comScore reports that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched over-the-top (OTT) video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 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 with 146.3 million unique viewers. Facebook.com jumped one position to capture the #2 spot with 58.6 million viewers, for a total of 243 million viewing sessions.
Yahoo! Sites ranked third with 53.9 million viewers, followed by VEVO with 45.4 million. Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.9 billion and average time spent per viewer at 270 minutes, or 4.5 hours.
Americans viewed more than 3.8 billion video ads in August, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at 790 million. BrightRoll Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 469 million ad views, followed by Tremor Media Video Network (442 million) and Microsoft Sites (234 million).
Video ads reached 45 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 28 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 30 over the course of the month.
Other findings from the comScore study include:
- The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: Break Media at 46.4 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 45.0 percent, and ScanScout Network at 44.5 percent.
- 85.1 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 advertising accounted for 10.7 percent of all videos viewed and 1.0 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.
