Hulu Continues Losing YOY Viewers

Online video site Hulu had about 27.5 million unique US viewers in March 2011, according to new comScore Video Metrix data. While this was on par with 27.26 million unique viewers in February 2010, it represented a steep 31% drop from about 40 million unique viewers in March 2010.
Hulu also lost about 30% of its unique viewer total in February 2011 compared to February 2010.

Google Strengthens Lead

In contrast Google sites, which includes the undisputed leading online video platform YouTube, increased its dominance of the US online video space in March 2011. Google recorded about 143.2 million unique viewers, 1.97 billion viewing sessions and 275.6 average minutes per viewer. These totals were all significantly ahead of any competitor, with the closest competition coming from Hulu in average monthly minutes (215).
Compared to February 2011, Google increased unique visitors by about 1% from roughly 141 million, increased viewing sessions by almost 9% from roughly 1.83 billion, and increased average minutes per viewer by 5% from 261.6.
The only one of those metrics comScore tracked in March 2010 was unique visitors. Google grew its unique visitor total by about 5% year-over-year from 136 million.

Fewer Monthly Unique Viewers Watch More Videos

Video Metrix data shows that 174 million US internet users watched online video content in March 2011 for an average of 14.8 hours (888 minutes) per viewer. The total US internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.
Unique viewers were up 2.5% from 169.65 million in February 2011 and down about 3% from 180.2 million in March 2010. Viewing sessions were up 15% from about 5 billion the prior month, and average time per user was up about 9% from 816.4 minutes.

Tremor Media Reaches More than Half of Audience

In March 2011, Tremor Media ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 96.5 million viewers, or 53.5% of the total video viewing audience. Adconion Video Network ranked second with a potential reach of 81.6 million viewers (45.2% penetration), followed by Advertising.com Video Network with 80.8 million viewers (44.8%).

Other Findings

• 84.8% of the total US internet audience viewed online video.
• 135.3 million viewers watched 12.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (95.6 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 26.7 videos, totaling 2.6 hours of video per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.