Time Spent Viewing Online Up 25 Percent

NEW YORK: The average Internet user in the U.S. spent 195.2 minutes watching online video in September, according to The Nielsen Company, a 24.8-percent year-on-year hike.

Also up by 24.8 percent was the total number of streams, at 11 billion, while the number of unique viewers gained 12.3 percent in the year to 139.3 million. The number of streams per viewer last month was 79.1, 11.1 percent higher than the year-ago period.

YouTube remains the top online brand based on video streams, with a total of 6.7 billion and 106.1 million unique viewers. In distant second place was Hulu with 437.4 million streams and 13.5 million unique viewers. Yahoo! had 228.5 million streams and 30.1 million unique viewers. Others popular sites include MSN (180.1 million streams, 18.1 million unique viewers), Fox Interactive Media (139.6 million streams, 14.3 million unique viewers) and Nickelodeon (127.6 million streams, 5.3 million unique viewers). Rounding out the top ten are Turner’s sports and entertainment sites, MTV, ESPN and Facebook.