• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, March 14, 2013

The February comScore Video Metrix data, released today, had the average eye-popping statistic that is usually part of the monthly report. This time it was news that Google Sites, kind of the long-hand way of referring to YouTube for the purposes of video tabulation, registered a record-breaking 2.2 billion video ad views last month, or a stunning 22% of the total 9.9 billion total ad video views in the month.

More than 33 billion video content views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 11.3 billion. That’s one in three, as even a math challenged person like me could figure.

And February is a short month, remember, so that’s a lot of ads in a relatively short period of time. Last February, when video watching was not quite the spectator sport it has become now, comScore recorded 7.5 billion video ad views. Things started to take off after that, reaching a peak of 11.3 billion in December. But February is also the month of the Super Bowl and the Oscars which must drive traffic to YouTube and every other video-centric site.

Still, January, a nice normal sized month, grabbed 9.1 billion ad views, 800 million less than day-deprived February.  

All of this makes it hard for me to believe the stories about major advertisers that aren’t using online video advertising. I’m not necessarily saying every video ad works for every advertiser, and I remember how my mother told me it was stupid to jump off a bridge just because my friend did.

But if my whole town jumped off a bridge I think mom might have to think over her advice.  

 Google Sites also ranked at the top of the list in terms of visitors, with 150.7 million, followed by Facebook with 61.2 million, VEVO with 49.5 million, NDN with 46.3 million and Yahoo! sites with 43.6 million.

So, to recap, 177.9 million visitors saw over 33 billion videos, so each viewer watched 1,045.7 minutes each. That’s more than 17 hours a month. In addition we watch about 35 hours of TV a week. Somewhere in there, some of us work and sleep.

Again, a lot of video viewing happens via YouTube, as ubiquitous in the video biz is Band-Aids are as the killer app for skinned knees. Its partners share the benefits. YouTube partner VEVO, the music channel, maintained the top position in the ranking with 48.2 million viewers. Fullscreen followed with with 36.8 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 30.5 million, Warner Music with 26 million and ZEFR (formerly MovieClips) with 23.8 million. Machinima was stickiest; it had the highest engagement, averaging 61 minutes per viewer, a rather awesome stat.