Online Video Use Up 45 Percent

NEW YORK: New Nielsen data reports that time spent on online video in the U.S. grew by 45 percent since January 2010, while the actual number of online video viewers was up just 3.1 percent.

Nielsen estimates 143.9 million unique online viewers in the year, delivering a total of 14.5 billion streams, a 31.5-percent increase. The number of streams per viewer gained 27.5 percent to 101.1, while time per viewer rose 44.5 percent to 279 minutes.

YouTube remains the most popular U.S. video brand, with 112.8 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook in a distant second place with 32.3 million uniques. VEVO entered the top ten in third place (32.3 million), ahead of Yahoo! with 25.5 million. The fasting growing video brand based on month-over-month increases was MSN/Windows Live/Bing, with 17.3 million uniques. Hulu is in sixth place with 11.9 million. Netflix is ranked ninth with 7.4 million.

Based on total streams, YouTube is also number one with 8.5 billion, ten times the number recorded by its closest rival, Hulu, which had 813.2 million. Rounding out the top five based on total streams are Vevo, MSN and Netflix.

Netflix, meanwhile, ranked number one on the list of most engaging video brands, with users spending an average of 11 hours and 8 minutes watching video on the site.