YouTube Dominates U.K. Online Video Market

LONDON, June 25: According
to data from the comScore Video Metrix service, 27.4 million British Internet
users viewed 3.5 billion videos online in March 2008, with almost half seen on
YouTube.

Google sites, including
YouTube, took a 48-percent share of the online video market, followed by BBC
sites with just a 1.2-percent share. Fox Interactive Media had a 0.9-percent
share, Microsoft sites 0.7 percent, Yahoo 0.6 percent and Dailymotion.com 0.4 percent.

The data also reports that
the U.K.’s 27.4 million Internet viewers watched an average of 127.7 videos
each in March. This is the highest usage rate of any of comScore’s Video Metrix
markets, putting the U.K. above the U.S., Canada, France and Germany. Google
sites attracted the most viewers (20.7 million), who watched an average of 81.1
videos per person. BBC sites drew 6.3 million viewers and 6.7 videos each,
followed by Fox Interactive Media (5.5 million) and Microsoft sites (4.8
million).

In addition, 81.2 percent
of the total U.K. Internet audience viewed online video. The combined U.K.
online video viewing audience watched a total 172 million hours of video
content. The average online video duration was 3 minutes.

—By Mansha Daswani