Comscore Says Almost Everyone (75%) in the US Now Watches Video Online
Traffic analysts estimate 5 billion US video views in July for YouTube alone.
Comscore issued their report for July website traffic in the online video sector today and two numbers really stand out. The company estimates that US web users viewed more than 5 billion videos that month and says that 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in July. Those are some pretty high numbers, but 3rd party traffic stats always have to be taken with a giant grain of salt. Do you believe that online video is this universal yet?
Interesting stats from the Comscore study include:
- The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
- 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
- 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
- The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.
How good are these numbers from Comscore? It's hard to know. The company is widely respected, but so is Hitwise, another traffic analyst firm that comes up with very different numbers. See our write up in June of a Hitwise report that argued that the video market in general was declining but that YouTube had a 75% marketshare in May. Comscore reports that YouTube has a 44% marketshare. Both companies agree on who the leaders are, perhaps Comscore is just looking further out the long tail in who it includes in the category.
All of these numbers are subject to interpretation and no one's data collection method is anywhere near perfect. Do you believe the assertion that 75% of the US market online watched online video in July? We regularly talk to people who don't know the first thing about anything regarding the internet, but perhaps even they spend time on YouTube or use Windows Media Player to watch news video on the big news portals.
Let us know your take on the believability of these numbers in the poll above. For more details, see Comscore's full report.
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Watches video continually or has watched video? Pretty vague
Posted by: Bwana McCall
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September 10, 2008 2:52 PM
Yeah, "watched" I believe..."watches", I'm not so sure. I sure have watched video (even today), but I'm not watching it like I do TV.
Posted by: Shepard
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September 10, 2008 3:02 PM
"..of the total US internet audience"
So wouldn't that be a percentage of the total population?
I am agree with Shepard. I don't think video ( especially Youtube video)is more important then TV and movie in people's life.
The story reports "51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com". I think the question we're all asking here is: Are they (Comscore) counting video content that automatically plays on MySpace pages, or video that was actually requested to be played by the visitor (user initiated)?
I think it depends on how the data is gathered. There might be big differences between how those two companies collect the presented data. But at least they agree upon the leaders in video industry. And i also bet they count all views, no matter if a user finished watching or not.
Based on the data, it'd be more accurate to ask if 75% of those using the Internet have watched online video. Not the entire population. I'm not even sure what percent of the US is net-connected at this point. My great uncle gets all kinds of links sent to him via email, including YouTube and news sites. If an AOL customer like him is viewing video online, it may indeed be possible the vast majority of Internet users have seen something. Though that 235 minute stat is kinda crazy.
Here is another report from January stating that 48 % of internet users have visited video sharing sites:
Increased Use of Video-sharing Sites
A report from march mentions 70 % of internet users streamend video online and warch 7 minutes a day:
Internet video poised for explosive expansion in viewing
Contemplating the growth rate and the way video now is spreaded by widgets and shared by web players I guess 75 % might be right. Videos are already everywhere now.