• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, June 25, 2010

What a difference a year makes when it comes to video consumption. Last year in May comScore counted 16.5 billion videos served for the month. Now, they just reported that for May, 2010 we are up to 33.95 billion. And there have been some extraordinary shifts in rankings and market share, year-over-year. In 2009, Google accounted for a 40.1% share of videos served. But the gorilla in the marketplace has only grown amid substantial competition, now up to 43.1% share. Hulu, of course, was the big winner, rising from a 2.5% share last year to 3.5% in May this year. The average hulu visitor now watches 27 video for 2.7 hours a month per user.

Where did all of that share come from? Well if hulu was sold as a "YouTube killer" years ago, it hasn't worked. Instead we see most of the other major media on the list still growing but at a slower pace than these top streamers. To be sure there is jockeying month-to-month, but Viacom, Yahoo, and Turner are now all down to 1% shares of video served, when less than a year ago most of them had nearly twice that share. Microsoft and Viacom in particular lost share.

On an audience basis the picture is different but the rise of new players is all the more obvious. Yahoo now has the second largest video audience, with 46 million unique users, and May 2009's #2 (Fox) has dropped to #5 and #4 last year (CBS) is #7. Now music video portal Vevo is the third most popular video destination with 45.6 million users. And Facebook has been the other great video success story of the year, with a video audience of 45.5 million, although these users consume less media than any other properties among the top ten. Last year at this time, Facebook had a video audience of only 18 million.

comScore says that online video penetration is now at 84.8% of the Internet audience. But comparing last year with this year's numbers suggests we aren't even close to seeing the market gel. There is still room for new brands to get a toehold ... and for old media to screw it up.