• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 14, 2013

The video ad marketplace continues to resemble the story of David and Goliath, with BrightRoll and Google battling it out for the most impressions served. Taking the top spot in May, BrightRoll was responsible for 2,624,509,000 of the roughly 15.8 billion video ads viewed by U.S. consumers, according to comScore. That number beat out the 2,553,208,000 ad impressions served up by Google in May -- but not by much.

BrightRoll first surpassed Google in video ad impressions last October, but by December had to take a back seat to the search giant. In April -- the last period for which comScore reported video ad data -- Google’s 2.4 billion ad impressions bested the 2.2 billion served by BrightRoll.

Tod Sacerdoti, founder and CEO of BrightRoll, explained his company’s success taking on Google. “Our exclusive focus on video has enabled us to grow and scale faster than our competitors,” Sacerdoti said on Friday. "We’ve built the BrightRoll platform from the ground up to simplify the complexity of the video ad industry.”

As for what’s at stake, eMarketer projects that domestic video ad spending will approach $8 billion by 2016. "Video has emerged from the shadows of digital media and planted itself at the center of the advertising ecosystem,” Sacerdoti added.

The video ad market is much bigger than Google and BrightRoll, however. In May, LiveRail.com and Adap.tv were each responsible for 2.1 billion video ad impressions, followed by the 1.7 billion impressions that Hulu put on the board. Specific Media and the TubeMogul Video Ad Platform were also in the running in May with 1.4 billion and 1.2 billion impressions, respectively.

Of the 6 billion minutes that consumers spent watching video ads in May, BrightRoll’s platform also delivering the highest duration of video ads at 1.3 billion minutes. Thanks to YouTube, however, Google Sites still ranked as the top online video content property in May, with 154.5 million unique viewers.

Facebook came in at second place with 60.4 million; followed by AOL with 53.8 million; Vevo with 52 million; and NDN with 46.5 million unique viewers.  Overall, nearly 41 billion video content views occurred in May, with Google Sites generating the highest number at nearly 14 billion, followed by AOL with 839 million.

According to comScore, video ads reached 53% of the total U.S. population an average of 96 times in May.