Monthly U.S. Online Video Views Hits 14.5 Billion

RESTON: American Internet users watched 14.5 billion videos online last month, according to comScore Video Metrix, an 11-percent increase on February, with Google-owned YouTube accounting for more than 40 percent of the market.

In March, Google sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with 5.9 billion videos viewed (a 40.9-percent online video market share), with YouTube.com accounting for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 437 million videos (3 percent), followed by Hulu with 380 million (2.6 percent) and Yahoo! sites with 335 million (2.3 percent). March represented the first time Hulu has cracked the top three in the ranking of videos viewed.

comScore also reveals that almost 150 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 97 videos each last month. Google sites had 100.4 million viewers, watching an average of 59 videos. Fox Interactive was second with 55.2 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! sites (42.5 million) and Hulu (41.6 million).

In addition, 77.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. The average online video viewer watched nearly 5.5 hours in March.