• by Wayne Friedman , April 13, 2009

Online video continues to expand -- now up 40% versus the same levels a year ago.

Nielsen Online says March's 9.6 billion streams and 130 million Web users are a 38.8% hike over March 2008. Total streams for viewers during March were at an average 74.4 with the total time per viewer, in terms of minutes, at over three hours per month -- 190.7 minutes.

Nielsen says the total time per viewer in March -- which includes progressive downloads but excludes video advertising -- was up a big 12.6% versus February. This seems to suggest -- as other research has found -- that users are watching longer-length videos.

YouTube, the big Internet video site, continues to dwarf the competition in two big key areas -- 5.5 billion streams and 89.4 million unique viewers.

Among streams, the next-biggest site after YouTube is hulu.com at 348.5 million. Yahoo comes after that at 231.8 million; Fox Interaction Media (which includes MySpace)is 207.5 million; Nickelodeon, 196.1 million; ABC.com, 176.9 million; MSN/Windows Live, 168.9 million; Turner Sports/Entertainment, 137.6 million; MTV, 123.8 million; and CNN, 103.5 million.

Among the unique viewers, Yahoo came in second at 24.8 million, followed by Fox Interactive Media (which includes MySpace) at 14.7 million, and MSN/Windows Live at 12 million. CNN was next at 9.0 million; hulu.com, 8.9 million; ABC.com, 6.9 million; Nickelodeon, 6.4 million; MTV Networks, 6.3 million; and Turner Sports/Entertainment at 5.8 million.