I think there are several interesting things to take away from this latest online video report from Nielsen.
1. 205 minutes (3.5 hours) of online video viewing per month, even growing at 38% a year, is a tiny fraction of the 141 hours / month of TV viewing per person in the home.
2. Hulu is the #2 video source by streams already, with nearly 2x the streams of #3 Yahoo.
3. I need to check out Blinkx. They’ve had a billboard on Hwy. 101 in San Francisco forever, but I’ve never given them much thought.
The Nielsen Company today reported overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for August 2009. Year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 41 percent growth in total streams.
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.) August 2009 Year-Over-Year Month-Over-Month Unique Viewers (000) 139,176 18.00% 2.40% Total Streams (000) 11,363,819 41.00% 1.50% Streams per Viewer 81.7 19.60% -0.80% Time per Viewer (min) 204.9 38.60% -3.20% Source: The Nielsen Company
Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for August 2009 (U.S.) RANK Video Brand Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000) 1 YouTube 7,188,638 107,730 2 Hulu 392,545 9,894 3 Yahoo! 226,601 28,402 4 MSN/WindowsLive/Bing 180,603 17,244 5 Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network 158,790 6,376 6 Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network 151,606 7,826 7 Fox Interactive Media 149,304 14,823 8 Disney Online 103,992 9,524 9 MTV Networks Music 102,021 6,227 10 Blinkx 94,728 425 Source: The Nielsen Company
More on the methodology and metrics here from Nielsen Wire.
Hm, ABC was one of the first broadcast networks to really pioneer the online streaming of full episodes, it’s surprising to me they’re not in the top ten.
since the sorting is by streams, and not unique viewers, I am not surprised. it’s also not tracked by “streams of long-form full episode content”, where I’m sure ABC would fare relatively well. A lot of the sites above have high total streams due to shorter clips.
Also, a lot of ABC content was on Hulu in August…
It would be interesting to see the average minutes per stream. While YouTube would still without doubt be far and away #1, if it were reported as minutes watched per month, I bet the gap would be slightly (very slightly) smaller between YT and Hulu.
Note that Nielsen inflates these numbers by expressing the averages on a “time per viewer” instead of a “time per person” basis.
If 139 million people watched video online in August, then over half the country watched zero minutes.
If you have some time to kill, try calculating the TV and online numbers on a per person basis by crediting each person who didn’t watch at all with zero minutes.
A typical 1 hour show might be split up into 5 streams on you tube.
It would be interesting to know how many downloads some shows are getting from places like iTunes. Apple won’t release numbers – but the studios/networks get paid per download – so they know … I monitor a large (one of the three largest on the internet) p2p sites just to see which shows are getting the most traffic. It’s fascinating to watch in live time after a show ends whether the “net” is interested or not … While these don’t have traditional spots – product placement really stands out.
Kay Bradley, we don’t see iTunes numbers on a regular basis, but have seen occasional numbers and it doesn’t take many people to put shows on top of the iTunes download list. Tens of thousands can do it, and that revenue is insignificant compared to TV advertising.
Thanks for the info Bill. As an advertiser, I’m always interested in which shows people pay to see, or go out of their way to stream/ DL, etc. It tells me for every one person like that – there are at least ten people “glued” to their TV sets – and my commercials are more likely to be seen – rather than missed in a “lets see what else is on during the commercials” environment. Personally, I’m a HUGE fan of product placement (done **right**). I was always taught that “word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising there is.” Subtle and appropriate product placement comes in a close second for the products I advertise.