Comments for YouTube Grows - But Loses Market Share

YouTube Grows - But Loses Market Share

2008-12-12T22:27:57Z

According to the latest Comscore report about the online video market, U.S. Internet users watched close to 13.5 billion videos online in October, which represents an increase of 45 percent compared to last year. Google's YouTube alone served almost 5.4 billion videos to 99.5 million viewers.

However, according to a report by AdAge, there was some negative news for YouTube in these numbers as well: the site's overall market share dropped almost 10% since July, as Hulu and other services are getting more attention from users than ever before.

]]> Hulu

The overall market is still growing, and a lot of these viewers are heading to YouTube, but Hulu almost doubled its viewership from July to October. According to Comscore, Hulu's users also watch relatively long videos, with an average of 11.6 minutes. Given the type of content on the site, that's really no surprise, but no other top 10 video site gets even close to these numbers.

TV on YouTube

In many ways, this is probably just a sign of a maturing market, but it also shows that YouTube has to continue to improve its service, and that Google needs to continue to court professional content producers, as viewers are clearly also looking for this kind of content. The addition of the wide-screen format and HD videos is surely a step in this direction, but so far, we haven't heard of any major TV networks signing up with YouTube to distribute full length shows, and the viewing experience on the site for longer videos still isn't ideal.

Comment from Ryan on 2008-12-12

2008-12-13T05:36:07Z

I wonder why Hulu after a year or so does not have the audience YouTube does?

I mean free TV shows ... probably because people have yet to hook their PCs or Mac Mini (s) up to LCD TVs like this http://techavid.com (not spam just sharing). It's pretty simple to do and tons of people have LCD TVs nowadays.

Comment from Marco Raaphorst on 2008-12-13

2008-12-13T08:27:40Z

Hulu and copyright... how boring. Here in Holland we can't see anything. Hulu doesn't exist for us right now.

Comment from DC Crowley on 2008-12-13

2008-12-13T22:50:39Z

Well said Marco, Hula, Sling totally FAIL because the world is bigger than the US, much bigger. Yet it's all black screen experience. If I sometimes hope that the US wants world domination I am not seeing it here. The BBC iPlayer is not much better though.

So YouTube can sit back and relax. Google/ You Tube combined have 10 times the percentage share (39.7%) of the next player (3.8%). We can watch You Tube anywhere.

Comment from Hank Green on 2008-12-13

2008-12-14T02:26:27Z

Is youtube really the same thing as Hulu? I feel like there's no sense in comparing their market share because they're serving entirely different markets with entirely different services.

Saying that Hulu is gaining ground on YouTube would be like saying that the Cartoon Network is gaining ground on the Orlando Sentinel. While it's certainly true in terms of eyeballs served, they're different mediums with different audiences, and different goals.

Hank Green (ecogeek and vlogbrothers)

Comment from Steve on 2008-12-14

2008-12-14T16:21:43Z

Hulu rocks maybe im saying that cause im in the states. I would like to see the traffic stats for Hulu in the states vs youtube im sure its alot closer.

Steve
grindvision.com