Social networks are the hotspot for online video

According to a recent Nielsen Online report the time spent by consumers to watch online video clips via social networking sites increased 98% from October 2008 to October 2009; more than 999 minutes of video were viewed during the month with viewers watching more than 240 million streams via a favorite social hub, blog or profile.

Facebook is feeding the masses with more than 217 million streams alone.

"In conjunction with this increase, we are seeing remarkable growth in video viewing on social networking sites and it is only natural that these two trends would converge in consumers' minds, making sites like Facebook and Myspace.com, increasingly important distribution points for both consumer and professionally generated video," said Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics.

According to comScore metrics more almost 170 million consumers are now regularly watching video clips, user-generated content and complete television shows online, a huge number with big potential for the right marketers. The key is to be in the right place at the right time, and the social space may seem to be the right place - at least for now.

Because more consumers are watching clips via social networks, marketers have the potential to target specific demographics - age ranges, gender and even hyper-local geographic - through social profiles and information. Now, for the most part, these videos are simply being uploaded so there won't necessarily be video ad space, but the ability to contextually target ads to video target is there.

Tags: comScore, Nielsen Online, online video, social marketing, social video, video content, video streams, YouTube