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U.S. Online Video Use Grows and Pay-TV Declines

To date, most media industry analysts still insist that consumer use of online video has no negative impact on traditional pay-TV service revenues. Even when there's mounting evidence that consumer behavior is shifting away from traditional linear broadcast programing, the denial continues. The recent disclosure of a huge decline in U.S. pay-TV subscriptions is the latest example.

Meanwhile, comScore released July 2010 data showing that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content during the month -- for an average of 14.7 hours per viewer.

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #3 spot with 46.6 million viewers.

Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 283 minutes, or 4.7 hours. Hulu also had high viewer engagement with an average of 158 minutes (or 2.6 hours) per viewer.

Americans viewed nearly 3.6 billion video ads in July, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 783 million. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 452 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network (248 million) and Microsoft Sites (232 million).

Video ads reached 27 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 44.5 times during the month. Tremor Media Video Network delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 19.0 over the course of the month.

Other findings from the July 2010 study include:

- The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: ScanScout Network at 40.5 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 39.4 percent, and Break Media Network at 38.7 percent.

- 84.9 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

- The duration of the average online content video was 4.8 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

- Video ads accounted for 9.8 percent of all videos viewed and 0.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

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