during the month, with Adap.tv delivering the highest duration of video ads at 450 million minutes. Video ads reached 50 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 45.3 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 38.2.

Other Findings

  • 85.3% of the U.S. internet audience viewed online video.
  • The duration of the average online content video was 5.3 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
  • Video ads accounted for 14.7% of all videos viewed and 1.4% of all minutes spent viewing video online.
  • 182 million US internet users watched online video content in September for an average of 19.5 hours per viewer.
  • The total US internet audience engaged in 39.8 billion video views.

Facebook Falls from 2010

Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the number two spot in September 2010 with 58.6 million viewers, meaning the property has lost 15% of its unique video viewers in the past year and fallen three spots in the overall rankings.

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