Young American adults viewed nearly five hours of online video each in April. The latest figures from online measurement company comScore showed that almost 11 billion online videos were viewed during the month, with YouTube accounting for more than 4 billion of them. The vast majority of this was viewing of short form material, with the average viewing duration of less than three minutes.
Google sites accounted for a 38% share of all videos, 98% of them served from youtube.com. The total number of videos viewed was down slightly on the previous month, but this is accounted for by April having only 30 days.
YouTube was a long way ahead of the next most popular service, Fox Interactive Media which operates myspace.com. They received over half a billion video views, a 5% share of the market.
Yahoo! followed with 350 million views at 3% and Microsoft with 270 million views at 2%. The remaining places in the top ten were taken by Viacom, Time Warner, ABC, Disney, AOL and ESPN.
The total American audience for online video was nearly 135 million unique viewers, watching an average of more than 80 videos each. Google alone accounted for nearly 84 million viewers, watching an average of 50 videos each. The vast majority of these were short clips on YouTube. Fox Interactive Media reached over 50 million online viewers, watching just over ten videos each.
Yahoo! sites reached 37 million, followed by Mircosoft with nearly 30 million and Time Warner with just over 20 million.
Over 70% of online Americans viewed online video during the month. Those aged 18-34 were the heaviest viewers, watching an average of nearly 290 minutes each.
The average video duration was 2.8 minutes, reflecting the short form clips available on the most popular sites YouTube and MySpace.