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Online Video Ads Reach 43 Percent of U.S. Population

comScore released data showing that 174 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in March 2011 for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 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 March with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by AOL, Inc. with 57.0 million viewers and Yahoo! Sites with 56.4 million viewers. Microsoft Sites came in fourth with 53.1 million viewers, while VEVO ranked fifth with 52.6 million viewers.

Google Sites had the highest number of viewing sessions as it neared the 2 billion mark, and highest time spent per viewer at 276 minutes, or 4.6 hours.

Americans viewed 4.3 billion video ads in March, 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 804.3 million ad views, followed by Adap.tv (553 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (398 million).

Time spent watching videos ads neared 1.9 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu delivering the highest duration of video ads at 520 million minutes.

Video ads reached 43 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 33 times during the month. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 47 over the course of the month.

Other findings from the comScore market study include:

- The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: Tremor Media at 47.9 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 40.5 percent and Break Media at 39.6 percent.

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

- The duration of the average online content video was 5.2 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

- Video ads accounted for 12.7 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

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