comScore Releases March 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings

RESTON, Va., April 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 37 billion online content videos in March, while video ads topped 8 billion for the first time on record.

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Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in March with 146.1 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 60.6 million, VEVO with 51.3 million, Facebook.com with 45.1 million and Viacom Digital with 44.3 million. Nearly 37 billion video views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 15.7 billion, followed by Hulu with 1 billion and Yahoo! Sites with 815 million. The average viewer watched 21.7 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.1 hours) and Hulu (4.6 hours) posting the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

*A video is defined as any streamed segment of audiovisual content, including both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, (e.g. television episodes with ad pods in the middle) each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream.

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed more than 8.3 billion video ads in March, representing an all-time high, with Hulu delivering another month of record video ad views at more than 1.7 billion. Google Sites ranked second with more than 1.2 billion video ads during the month, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 953 million, Adap.tv with 892 million and Specific Media with more than 775 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.5 billion minutes, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 690 million minutes. Video ads reached 51 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 53 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 51, while ESPN delivered an average of 26 ads per viewer.

*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, etc.

**Indicates video ad network

tIndicates video ad exchange

Top 10 YouTube Partner Channels by Unique Viewers

The March 2012 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO (49.1 million viewers) and Warner Music (30.3 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 22.9 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 14.6 million, FullScreen with 12 million and BroadbandTV with 8.5 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima demonstrated the highest engagement (69 minutes per viewer) followed by VEVO (62.5 minutes per viewer). VEVO streamed the most videos (670 million), followed by Machinima (379 million).

*YouTube Partner Reporting based on online video content viewing and does not include claimed user-generated content

Other notable findings from March 2012 include:

• 83.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The duration of the average online content video was 6.4 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 18.5 percent of all videos viewed and 1.5 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

SOURCE comScore, Inc.