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July a record month for online video; Hulu ruled ads

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Media analysis firm comScore has released its online video rankings for July 2011, and finds that—as in previous months—Google sites (led by YouTube) dominated the field, while online streaming service Hulu was putting more ads in front of consumer eyeballs than any other online video service. Significantly, comScore also found July was a record month for online video consumption, with an estimated 180 million Americans each tapping into an average of 18.5 hours of online video during the month, for a record 6.9 billion viewing sessions.

In terms of viewership, Google sites (led by YouTube) led the pack with over 3 billion viewing sessions and almost 160 million unique viewers. Vevo came in a rather distant second place with 62 million viewers and half a billion viewing sessions, while Facebook managed a third place finish with 51 million unique viewers and a scant 186 million viewing sessions. Interestingly, Microsoft sites, Viacom Digital, Yahoo sites, and AOL all beat Facebook in terms of the number of viewing sessions, if not total unique viewers. However, while Hulu came in 9th place in terms of viewers, it was second only to Google in terms of minutes per viewer: Google managed 353.7 during the month, while Hulu got 205.5. No one else even came close.

Hulu was also lead the way (or, depending on one’s point of view, brought up the rear) in terms of ads viewed by users: of 5.3 billion ads served in online video during the month, Hulu sent out over 960 million of them. The average Hulu viewer was subjected to 40.4 ads during the month, putting Hulu almost four times ahead (or, um, behind) Viacom Digital, which managed to put 11.8 ads in front of its viewers during the month, on average. In terms of overall ads served, Adap.tv came in second with over 670 million, and ad networks Tremor Video and BrightRoll Video Network came in third and fourth, with almost 640 million and just over 520 million, respectively.

New this month, comScore is also breaking down YouTube Channel partners, enabling advertisers to see how individual YouTube partners are faring within the YouTube universe. Leading the pack is Vevo, with almost 60 million viewers who spent almost 66 minutes each during the month. Second place went to Warner Music, and third place went to gaming-oriented Machinima, which only say about 17 million viewers but really engaged them, with each seeing an average of 72.7 minutes of video.

It’s important to note that comScore’s rankings don’t include subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Video-on-Demand, CinemaNow, and others.

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