Commentary

YouTube Is Video Streamers' Choice, By Far

by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, June 19, 2009

Overall online video usage in May, reported by Nielsen Online, shows that unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49% growth in time per viewer, year over year.

Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)
	*May-09*	*% Change Year-Over-Year*	*% Change Month-Over-Month*
Unique Viewers (000)	133,797	12.8	14.7
Total Streams (000)	10,043,049	34.8	6.2
Streams per Viewer	75.1	19.6	-7.3
Time per Viewer (min)	188.7	48.9	-8.3
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, June 2009 (Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising)

Online Web Brands ranked by Video Streams for May 2009 (U.S.)
*Video Brand*	*Total Streams(000)*	*Unique Viewers (000)*
YouTube	6,048,666	95,357
Hulu	382,322	10,106
Yahoo!	208,202	25,224
Fox Interactive Media	190,135	16,029
ABC.COM	175,102	6,309
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network	153,414	5,699
MSN/Windows Live	148,358	12,454
Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network	141,350	6,848
MTV Networks Music	126,929	6,733
CBS Entertainment Network	98,228	6,647
Source: Nielsen Online, VideoCensus, June 2009 (Includes progressive downloads and excludes video advertising)

A unique viewer is anyone who viewed a full episode, part of an episode or a program clip during the month. A stream is a program segment. VideoCensus measurement does not include video advertising.

For more information, please visit Nielsen-Online here or the Nielsen-Online blog here.

consumer generated, research, social networks, streaming, video

3 comments about "YouTube Is Video Streamers' Choice, By Far".

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Tilly Pick from Development Practice 360, LLC., June 19, 2009 at 3:23 p.m.
What I found interesting is each platform's stickiness (e.g. how often does a unique viewer return). When you run the Average # of Streams Per Unique Viewer, here's what happens.
Expectedly, YouTube and Hulu have the best level of returns and loyalty.
ABC.COM, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network and Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network, despite their smaller absolute # of viewers, actually bump up in importance in my book.
And, MSN/Windows Live, Fox Interactive Media and Yahoo! become a lot less appealing if I were a client.
I know it's just back of the envelope math, but interesting and valuable nonetheless.
Reply

Duncan jb Horner from Qualvu, June 19, 2009 at 8:14 p.m.

How better would this look for Hulu if Length Of Session was incorporated into the picture?

Neil Sanderson from neilsanderson.com, June 20, 2009 at 2:50 p.m.

It's also interesting to look at the increase in total minutes spent watching online video. Since there is an increase in the number of viewers and an increase in the number of minutes per viewer, total online minutes of video viewing grew by a very impressive 68 per cent, year over year. My calculation is at http://neilsanderson.com/?p=637