Nielsen: Video Audience Up 5% In 2009

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The online video audience grew 5.2% last year from 137.4 million unique U.S. viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million last month, according to new Nielsen data. That marks a slowdown from the 16% growth between 2008 and 2009. YouTube remained by far the dominant video property, with an audience of 112.6 million, up 6.7% in the last month.

Yahoo, a distant second at 26 million, was the only top 10 site to suffer a monthly decline in video viewers, dropping 5.3% from December. With an effort underway to expand its lineup of branded video programming this year, it should be interesting to see whether Yahoo's video audience continues to slide in 2010.

Disney Online, by contrast, claimed the fastest-growing audience in the last year, increasing 23.3% to 8 million. Facebook, which ranked No. 3 behind Yahoo, saw the next-fastest rise in video viewership, growing 18.6% to 21.5 million. Considering that Facebook isn't even a media company per se, the fact that it ranked ahead of properties like MSN, Hulu, Fox Interactive and Disney underscores how important the social networking site has become as an online video hub.

When it comes to total streams and time-per-viewer, Hulu remains formidable. In the former category, it was second only to YouTube's 6.6 million streams, with 635, 546, and No. 1 in time-per-viewer, at 234.6 minutes (almost 4 hours) last month. But with rumors heating up that Hulu is likely to erect a pay wall around at least some content, those numbers could tumble.

ABC Television was the biggest gainer in streams last month, jumping 71.3% from December to 128,510. As with its overall video audience, Yahoo had the biggest monthly decline in streams, falling 9.2% to 221,355. In time-per-viewer, ABC Family shot up more than 1000% to 183 minutes. Chinese video-sharing site Youku saw the steepest drop-off in time spent viewing, sliding 65% to 191.5 minutes.

Total streams and time-per-viewer in 2009 increased 5.8% and 5.7%, respectively, about the same as total audience growth.

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