Online video viewing was down from November for unique viewers, total streams and time per stream, but up versus last December. The small drop from November isn't terribly surprising considering the holidays and less new content (particularly with TV shows) in the month.
| Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec-09 | Year-Over-Year | Month-Over-Month | |
| Unique Viewers (000) | 137,411 | 10.3% | -0.7% |
| Total Streams (000) | 10,726,014 | 11.8% | -4.0% |
| Streams per Viewer | 78.1 | 1.4% | -3.3% |
| Time per Viewer (min) | 193.2 | 13.2% | -3.4% |
| Source: The Nielsen Company | |||
| Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for December 2009 (U.S.) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Video Brand | Total Streams (000) | Unique Viewers (000) | |
| 1 | YouTube | 6,427,623 | 105,592 | |
| 2 | Hulu | 634,880 | 13,638 | |
| 3 | Yahoo! | 243,846 | 27,533 | |
| 4 | Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network | 142,349 | 5,758 | |
| 5 | MSN/WindowsLive/Bing | 141,235 | 13,540 | |
| 6 | Fox Interactive Media | 125,397 | 10,914 | |
| 7 | Megavideo | 111,004 | 3,389 | |
| 8 | Blinkx | 108,445 | 615 | |
| 9 | Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network | 107,150 | 5,688 | |
| 10 | ESPN Digital Network | 101,856 | 8,470 | |
| Source: The Nielsen Company | ||||
If you click through to the Nielsen link it’s interesting to look at how that year-to-year comparison changed during 2009.
For example, in March total streams viewed were up +39% over March of 2008.
In May it was +35%
October +26%
November +17%
December +12%
Seems like we’re getting fairly close to online video being a stable category. The days of explosive growth are either ending or already over. Are we far away from online video becoming a single-digit growth area? Seems like that threshold could be crossed as early as this month.