comScore: Video viewership increasing

Online video continues to see an increase in viewership and the amount of time viewers are staying on-site to watch and download videos. According to a new report from comScore, more than 12 billion videos were viewed during the month of May.

by Kristina Knight

This is an increase of 1 billion viewed videos over the April reporting period.

The report finds that 74% of the total online population in the US watched a video during the reporting period and that more than 4.1 billion videos were viewed through Google sites, including YouTube, alone. On average, videos lasted 2.7 minutes.

Both MySpace and Fox Interactive saw increases over April. MySpace users viewed more than 700 million videos in May. Meanwhile, Fox Interactive saw their market share increase to reach 6.4%, making them second only to Google Sites. Fox Interactive gained 1.3 share points on the leader. Google sites are firmly in the lead for online video with a 34% market share. Yahoo Sites, meanwhile, are in third place with 2.9% market share.

On average, viewers watched 85 videos each. 83 million unique users logged on to Google Sites while 60.7 million logged on to Fox Interactive sites. Yahoo Sites (40 million uniques), Microsoft Sites (29 million unique) and Time Warner - AOL (24.6 million unique users) rounded out the top five.