72 million internet users watched online video content in December 2010 for an average of 14.6 hours per viewer, according to research by Comscore. The total US internet audience engaged in nearly 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.
Google sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 144.8 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! sites with 53.1 million viewers. In the year since its launch, music video site Vevo steadily grew to reach 50.6 million viewers in December, with much of its viewing being driven by Vevo on YouTube.
AOL maintained the fourth position with 48.6 million viewers, followed by Viacom Digital with 45.9 million. Google Sites had the highest number of viewing sessions with 1.9 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 274 minutes, or 4.6 hours.
Americans viewed 5.9 billion video ads in December, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.2 billion. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 1.0 billion ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (682 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (588 million). Video ads reached 49% of the total US population an average of 39.8 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 47.1 over the course of the month.
Other notable findings from December 2010 include: the duration of the average online content video was 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes. Video ads accounted for 16.4% of all videos viewed and 1.6% of all minutes spent viewing video online.
